No but it's a good thing for a few reasons (1) XMR really needs to focus on it's primary mission. Blockchain based smart contracts make privacy harder. (2) There is no consensus on a good smart contract language is yet, especially for UTXOs so it's best to wait until a standard emerges (note there are several challengers to EVMs that might yet replace it), (3) Once something is on the public blockchain, it'll stay forever so it needs to be done right the first time so we need a mature smart contract standard (see previous point), (4) It can be handled by a parallel merge mined chain for added flexibility and experimentation so XMR might never need it, (5) the comining implementation of FCMPs has featurres that will make it easier to do, so any effort spent now will need to be thrown out. (6) Most common smart contracts like automatic payments and smart contracts and payment channels can be done by using time locked XMR and checkpoints (with clear roll back rules) and step signatures. These can be integrated into wallets to run in the background, so it might not even be necessary for most cases to hard code opcodes onto the main block chain. All you need to do is leave your phone on to handle the checkpoints. Atomic swaps and the "Monero Subscriptions Wallet" already prove this is possible. All that's needed is a more full featured wallet extension library that handles all the typical smart contract cases (i.e. currently there are thousands of smart contracts out there...most are abandoned and only a handful are actually useful. We could implement those).

Objectively, ZCash has the equivalent of FCMP++ right now but there are a few issues. Firstly, most ZCash transactions are public so the anonymity set for ZCash is small and even smaller when compared with Monero which has a lot more users. Also, because of the former issue, every time you switch from public to private transactions, it taints your wallet just as it does with coinjoins in Bitcoin. There's also a much smaller purely private ecosystem (e.g. Haveno, Atomic Swaps, Serai, Tari, DarkFI, etc), since there is less pressure to do things privately. That makes it easier for ZCash to cave to governments request, even if it didn't have a company to target. It also lacks other features like Dandelion++ to help anonymity or P2Pool and RandomX to help avoid centralisation. Pirate chain, being a fork of ZCash, solves some of these issues by getting rid of the public blockchain but it is smaller and dependent on ZCash for new research so it is not viable yet.

Notice that Signal isn't attacked (at least not yet). Telegram is optionally end to end encrypted and it is a for profit company. Those are two vectors that Durov was attacked on. It's the same reason Samurai Wallet was attacked on and Tornado Cash. Going after Monero would be much harder. It is not a for profit company (or even DAO). It's privacy is part of the protocol, like SSH and when ring signatures are gone the final legal potential weakness will be gone. Legally, there is no clear way to attack Monero since if Monero is attacked, any privacy technology like VPNs and SSH and HTTPS could also be attacked and that would have a major industry backlash. It is far more likely that if an attack happens, the infrastructure would be attacked (e.g. getting Monero off github, etc) by putting pressure on the web hosts, but there are already several projects that work on GIT over TOR so this is more an inconvenience than a threat. At the moment, I'm not worried. If Signal and ZCash are attacked, then I'd start to be more worried.

This is where open block chains fail. A good open block chain won't disallow the transaction, but since it is open, the owner of the wallet can be fined or jailed after the fact. Coinjoins don't work since they depend on most people doing it, most people not being KYCed, and most people not making a mistake that would cause them to be KYCed. This just doesn't happen. Breaking a transaction up into several transactions just under the limit makes you more of a target since it's obvious what you're doing. By all means, try to defeat this measure politically and form common cause with the cash/gold/silver bros, but recognise that even if you win, we're only one 9-11 or COVID-19-like crisis away from losing. The only real solution are private block chains like Monero and non-cash unit of accounts like gold, silver, rice, dried beans, or outright barter.

While I do admire the pledge and I hope it succeeds, IMO, it's a bit too idealistic given how few people currently accept Monero. My suggestion is to have three tiers...platinum (the above)...gold (add "where possible" to each level) and bronze (add "or other crypto" but not fiat when not possible).

