$FIRO, formerly known as Zcoin, is a privacy focused cryptocurrency that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs which allows users to destroy coins and then redeem them later for brand new ones with no transaction history.
Its research created the Lelantus privacy protocol which supports high anonymity sets without requiring trusted setup and relying only on standard cryptographic assumptions. Lelantus' innovation in combining one-out-of-many proofs with hidden amounts have also been used in Monero's Triptych protocol and Beam's Lelantus-MW. Firo also utilises Dandelion++ to obscure the originating IP of transactions without relying on a external services such as Tor/i2P.
The Firo blockchain developed and utilizes Merkle Tree Proofs (MTP) as its Proof-of-Work algorithm which aims to be memory hard with fast verification to encourage mining using commodity hardware. The blockchain is also further secured with LLMQ ChainLocks. The Firo blockchain was used in the Thai Democrat Party Elections in 2018 to elect its party leader with over 127,000+ votes cast nationwide.