Does anyone know what’s going on with Firo’s price: +100% in the last 24 hours, +150% in a week?
It makes me smile, but I’d like to know why today.
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There was a massive (relatively speaking) volume spike on MEXC, but I can’t tell you why volume suddenly spiked again. The optimist in me would like to say there’s a sudden new wave of interest in privacy tech but I kind of doubt that’s behind it.
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there are some trends in privacy, some influencers, big names… talking about it. Led by ZEC, and other privacy coins seem to follow.
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yah should stop mentioning that coin unless you like Israeli backdoors in your crypto. any one mentioning ZEC and not Firo is a paid shill cuz firo does it betta with ZKnowledge as is its own thang but you do you boo and enjoy USS Liberty while your at it ffs
Can you elaborate more on this? Was this backdoor discovered?
The true answer to this is more nuanced. Also remember, I have no incentive to defend Zcash, in fact it would serve me better if I was to play up the anti-Israel/backdoored sentiment, but I won’t. Also Zooko has blocked me for years for reasons unknown :).
Yes some of the people that worked on Zcash especially it’s founding cryptography have Jewish/Israel heritage. Eli-Ben Sasson, Aviel Avi Rubin (though he is US-born) and Eran Tomer have connections to Israeli universities and heritage. However this discounts all the other important people who worked on it like Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman who do not have any Israeli heritage as far as i know.. There is an article (now taken down) that talks about the ‘Israeli developed’ currency that is referring to Tel Aviv University and Technion’s involvement. It is more accurate to call it a global team where many key people are from American, Israeli and Italian universities. Madars I believe is Latvian.
Even the people who funded Zcash are quite diverse from Shanghai investment firms (Fenbushi), Naval Ravikant, Winklevoss brothers, Roger Ver, Barry Silbert DCG Group (Jewish) and Maple Ventures (American-Israeli).
The people that talked about a potential backdoor in Zcash were actually Americans: Matthew Green and Zooko Wilcox but it is important to note that at least some of it was taken out of context. Matthew Green’s talk of a backdoor was actually when he was presenting the Zerocoin paper (not the Zerocash paper) and this was what he was quoted as saying:
Green says that he and his fellow researchers are not interested in facilitating criminal activity with Zerocoin. “Zerocoin would give you this incredible privacy guarantee, then we could add on some features which let the police, for instance, to be able to track money laundering. A back door.” The paper is due to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy in Oakland, California, in May.
Matthew Green actually has many times publicly defended to say he’s against backdoors, and he clarified that what he meant there was that you CAN weaken it if you want to. I guess we can make our own conclusions on what he really meant.
Zooko made a really dumb comment which on the face of it sounds damning:
What he meant, which I honestly believe is his true intention is that he thinks law enforcement can still chase leads (especially if Zcash is deposited into CEXes) even with on-chain privacy.
This is also consistent with the reports that Zcash funded or helped contribute to such as the RAND report and also the Perkins Coie brief on privacy coins which said that there are ways that privacy coins can exist in the existing regulatory framework instead of banning them.
This approach is in contrast with Monero’s culture which is ‘we don’t care about regulation’ and ‘ban us if you want’, with even certain circles cheering its use by criminals. I sympathize with this approach but I also think that openly cheering on criminal usage isn’t a good look for the vast majority of people. We want privacy, in an ideal world, governments and regulators should support and uphold the right to privacy for citizens while minimizing truly harmful criminal use.
My view is that ZCash, being more ‘Silicon Valley’ and VC focused wants to normalize privacy and have it be accepted by regulators and governments rather than being anti-establishment like Monero and personally, I think there’s value in that though arguably they could have done much more.
Zooko has in fact publicly spoken against ‘backdoors’ too.
The Sprout Vulnerability
The big blemish is really the Sprout vulnerability which would have enabled coins to be printed out of thin air. Some use it as proof that there was a backdoor. But it was found by Ariel Gabizon a Zcash engineer (also a Jew if that even matters). Ariel actually also really liked our work on Lelantus btw! Also while it allows infinite printing it doesn’t break the privacy so this claimed’ ‘backdoor’ wouldn’t have helped to identify people who used Zcash. They hid the transcript to prevent it being exploited and then patched it (but handled it less than ideally). Some influencers who don’t know better say that this can mean there’s hidden inflation but because of turnstiles, this can’t have happened.