I agree in principle but in practise it would be a disaster without a plan. Localmonero.co works because it is THE P2P XMR place. If there are 100 versions, the liquidity on each would be so low that Noone would use it, especially for non USD trades. Having 100 localmoneros is good but you need a federated login like nostr and when you search for offers you would see offers for all instances of localmonero, or at least the most reputable ones. With this approach, the new localmonero would be unstoppable.

Instead of POS (see my previous post), it would make much more sense to adapt the Nimble Wimble approach of making it so that validation is P2P whenever both parties are online. If I buy from you and you agree, then the purchase should been validated with 2 confirmations. Since we both agree that the transaction is made, it's no-one else's business if the transaction is valid. This would be much less resource intensive than even POS and be faster. If only one party is online at a time, it should be possible to have 1 confirmation and the other confirmation can be delegated to a miner. If neither are online at the time, then the usual POW takes place. Of course, that would mean that all wallets would have to be validators, but since you're only validating your own transactions, it should be light weight.

POS is fundamentally flawed. It increases centralization because people won't want to validate themselves and instead delegate their stake to "trusted institutions". Essentially, you're recreating the existing financial system. POS is also less secure since you only lose X dollars for misdeeds but have the power to do far more than X dollars of damage. And if all you want to do is damage, that slashed stake is just the cost of doing business. And if people are staking with you, you don't even risk losing your own money. And although the "guarantee" that the validator is doing right comes form the slashing of the stake, the enforcement of that slashing is political (i.e. others have to gang up on you to take your stake). When enforcement is political, wrongful slashing is inevitable. Finally, when a 51% attack is possible with validators, it's imposible to undo it...unlike POW which can call on the community to start a few miners on their PCs.

Put yourself in the place of the grocer. If one person asked you to accept platinum as payment, would you? Probably no. If 10 people or a few loyal customers did, you might look into it.

Something is seriously wrong. There's a reason decentralisation is important. Anonymity or not, you never put all your eggs (digital or physical) in one basket for precisely this sort of reason. Once the wallet size reached a certain threshold (say 100 or 500 XMR), a new wallet should have been created for subsequent funds and the previous wallet should be in a hardware or paper wallet with a different trusted person ideally multisig. If funds were stolen via hack or the police forces the wallet holder to give up the keys, only a fifth (for a 500 XMR wallet) or a twenty fifth (for a 100 XMR wallet) of the amount would have been lost. If multisig is buggy, it need be ready for Seraphis. If it's just a matter of UI, then it needs to made usable and widely adopted. Remember, one of the key advantages of Monero is that it make privacy easier. You can try use Bitcoin and go through a lot of hoops to get privacy and forever stay vigilant, or just use Monero. Multisig and managing multiple accounts should be at most as difficult as Bitcoin.

Depending on how serious you are about "getting government approved", you can do a cross chain analysis on yourself and provide necessary view keys. To prove you bought 10K of Monero, just show that your bank account went down 10K and your Monero account went up 10K (at the past exchange rate). To show you exchanged 5K Monero for 5K Bitcoin, show that 5K Monero was transferred from your wallet at the same time 5K was added to your Bitcoin wallet. It's extremely cumbersome and requires that you have access to all wallets/accounts and is extremely invasive on your privacy, but it can be done if you really want to. Personally, I'd agree about the tax attorney. Often there's a way of "legitimising" grandfathered funds, but expected to be taxed to the max. Alternately, there may be a way of doing crypto loans so that you get the money without actually cashing out.

What does unlawful sources mean? If you donated to a Russian band a few years ago, you were doing something lawful. Now, it's unlawful in some parts of the world. Even remittances to your Russian family puts you in question. If you supported certain protests, you can be unlawful, but lawful the next government. Privacy pools only "work" if they are federated because laws throughout the world are not uniform, but being part of the "wrong" federation can make you unlawful. In the end, fear will prevent people from joining, and that fear will spread to the pool developers since at least one federation will do something another country does not like. I'll fail before it gets started. Just use Monero.