Well not going to lie, Firo is destined to be just another P.O.S. blockchain. If it wasn’t for mining i probaly never would of known of Firo. I have been mining since Zcoin.
50% masternode 30% mining and 20% dev would have kept this oroject going.
People say miners suck, dont appreciate this or that. To all of you…you clearly miss the point. Eth would never have gotten to where it is without miners. Even if they are just there for the profit, they boost security aswell as public knowledge of the network.
In the end my opinion is just that…my opinion and having a privacy blockchain relying on centralized masternodes is foolish.
Tokenomics is one of the most important feature of a coin. Hope that Firo developers will inplement the emission rules into code and do not change it in the future for whatever reason. This gives people a stable anticipation.
Fiat currency fails due to arbitrary issuance. Hope Firo won’t.
Just to add to what I mentioned earlier, I’ve had others bring up a valid point about the role of miners. Like KrombopulousMichael said, without miners, projects like FIRO could end up just another P.O.S. (and not the good kind!). Mining has been crucial for awareness and adoption—it’s what got a lot of us involved in the first place.
I’ve got 5 masternodes myself and I’m fully behind FIRO, but I can’t help thinking that bringing more miners into the fold could really drive growth. Just look at how ETH benefited from its miners—they were a huge part of its success. Sure, some are in it purely for the profit, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Profit-driven miners still boost network security and spread the word, which is crucial for any blockchain project.
The idea of relying too much on centralized masternodes for a privacy-focused project is something worth thinking about. Balancing between mining, masternodes, and dev funding is tricky, but it’s crucial for keeping the project decentralized and secure.
Anyway, just wanted to flesh that out a bit more—miner involvement is still key to the long-term success of FIRO (in my opinion).
I understand the argument very well but I’ve seen the effect on this on many chains except those that are ASIC driven (Kaspa etc).
Beam for instance is 100% PoW with mostly GPU and possibly some FPGAs. Did nothing for them. Got 51% attacked.
Grin is 100% PoW, linear emission. same thing. Got 51% attacked.
Firo was secured almost solely by miners for the longest period and had a huge chunk of the reward dedicated to them along with algorithm that targeted them. Guess what, 51% attacked.
Let’s look at a newer coin IronFish. No decentralization of hashrate. More than 80% on one pool.
Firo for a long time had a huge percentage dedicated to GPU miners which started out okay but when we switched to FiroPOW (which makes them the exclusive class of miners), they didn’t like it.
We begged the miners to decentralize the hashrate to show that they still care so that at least I could make a case to the community that they matter. We offered incentives for them to use other pools (that would have given them huge boosts if they did). We appeared on some of the largest mining channels like Voskcoin and some others. Telling them to vote, that they mattered and that we weren’t putting any firo holding requirement to vote in particular so that miners could be involved.
Nope, they didn’t show up, they didn’t decentralize hashrate. The only time they came was after the change was locked in and they asked ‘hey why did our rewards go down, firo sucks and reuben sucks and made the decision himself’. HELLO, I WENT OUT OF MY WAY TO ENGAGE MINERS AND MAKE SURE THEIR VOICE WAS HEARD. I didn’t have to do any such efforts to masternodes. Very few of them participate in governance or even follow what we do.
So forgive me if I don’t have a very high opinion of GPU PoW.
ASIC coins are different since ASICs are effectively a ‘stake’ in the project since you can’t mine anything else. But they also lead to strong control in the manufacturers (in most case for smaller coins it’s one manufacturer).
So the argument is that miners ‘provide security’ hence we should maintain them. But the flip side is why don’t we just use a model where we don’t need miners if their sole value is ‘security’ and not community or governance or anything else?
Decred also downgraded miners and Dash as well. Eth miners early on were different as were Bitcoin miners. They gave back to the ecosystem. Do you see Bitcoin miners doing that now?
Don’t get me wrong, I still love the idea of PoW but its current state of community (if you can see from the youtube videos) are far from the miners of old.
I do like the idea of merge-mining the coin though with let’s say maybe even Monero or Bitcoin or something else. That means we can latch on to a big mining community and have them earn Firo on the side. This is a idea that would make it possible for Firo’s security to be maintained even at tail emission but it does mean the potential elimination of downplay of masternodes. The model has made sense for Dogecoin (which is merge mined with Litecoin).
