Firo Activates Latest Privacy Upgrade “Lelantus”

Firo has activated a new privacy upgrade called Lelantus as of Jan. 14, 2021. The newly upgraded protocol enhances transaction privacy by removing Firo’s previous limitations.

Firo was initially launched as ZCoin in 2016 as a privacy-focused open-source cryptocurrency. 

At its launch, the coin leveraged the ZeroCoin protocol, a zero-knowledge proof system that allows users to destroy coins and then redeem those coins for new coins that have no transaction history. 

Later, the Firo team recognized ZeroCoin’s limitations and worked to eliminate those issues in its Lelantus upgrade.

The Firo team writes that Lelantus is “a significant milestone in blockchain privacy, bringing the highest levels of practical privacy without compromising on trustlessness.” It adds that Lelantus’ zero-knowledge proofs “employ well-established cryptographic assumptions” and “use a simple, intuitive construction.”

Most notably, Lelantus does not require a trusted setup. Trusted setups are an initial step required by many other coins that use zero-knowledge proofs. However, these are not ideal in some cases because they require known parties to participate in a setup ceremony, potentially compromising privacy in the long run.

The upgrade also allows users to burn and redeem coins of any amount. Under Lelantus, users can now do partial redemptions rather than redeeming burn amounts in full. This approach is more convenient for users, and it also enhances privacy by making the transactions nearly impossible to track.

Finally, with the Lelantus release, Firo has introduced new scaling features like faster proofs and reduced proof size for faster transactions. Node operators for Firo coin can update here.