Fiend Interview 3/10/23
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 2:10 PM]
To start, we all know you guys have to meet a minimum of 1 year in the community to be able to be a nominee. That only tells part of the story, though. How long have you been part of the Firo community, and what brought you to the Firo project?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 2:14 PM]
I got involved in 2019. My opinion is privacy is freedoms best friend. Something told me I’ll need it some day.
Fiend, [3/10/2023 2:15 PM]
I’m more certain of that in 2023.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 2:23 PM]
What are your favorite aspects of the Firo Project and community?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 2:37 PM]
Firo’s privacy mechanism and it’s unrealized potential in terms of adoption. There is a lot of ways for it to grow. The CFC is a part of that, but it’s current structure makes it hard to take on specifically exciting community inspired development ideas due to codeing skills and technical knowledge required.
Hopefully we can build community tools to help solve that issue. I’d like to see a portal where devs browse and tender quotes for community driven ideas.
Right now it seems the community is limited in this respect, and there maybe quite a few big picture thinkers that are not coders. It would be good for Firo to be able to tap that resource in my opinion.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 3:03 PM]
As you have a previous interview with Reuben from when you ran for the CFC election I will be drawing on a little bit of that to see what has changed for you since then. In the mean time, as a member of the current CFC, which are your thoughts and opinions of the decisions so far with the CFC? Would you do something differently now that you have the benefit of hindsight? If so, what?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 3:24 PM]
I would have pushed harder and sooner to find a solution to my previous comment. Trying to get technical info as well as to locate and consult with a qualified dev, is difficault to say the least.
As for my thoughts on CFC opinions and decisions so far. I’m glad we all voted to help fund audits for spark. That was very important to me, as above all money should be secure and investing in audits to minimise the risk of bugs contributes to security.
I also think it has proven to be invaluable in supporting the dev team during this bear market.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 3:29 PM]
I don’t think anyone could be grateful enough for the support the Firo Project received not only from individual community members, but also the CFC for our audits for Spark.
Were there any particular proposals previously funded by the CFC that you disagree with?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 3:34 PM]
No luckily the CFC have been careful and hasn’t squandered funds without recieving worthwhile benefit. If anything I was sad to see a couple of proposals not pass.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 3:35 PM]
Can you expand on which ones you were sad to see not pass? What impact did you foresee these proposals having?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 3:42 PM]
I wanted alphaday to pass. I figured it may be a long shot, but if the platform were to become popular, it could help to raise awareness of Firo. Also perhaps it may have provided a platform to advertise and inform users as to why Firo is a gem. I was hoping we could maybe participate in beta ad campaigns which may be cost effective.
Fiend, [3/10/2023 3:46 PM]
If we look at exchange listings. Some were cheap to list a few years ago. Now exchanges like KuCoin cost a fortune that Firo cannot afford right now. Sometimes it pays to be an early bird.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 3:55 PM]
That’s a fair perspective.
In your previous candidacy interview, you had said first and foremost your interests were to support the core team temporarily during the bear, but once things got better that you would be pursuing building, or acquiring, infrastructure and services for introducing and leading people to Firo. You also brought up a multi coin wallet with swaps in wallet for development. Like some of your fellow candidates at the time you’re interested in home hosting of masternodes to steer away from the dependency of hosting services.
Obviously, I get the feeling that you’re still very interested in the infrastructure and services element given what you just explained. Given that Stack Wallet has come out meeting what your previously aimed for, are you still interested in funding a multi coin wallet with swap functionality, or has that changed? What about your perspective on masternode hosting?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 4:10 PM]
For folks reading this, this thread is illustrative of the projects I would like to persue, but am unable to seek out qualified devs etc.
Ideally I’d like CFC to fund and create tools/services that have the potential to reach the masses. i.e. a cypto superchats service for youtubers/streamers. Imagine what would happen if crypto streamers directed their viewers to a Firo service to donate to their stream. Ideally the service would be multi-coin for obvious reasons.
The same goes for a self custody payment plugin etc. for wordpress shops.
As for wallets, it seems stack wallet is pretty good aside for IOS limitations regarding swaps. When it’s more mature and features more coins, then it’l be a great solution for most people.
Fiend, [3/10/2023 4:13 PM]
With regards to the ability to self host our nodes.
Fiend, [3/10/2023 4:14 PM]
I view this as a must in the long term. Just look at the direction regulagtors are taking. We need to be as hardened to censorship as possible.
Fiend, [3/10/2023 4:23 PM]
I’d be open to funding research in this area.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 4:27 PM]
How do you see the future of the CFC? How about the Community Matching Fund?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 4:47 PM]
It all depends on the future of Firo. Ideally in my opinion there would be no need for a CFC fund. However Firo’s community is relatively small, which limits the scope of crowd funding compared to much larger projects. So I think we should focus on finding ways to become a much larger project.
For now I think the CFC and it’s fund is needed, and I think the proposals it has funded proves that. I think the creation of the CFC is one of Reuben’s best ideas in this regard even if at the time it didn’t seem crucial.
As for a CMF, you would need to be more specific on the when. If it’s to be implemented now, then I don’t think the community is large enough to fund many expensive projects.
However if it’s be used as a form of voting whereby community members individually donate a small amount but the CFC picks up most of the tab, then I’d have concerns about proposers gaming the system. i.e. I wouldn’t want to see developer propose a project, and for it to be cost effective for the dev to vote for their own proposal with donations.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 4:59 PM]
That concludes my questions for this. Do you have anything you want to say that wasn’t covered with my questions? Anything in particular to the reader and voters? Or a topic covered you would like to go back to and expand on?
Fiend, [3/10/2023 5:05 PM]
If we can get a dev portal funded and created. I’d like to add to your duties and have you scourering the interwebs and connections for devs to tender their services.
Maybe we could reduce your burdens elsewhere though! 
Fiend, [3/10/2023 5:05 PM]
Thanks for your questions, have a good evening.
Lucas Fullam, [3/10/2023 5:07 PM]
You’re welcome! Thank you for your patience, and thank you for your current services for the CFC as well as running again to offer them further. Have a good night, and best of luck!