Firo believes in the importance of financial privacy in cryptocurrency as an essential element in maintaining the original goal of cryptocurrency: to be a public utility for money. We have seen how freedom of commerce or even access to our savings are things that are no longer things that can be taken for granted and authoritarian governments have increasingly used money as a tool of control. As fiat currencies go increasingly digital with some going as far as totally replacing physical cash, we lose control over our own money instead relying on intermediaries.
Firo has dedicated itself to being a privacy preserving cryptocurrency and have designed and built trustless privacy protocols such as Lelantus and Lelantus Spark that have inspired and shaped the designs of other privacy protocols (for e.g. Triptych, Seraphis, Lelantus-MW).
For it to be truly a public utility that isn't beholden to any one entity,
Firo strives to increase individual liberty. By guaranteeing financial privacy, Firo can help ensure freedom of commerce. People should be able to transact however they want, as long as it does not infringe on the well-being or individual liberty of others. We are also big believers that freedom of commerce also facilitates peace and prosperity across countries and cultures. By guaranteeing financial privacy, Firo can directly guarantee fungibility, an essential property for free commerce.
Although there are many privacy solutions out there for cryptocurrencies, it is our aim in providing the strongest level of privacy without sacrificing on trustlessness, ease of use and relying on time tested cryptographic building blocks.
Algorithm
Firo uses the FiroPoW algorithm targeted at GPUs that keeps mining accessible to everyone.
Firo has always been a strong believer in the power of Proof-of-Work (PoW). PoW enables community building, fair distribution and ties the value of Firo to the physical world with energy.
FiroPoW is a mining algorithm that is highly optimized for GPU mining and designed to be both FPGA and ASIC resistant to even the playing field and allow people to mine from their own consumer hardware. We have always been big fans of Proof of Work’s ability to tie the value of a virtual currency to the real world along with a way to distribute Firo’s supply in a fair and decentralized manner free from restrictions.
FiroPoW follows ProgPoW’s 0.9.4 spec with a small change to have the algorithm randomly change with every block. The starting DAG size will be slightly over 4GB and will increase by 8MB every 1300 blocks (~4.5 days). This DAG size has been chosen to support most modern graphics cards.
Mining
Firo mining requires 6GB of GPU memory as it downloads and stores a DAG file into it. DAG file stands for Directed Acyclic Graph and is used in all Ethash coins to provide a proof of work. DAG file is generated every mining epoch and it increases from epoch to epoch. For more details, see our quick step-by-step guide on how to mine Firo on Nanopool.
Useful Links
- Firo Website - https://firo.org/ethereum.org
- Wallet - https://firo.org/get-firo/download/
- Firo explorer - https://explorer.firo.org/