Monero, as a technology, is very hard to break. But from the standpoint of an attacker, breaking Monero is not the best approach. The approach is to attack the people using it, to demoralize them, to gaslight them, to distract and dissuade them.
When Bitcoin came out, it was gaining momentum and around 5 years after its creation a bunch of shell companies came along and tried to convince the community that it shouldn't increase its blocksize. They installed developers and made quasi-religious arguments about Satoshi and the whitepaper. That lead to a hard fork and has had lasting implications on the use of Bitcoin as money, changing it into a slow and expensive chain.
The same kind of logic seems to be happening in Monero. Although, instead of infiltrating the developer team with ideological positions that keep it slow and inefficient, another approach is taking place. That is one of creating a toxic environment such that people just want to leave.
This became apparent first around July or August 2024, when practically every website of any significance in Monero was DDoS attacked for months. Monerica had a massive DDoS attack that lasted 2 straight months, almost causing it to end due to rapid CDN costs and a poor system design. Around this time, some strange characters showed up.
Monero's community is diverse, and some developers are living alternative lifestyles. People are from different countries and have various religious backgrounds, it's not a monolithic group in that regard. So, an attacker tries to find ways to stir up division, to overtly try to associate Monero with extremist positions, nationalism, racism and the usual hate messaging.
For a while, it did surprise people that there was some vocal small group of people on X.com trying to associate Monero with these fringe ideologies. Some developers did start to question their involvement in Monero. But it became apparent rather quickly that these people, who claimed to support Monero, were nothing more than agitators. To this day many still think these people are being authentic, but they are not.
The reality is that a single person or a few people control many different accounts and hide behind faceless profile pics, this amplifies the messaging by seeming to come from different accounts. So don't think there is actually much of a "group" out there.
These agitators stalk people in the Monero community, make harassing statements and generally try to bait everyone into a violent or distracted response. Anything they can do to discourage work, to cause a psychological problem in the developers and users of Monero is something they will try.
It is easy to spot these inauthentic sociopaths at this point. They are boastful while accomplishing nothing, they troll and attack people, and generally see anyone who is not on their side as an enemy. They continue to ramp up their attacks, slander, and are clearly putting a ton of time into this. But there is no logical way they can do that unless they are paid from the outside or are somehow independently wealthy and true sociopaths.
They will take the approach at all times that gets the most attention, they will do anything possible to take the spotlight and control the narrative. They want you sharing their posts and replying. The typical way they do this is through insults, belittling people on X.com and hoping they will respond. But they could very well say something positive to socially engage you and control you that way. Anything that they think will cause an emotional reaction will be done. But unfortunately for them, their consistent attempts to derail Monero have only vindicated its importance and in rage baiting people have ironically caused more encouragement to make improvements. Let's keep these distractors in their own echo chamber.
These people will continue until the bitter end to distract Monero developers and users. That is their paid assignment it seems. So be careful of falling for these kinds of psy ops. If you want to interact with real people in Monero, who are not trying to control a narrative or rage bait you, then you will need to do so at in-person conferences, or be on a live stream in which they cannot so easily take control. The likelihood of them attending any of these events is near zero.
Be mindful of the attacks, mind control techniques, and don't fall for any of it. Do not engage with them. Block and mute them. They live and breath for attention and distraction. The people who are making a difference are busy working, not trolling or boasting about their fake accomplishments and their projects which will never see the light of day.
