Come say hi at the Firo booth if you’re attending—we’ve got merch, giveaways, and prizes waiting for you! Plus, we’re proud to be one of the official sponsors of this amazing privacy-focused event.
Our presence at Monerokon was a huge success. There were only two ‘alternate’ coins there Firo and Beldex and our booth was by far the more well visited. A lot of other projects tried to get in but were not accepted so it’s great that we were received well by the Monero community and a lot of them were saying ‘we’re one of the legit ones’, which is nice to hear. We hope to foster this good relationship.
We were located in the courtyard where the food was located so it got really busy in between talks and lunch. We didn’t take any photos due to Monerokon’s policy of no photos unless you get permission from the people in the photo.
What worked
The placement and arrangement of merch and leaflets really made a big difference in making our booth attractive. Kudos to my wife who has experience manning other types of booths.
We didn’t spend money on banners or those roll-ups as it’s also hard for us to carry around all the way from Malaysia but the table cloth, red chocolates and color scheme really made a real difference. Great job from @VOSTOEMISIO
We decided for a higher quality t-shirt fabric and people noticed it and complimented on it. Good job @AJaydono
Coasters were low cost and a popular thing to give to people
We decided to go for a ‘we’re a complement to Monero’ rather than ‘we are better’ than Monero approach which worked well in a very pro Monero crowd and is one that I personally prefer.
The riddles were VERY well received but maybe more so for this crowd who are inquisitive and curious. It was a great way to onboard people to Spark Names as well.
Spin the wheel was also fun and people enjoyed the chocolate consolation prizes.
The single page leaflet and landing pages were great, again thanks to @VOSTOEMISIO
Our Instagram stories attracted people to follow us! (wife’s idea)
Things that can be worked on
The first sync of Campfire/Stack wallets were a problem in onboarding people as it took them a while to get it up and running unless they had a good internet connection to do a first sync.
Spark Names registration had to be guided as the way to do it wasn’t very prominent
I didn’t have a lot of time to brief volunteers (lepto and wife) so often questions still had to be fielded by me so instead a FAQ to brief volunteers needs to be prepared beforehand.
The lack of a BTCPayserver plugin for Firo hampers adoption and many people didn’t have an easy way to accept Firo or build it into their existing workflows. While we have a quotation from MoneroPay, most people still do BTCPayserver to accept Bitcoin and even Monero so it makes sense to build that.
Besides Locktrip, we didn’t have any other easy to point ways to spend Firo.
Edge Wallet Firo integration lacks a bunch of features and those onboarded with them couldn’t participate in the Spark Names or privacy stuff.
Things we can do next time
Plan better for merch. Lots were last minute and had to pay more for it.
Stickers were often requested but we didn’t have any
Hide Firo sticker competition (like what RetoSwap did)
Raffle to get ppl to onboard (like what Edge did)
Ways to preload Firo and have them onboard
We also met the guys at Trocador to look into adding Spark address support and also Exolix to reenable Firo. We also discussed things with Edge on how to get Firo better supported. Kept good relations with Cake and other notable allies and friends of Firo.
Met some long term supporters of Firo who have been around since Zcoin days and it was heartening to hear that they still believed in our mission and they were even talking about how resilient we are! @ekatonchiro <3
Again a huge thanks to @VOSTOEMISIO and @leptokurtic’s help in making our outing at Monerokon a success and we hope to participate in more of these types of close-knit and targeted community facing conferences as opposed to the big commercial ones (like Token 2049).
It was great to see Firo being discussed, merch being worn, and people genuinely curious about the project. Reuben, Lepto, and Reuben’s wife did a fantastic job managing the booth, answering questions, and running the social activities and marketing. Looking forward to seeing Firo on-site for Monerokon again next year, and hopefully at more privacy-conscious conferences and events in the near-future.
Plus, we’re proud to be one of the official sponsors of this amazing privacy-focused event.
See you there!