I hear you, and you make some solid points. The history of PoW, especially with GPU mining, is definitely mixed, and the examples you gave (Beam, Grin, even FIRO’s own experience) highlight the risks involved. The 51% attacks are a real concern, no doubt about that.
It’s frustrating to see how GPU miners have acted, especially after everything you’ve done to engage and incentivize them. It’s clear that the lack of decentralization and commitment from miners has been a major issue. I can see why your opinion of GPU PoW is what it is.
That said, I still think there’s a place for miners in the FIRO ecosystem, especially if it can be done in a way that doesn’t put the network at risk. The idea of merge-mining with something like Monero or Bitcoin is really interesting, it could offer the security benefits without the downsides we’ve seen with exclusive GPU mining. It might even attract a more dedicated group of miners who see value in FIRO beyond just short-term profits.
Just throwing an idea out there, what if FIRO had its own pool that specifically rewarded miners who mined there? The goal would be to incentivize miners to not just stick with 2Miners or other dominant pools. By offering greater rewards initially, we could attract more miners to our pool. Then, as the pool grows and the percentage of hash rate becomes more balanced with other pools, the rewards could be adjusted to maintain equilibrium. This way, we might achieve better decentralization and give miners a direct stake in FIRO’s success.
Just wanted to put my 2 cents in. Like I mentioned earlier, I have 5 masternodes and I’m mining FIRO as well. Regardless of where you take the project, whether it be towards Proof of Stake without mining, I’ll always be fully behind FIRO. I believe in the vision and the community, and I’m here for the long haul.
About the second pool (Firo’s emission): I am surprised and incredulous about the problem posed and the solutions that have attracted the most people.
The problem posed: the halving would be harmful to Firo’s good health.
The solution(s) (the one chosen by the survey is currently option D): they consist on the one hand in emitting more Firo’s over time (tail emission) and on the other hand in increasing this emission massively by eliminating halvings.
But if you think that halving who decreases the emission from 6.25 to 3.125 Firo per block is dangerous for Firo’s survival, how can you think, when the 21.4 millions Firos will be emitted, the decrease from 6.25 Firos per block to 1 Firo per block (tail emission) could not be fatal (killing Firo) ? It’s a contradiction.
We cannot believe that a division of the emission by 2 can be dangerous and not a division by 6.25. But I must be wrong since it seems that I am the only one to think that.
The practice of halving has the advantage of making this decrease progressive and must allow the price of the token to compensate for the decrease in monetary creation (division of monetary creation by 2 => multiplication by 2 of the price). Without halving, you eliminate a big lever to increase the Firo price, that of the inflation decrease: and we need this Firo price increase which has only been falling for years.
This is only my opinion, based on my desire to see this project finally meet the success it deserves.
Just voted , hope to be a roadmap after voting and also I think will be a good idea, if there will be a tail emission (as I see from the recent poll result will be in 4-5 years), to reschedule the rewards for every block, to be sustainable the project and have incentives for investors to continue their MNs and mining operation, that imho will be crucial for the future!
Any thoughts?
It would indeed be a contradiction if we didn’t take into account development progress and staff/skill retention. Everything depends on price, but price is an unknown.
If you think Firo would be ok if we ended development now, we should have the halving.
If you think Firo wouldn’t be ok, but development will continue via donations combined with remaining block subsidy, we should have the halving.
If you don’t think Firo would be ok if dev stopped now, or if you don’t think the community will pony up $25k+ per month to pay devs. Maybe we shouldn’t keep the current bitcoin emission rate.
Would a halving support price?
It’l help sure, but takes a lot of time at current supply/demand. It’s not the only thing that matters though is it. Otherwise Firo would have increased from $5 after it’s first halving, which was the most dramatic supply reduction it’l have (if we continue to follow bitcoins schedule).
Unfortunately Firo suffered more demand destruction, than it benefitted from the supply destruction of the halving.
So the real question I guess. Is what matters most, spending to increase public awareness or spending to further development.
