Hi everyone
I love Firo. With a passion.
However I’ve encountered some issues which I believe should be addressed by the development and website maintenance teams.
On the official website of Firo where it says to buy Firo (Buy Firo | Firo - Privacy-preserving cryptocurrency) multiple coin swapping services are unavailable, unusuable or have weird problems.
Example #1
I was looking to do my small monthly buy of firo by converting from other coins (eth in this case) and usually I try different providers. On the occasion i decided to go for Exolix. Exolix doesn’t have the best reputation but they are big enough and i haven’t had issues personally for other coins (though always small amounts). I choose my coin and I see there is only Firo available on BNB and XZC. None of these are official Firo network. I know for a fact they used to have up until recently an official Firo network option, now it is gone. I asked support what is going on and their response “our liquidity provider never had that option”. After pressing on they said they would check that problem and silence afterwards.
It’s great (i guess?!) to have wider reach with other networks but it defeats the whole purpose and privacy that comes with using the official network.
Example #2
Letsexchange doesn’t support shielded addresses at all. I know i read somewhere there is some work to be done on the wallet to automatically convert shielded to transparent but this can be frustrating process. They also block any known VPN or Tor (tested both). Not very privacy-like. Not cool. (same goes for swapzone)
Example #3
Swapspace doesn’t even have any Firo offers for a very long time.
Example #4
xchange doesn’t have a firo pair for a very long time as well.
Example #5
Majesticbank had previous reports of rugging a lot of users. For some reason they are still up. I don’t want to provide the forum name but its the largest english one (hidden) you can probably guess its name. Multiple very bad experiences including myself.
As Firo community i believe we should reevaluate and test on a regular basis (!!!) the exchanges listed on there. Issues like refusing to work with shielded transactions should be put as alerts above the exchange as well as put at the end not at the front. If we really care about privacy we should alert users where VPN or Tor is blocked as clearly such services have no interest in preserving user privacy. I’m personally also shocked a service like Changelly is put up there without any warning as there have been multiple problems with them (reference: reddit, monero reddit sub provides warnings including about majesticbank).
Please let’s settle these on ramp obstacles and show the world we mean business when it comes to privacy!