ZK work is complex. Zcoin (and Firo) went through multiple vulnerabilities that even respected auditors didn’t catch.
So in short, while yes Israeli academics and researchers have had an important role to play in Zcash, the work is all out there to see and collaborated with many other researchers and auditors and cryptographers from various nationalities. Some important figures in Zcash made really silly statements that while technically correct, when taken out of context, made people worry there was a backdoor though there is no evidence that such a backdoor exists and many of these same people fought against backdoors. Lastly, the Sprout vulnerability while serious, was found by an Israeli, mitigated to the best of their abilities and would not have broken privacy, just would have killed their project. This would be against their interests.
That being said, Zcash isn’t without its faults, as is with any project including Firo.
As usual, nuanced takes seldom satisfies anybody. It will piss off both Zcash and XMR supporters and win over none of them. Zcash people would say I’m against them or anti-semitic for even highlighting who is Jewish or not. Monero people would say I bow down to regulation and a sell-out. The truth takes time to explain which nobody has the time to read through this shit. But here it is.
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Thank you for the explanation and experience you have shared. Now I know more about it.
Thank you, Reuben, for this informative post.
It’s quite sad to rely on the nationality or religion of certain people to characterize a project.
Especially since, to criticize ZCash, there’s no need to resort to such practices: it’s enough to explain its origins and, within that, the friction with ZCoin (now Firo).
If you’re brave, I’d be really interested if you had the time and courage to embark on such a review.
Thanks for this very informative writeup.
The way @anon19852482 is just throwing around the term backdor is not great. The code is open source, so the backdoor will be found if it exists, but just claiming there is a backdoor because they are Izraelis is silly.
Lots of projects (including Firo) had a fishy beginning, that doesnt mean they are bad projects today, at this moment.
I just like the fact, that many privacy projects are being developed, each can learn from the other…
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I don’t know what you’re referring to when you write that Firo had a dubious start: for my part, it’s ZCash that had a dubious start and that has nothing to do with the nationality or religion of the initial team but with the way they behaved towards the ZCoin team from whom they largely copied (looted) the project.
Which part did they loot? I thought they are each based on different tech, one on the zerocoin paper (zcoin - firo) and the other on the zerocash paer (zcash).
I listened to Reuben on the Bitcoin Takeover podcast, there he explains all the adventures from the beginning of the project. Highly recommend. (this one: https://www.youtube.com/live/-sKg3eeSvPw )
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More than 4 hours of viewing: don’t you love me?
I’ll try to find time to watch.
Thanks, I’m sure this will be interesting.
As for the ZCash/ZCoin conflict (ZCash was created after ZCoin), it goes back a long time and I don’t want to argue, but there was something important enough for my choice to be made in favor of ZCoin (now Firo), at the expense of ZCash.
I do love you, 4hour videos are the best to learn. And listening to Reuben is always nice 
The zerocoin paper came out first in 2013
Then came the zerocash in 2014:
http://zerocash-project.org/media/pdf/zerocash-extended-20140518.pdf
To my understanding they didn’t copy anything from the other, its just a different approach.
But I might be wrong, maybe they built on that idea?
But I say, who cares, that was years ago, we have some cool tech from both, the whole crypto ecosystem is stronger because people keep building on different ideas. I personally refuse to get my sight blinded because someone was maybe an asshole years ago, or if someone is Israeli or whatever… We are here now and lets build the best from it.
I finished watching Reuben’s interview.
It was very interesting, and I thank @mus_tard for the link.
This video is a response to my post inviting @reuben to give us a ZCoin/ZCash history.
I’m sorry that an interview covering so much crypto history only has 138 views after 8 months.
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lol backdoor no, but honeypot yes 
Zcash is basically the Matrix[1][2][3][4][5] of the crypto space.
I’ll see you brothers and sisters in the Matrix room haha
Firo will only rise when it is Firo First!
The only alliance should be with PIVX, Dash, Zano, and Monero.
Not some RAND and Israeli funded subversive woke coin that hates your guts and trys to copy and never gives credit where credit is due.
Again why have most CEX’s de-listed all other privacy coins but not Zcash?
**Privacy first = *Firo first!
That’s our new motto I believe!
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