Personally thats a hard question to answer. Both can ignite the other.
There are initiatives to raise awareness, like the recent marketing proposal funded by Reuben if I recall, but tbh I’m getting too tired to participate.
I do however finally like the ‘image’ of Firo. It has a recognizable and good branding strategy now. There is/was a good infomercial video produced by Vosto, that could be adapted for a Youtube advertising strategy. i.e. play this ad on crypto channels via googles ad program.
I made suggestions on ways to improve the video with humor and tap into the ‘internet culture’ in order to make a campaign more effective. But I guess it’s pretty good as is.
A halving would make this hard to fund for a while (assuming no further demand destruction). Hell, it’s hard to fund now.
Shame we have to spend at all, but the community has been depressed since 2018 and have lost their tongues.
In summary, I don’t really care about supply destruction if there isn’t any demand creation.
It needs to be gradual but most importantly sustained.
I think you summed up the situation well.
Everyone has their own opinion and we are here to share them.
For my part, I try to base myself on FIRO’s experience since the ZCoin beginning.
We are moving further and further away from the original ZCoin project/contract: moving from PoW to quasi-PoS, multiple development expenses, some of which were risky and abandoned in vain.
And the result is disapointing: Firo price is at its lowest and its development has already cost 8 years instead of the 2 initially planned.
This is not about condemning, but about learning from the past.
I think it is time to complete the current developments to limit selling pressure and favor those who invest their money in the project, i.e. the masternodes.
So I am for status quo (option A) : keeping the halvings and, in that case, the issue of queue emission will only arise in 140 years, no urgence.
Halvings still allow for reduced development funding and by reducing selling pressure should support the Firo price, which in turn will hopefully allow for new funding opportunities (less Firo sellings for more USD).
If you look at the selling pressure from inflation in USD. It’s barely anything right now at Firo’s current prices.
Imo it actually may be more effective to get our public awareness shit together. Have a clear message, and reason for existing. Be clever. Let our messaging reflect the quality of our privacy project/tech. Little things like this can inspire confidence. We all should know by now, investor confidence is actually important.
For instance, how many ‘tag lines’ do we want to use together in the SAME piece of merch?
These are unforced errors that make Firo appear second rate. It’s not the worst, but kind of reminds me of the quality of a phishing email.
Having reviewed the work from the Guardians program. I’m not a fan, at least right now. They upheld their end of the bargain so far, but I don’t think it’s really the way to go. When you have twitter accounts following the same amount of people who are following them, it’s got a scammy feel to it. Like an XRP bot army but on a vastly smaller scale.
This is in stark contrast to community created. Intelligent thought provoking articles or debates, that other projects enjoy, and that people give a shit about.
It’s not even a hard sell. It basically comes down to an investment in Firo being a bet on humanity remaining free and liberty prevailing. I mean we all know what path society is on by now right?
Doesn’t take much adoption to dry up supply liquidity either right now. Needs to be gradual and sustained though. Able to withstand the current occasional pumps that serve as nothing but exit liquidity from members who have capitulated on the project. Make no mistake, thats what Firo’s price currently reflects.
Can we turn it around. Yes. But we can’t afford to be anything but smart about the moves we make.
You do bring up a good point though. After these changes, I’d like to see Firo actually publish on the website, an actual social contract. Once Firo is structurally sound, like Monero is in many ways compared to Bitcoin. It should NOT be easy for us to change the core fundamentals of Firo, based on the whims or flavor of the day. Governance is a problem I don’t know the answer to unfortunately.
To be optimistic, I find that the exchanges on our Forum are more and more qualitative and this quality, with that of the website (blog articles in particular), are what I personally look at before investing in a project that interests me.
Let’s encourage this quality and not let ourselves be distracted by a few trolls from newbees who only seek short-term gains.
I’ve also been thinking lately that token economics and block divisions can’t be changed too often, and that frequent changes will make people think that the project is immature and deter them from making large investments. I hope that after this one decision, no more changes will be made, maybe at least not for a long period of time.
Agree this is make or break. I also hope we won’t ever have to change the tokenomics but it also means that we need to see what type of consensus mechanism that would sustain the tail emission (merge mining or PoS) etc.