Firo was launched as Zcoin on 28 September 2016 and our project is now 6 years old! We have grown tremendously as a project and we thought it would be a good opportunity to have a look back at what was achieved in the past year since our last birthday (28 September 2021)!
TECHNICAL
- FiroPoW was activated on October 2021 which replaced our previous mining algorithm MTP making our coin ASIC/FPGA resistant and reducing the amount of overhead needed.
- InstantSend was activated on October 2021 making all transactions final within a few seconds without having to wait for block confirmation.
- The First Firo mobile wallet with Lelantus privacy tech support was released. This wallet automatically anonymized any received Firo. Campfire, an open source Firo wallet was also released as a joint effort between Cypher Stack and Arcadia.
- MTP Data stripping Extraneous data in old MTP blocks were stripped out allowing Firo’s blockchain to reduce its size from 60+ GB to around 4 GB.
- Firo GUI UI on both Firo-QT and Electron (Rich GUI) was refreshed with a new look to reflect the Firo branding.
- Block time was reduced to 2.5 minutes on June 17th, 2022. This allows for faster confirmations even for exchanges or wallets that do not support Firo’s InstantSend.
- Elysium was launched on testnet and is now in release candidate status. Final bug fixes and rounds of tests are being done before releasing to the public.
- FiroDEX, a cross-chain atomic swap DEX powered by AtomicDEX is released allowing Firo to be swapped in a decentralized manner across major chains such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche and others.
RESEARCH
- The Lelantus Spark Cryptography Audit by Hashcloak has been completed. It was funded by the community and core team funds via the Firo Crowdfunding System.
- We introduced Helsing, which enables a Private Firo Masternode in Lelantus Spark.
- Spark Assets (Spats) were revealed that extend Lelantus Spark Technology to support confidential tokens/assets which hide the sender, receiver, amount, and also the asset being transferred.
- The Lelantus Spark paper was accepted into the 6th Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts organized by the International Financial Cryptography Association.
TOKENOMICS AND THE FIRO COMMUNITY FUND
- After three rounds of polling, the community voted for a change in the distribution of block rewards: 50% Masternodes, 25% Miners 10% Community Fund 15% Development Fund. Emission remains unchanged.
- The Community Fund Committee (CFC) was formed and elected from the community members to oversee the newly formed Community Fund. They are a well-rounded mix of well-established community members, subject matter experts and developers which are independent from the core team.
- The CFC approved a bonus mining rewards campaign to decentralize mining hashrate. This gives a 10% bonus over the block reward to any pool operator that has less than 30% total hashrate.
- The CFC approved for the Community Fund to be utilized to fund the balance required for the Lelantus Spark code audit by Hashcloak
NEW LISTINGS AND TRADE PAIRS
- New listings on Tokocrypto, BitMart, TradeOgre, Incognito DEX, Tip.cc, BingX and Bitwell.
- New trading pairs with Binance (BUSD), Bittrex (USDT).
- Firo can be purchased with fiat using Visa or MasterCard through Binance and the 7b app.
NEW MINING POOLS
- Firo can be mined on several new mining pools that have joined the Firo mining ecosystem
Community Activities
- NFTs have been made by the community to show appreciation to Firo. FiroPunks, 999 unique algorithmically generated NFTs collectible on the Binance Smart Chain were used by collectors to battle each other. It is now listed on Binance NFT market.
- Firo Foxes is a WIP community-funded NFT PFP project. The goal is to reward Firo community members, whether they are coders, researchers, translators, or other helpful individuals.
- Contests like animation and meme creation contests have been held to get the community involved and have some fun.
- Moon Apes collaborated with us to bring a limited edition of Firo Moon Apes to raise money for our research.
- There are Tiktok videos made to spread privacy awareness, Firo’s technology, and blockchain knowledge.
- Show Me the Firo is a community podcast to discuss everything about Firo and its state. It can be found on the Firo Youtube Channel. It is also available on Firo’s Odysee channel.
- Firorunner is a small project developed specifically for the Firo community where you can play, and earn Firo.
- The Firo Hummingbot liquidity mining program is back on Binance. This program helps by providing liquidity to Firo and in return, getting rewards in Firo and HBOT.
Partnerships
- Firo will be supported as a zAsset by Panther Protocol to provide technical collaboration and research to develop new technology and invest in new ways of deploying zero-knowledge-proof systems.
- MAGIC (Multidisciplinary Academic Grants in Cryptocurrencies) Grants accept donations in Firo. MAGIC Grants empower communities to set up MAGIC Funds for various projects deemed essential.
- We have partnered with Finstreet to provide educational content regarding Firo and blockchain privacy to the Indian community.
- The Railgun partnership enables the Firo Core team to use private transfers for all ERC20 grant payments and donations, enabling private stablecoin payments.
- Partnership with DoTOracle allows them to bridge tokens across multiple chains into our upcoming privacy tokenization layer, Elysium. This allows FIRO to serve as a privacy infrastructure layer across all chains that DoTOracle supports.
- Firo has been accepted into the BPSAA. They are a think-tank of privacy-focused projects that focus on collaborative efforts for privacy innovation.
- We partnered with UDC Consultants, a marketing consulting agency that provides complete consulting and marketing support.
- Bitwell is partnering with us to jointly explore on-chain privacy solutions and asset information protection using Elysium.
Appreciation
A huge thanks to Rasikh and the Arcadia Group for their generous donations via OpenCollective, MAGIC Grants and privately that have helped tremendously in continuing our research and development.
We would also like to thank our FiroFam who donated via OpenCollective, Code Audit for Lelantus Spark via GoFundMe and in the proposals that have been posted on the Firo Crowdfunding System.
Firo would not have been possible without these contributions and the core team is extremely grateful for the continued belief in our mission and project.