Altcoin Arena: Firo

Firo, launched in 2016 as Zcoin, is a leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency that focuses on being private digital cash. Known for pioneering zero-knowledge proofs in cryptocurrency, Firo has designed and implemented several groundbreaking privacy protocols, including Zerocoin, Sigma, Lelantus, and its latest advancement, Lelantus Spark. Lelantus Spark represents the culmination of years of research and development. Built entirely by Firo from the ground up, Spark hides the sender, receiver, transaction amount and can even be adapted to hide asset types. Its simple, modular architecture allows for easier security audits and future upgrades. Firo is expanding its use case with Spark Assets that allow users to create their own privacy preserving tokens in the Firo ecosystem. As an open-source, community-driven project, Firo continues to innovate scalable, trustless privacy protocols that inspire others in the industry while upholding user autonomy and confidentiality. Firo uses a unique hybrid security model that combines Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining with a Masternode layer based on Long-Living Masternode Quorums (LLMQs) which provide additional layer of protection through ChainLocks and InstantSend, giving the network strong finality and resilience against 51% attacks. Firo’s operations are also backed by Dandelion++ which conceals the originating IP of transactions, removing the need for external services such as Tor or i2P.  The Firo/Zcoin blockchain was used in the Thai Democrat Party Elections in 2018 to elect its party leader with over 127,000+ votes cast nationwide making it the first wide-scale application of blockchain technology in a political election.