Firn Protocol

Cryptographically secure private payment from first principles.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

hi all, I have made the difficult decision to begin winding down Firn. as recent events (see quoted tweet) have made clear, the personal risk to me—i.e., @captainmcateer—of continuing to singlehandedly run, host and manage Firn is simply too great. I have transitioned https://t.co/yOmmE7QBv1 to be a withdrawal-only service. I will continue running the relay, in order to facilitate withdrawals, until the end of this year. I have readjusted liquidity, so as to create a uniform buy wall at the fixed cashout rate of 0.0014 ETH / FIRN. every FIRN Token holder can feel free to sell at his leisure; it does not matter the order that you sell, or when you sell. Shortly, I will fully open-source the Firn codebase, including its front-end. Firn will continue to live on as a public good. Anyone will become free to spin up his own Firn pool and run his own relay, if he wishes.

creating and running Firn was difficult, and I am grateful to our devoted, enthusiastic and smart community members. as the recent events showed, it is simply impossible to please everyone while running a privacy service. I made Firn because I love math, cryptography and privacy. I never bargained for the level of risk and stress that I would be personally undertaking. I never personally participated in buying or selling FIRN, and strictly wrote, deployed and maintained code throughout.

the cashout rate of 0.0014 ETH / FIRN may lead to ETH-denominated losses for some token holders. to explain these losses, I must recall an event that happened two years ago, which some already know. in late 2022, an initial cofounder of Firn—who was promptly removed from the team—embezzled about half of Firn's initial fundraise into his personal control, without my knowledge, permission or consent. though I fought this theft vigorously, I was ultimately unable to recover the funds. The evidence that this embezzlement was carried out by my cofounder—and not by myself—is visible publicly onchain for everyone to examine. As a result, 0.0014 ETH / FIRN represents what I am currently able to return to FIRN Token holders. this is the vast majority of the remaining half. as I already said, everyone will receive the same cashout rate. If I am able to eventually recover some or all of my former cofounder's funds, I will correspondingly increase the cashout rate, as well as retroactively reimburse those token holders who have already sold.

Once again, I am grateful to all of you! Let me know if you have any questions.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

two days ago, we were notified by @zachxbt that a known thief (see quoted tweet) had begun making relatively small deposits into Firn. thanks to @zachxbt's diligence, and to prompt actions on our part, we were able to freeze and recover about 80 ETH of funds deposited by the attacker. these have been transferred to Zach, who is coordinating their repatriation to the victim.

Firn is proud to have collaborated with Zach—the best in the business—to recover these funds for the victim.

To thieves, attackers, and those attempting to launder money through Firn, the message is clear: we will not tolerate it; we will freeze your funds, you will lose your money, and we will return it to the victim.

further details on what happened are available in our discord.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

this guy gets it

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

Ross, you are a hero to so many of us.

A HERO'S WELCOME

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

@Free_Ross @realDonaldTrump

[Free_Ross @Free_Ross]

FREEDOM!!!!

[LunarDAO @lunarpunksquad]

Another political prisoner is freed

Ross, breathe in the free air

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

🫢🤔

[ZachXBT @zachxbt]

@BurwickLaw If silly lawsuits come out of this perhaps I need to release a tutorial for people to fund addresses anonymously on-chain to cause chaos and make it harder for them to be sued.

[LunarDAO @lunarpunksquad]

@firnprotocol is shuddering services tomorrow (31st of December) If you are still holding VOX for LunarDAO1, you can ragequit from the treasury and exit with your FIRN and ETH fees

There are still LunarDAO members that haven't ragequit from the first LunarDAO raise

[Grav @Grav_Amundsen]

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

Merry Christmas everyone

[Grav @Grav_Amundsen]

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

@0xCrypbits if we ever launch Firn again, it will be 100% immutable from day one 🫡

[LunarDAO @lunarpunksquad]

If you previously used Firn, and funds are still sitting there, please remove them ASAP

You need to remove them by the 31st of December or funds will be lost (~21 days from now)

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

@Phalcon_xyz @BlockSecTeam what @zachxbt notified us of was normal 𝘶𝘴𝘦 by a bad actor—not an exploit!

do your damn homework, my friend.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

you're a fool.

we weren't exploited; we were 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥—by unsavory actors.

Firn's cryptographic security and integrity guarantees were never compromised; and still aren't. No bug was found in Firn's codebase throughout its entire existence.

get smarter

[Eternal Sammie @eternal_sammie]

→ Exploited protocols

@WazirXIndia, @Nexera_Official, @firnprotocol and @nomadxyz_ mentioned in the case studies illustrate exactly how Phalcon can make a difference.

This is the ultimate security solution to stay ahead of evolving threats. Don't be late!

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

now @Phalcon_xyz is a high-quality product and the @BlockSecTeam team are legends.

unfortunately for them, their product is being shilled by an idiot (you).

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

👉👉 PLEASE WITHDRAW ALL ASSETS 👈👈

Firn will be shutting down its relay on Dec. 31st, 2024. If you still have Ether in Firn (on any of the four chains), you may permanently lose those assets.

Please withdraw all of your Ether at your earliest convenience.

[LunarDAO @lunarpunksquad]

LunarDAO II is open

Our second raise starting a new DAO is on @arbitrum and the minimum amount to join is 0.01 @ethereum
Anyone can participate as EVERYONE benefits form strong privacy.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

𝐂𝐘𝐏𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐏𝐔𝐍𝐊 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

Our brothers at @lunarpunksquad have had our backs through thick and thin. Now, it's time to support them.

👉 https://t.co/HLURco4hI3

LunarDAO is convening again, for a new community raise. We strongly encourage all Firn community members to contribute to their effort. 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲.

In a groundbreaking industry-first, Firn's zero-knowledge tech will be used to facilitate a fully anonymous DAO raise. The raise will take place on Arbitrum. In order to participate, you must have a Firn balance on Arbitrum. If you don't have one yet, you can top up your account balance for a limited time at https://t.co/HLURco4hI3. Participants will be rewarded with DAO membership mediated in VOX2 tokens, delivered to a fresh address of their choosing; these will also grant partial control of a custom NFT on Arbitrum. To participate, navigate to https://t.co/HLURco4hI3, log in in the usual way, click the "donate" tab, and follow the instructions.

LunarDAO represents the future of lunarpunk privacy tech. As we at Firn wind down, we now pass the torch to those who backed and trusted us from the beginning.

The future is in good hands 🤝

[Digital spaces @GhostCypher90]

@lunarpunksquad So did the firn guys say the lunar doa guys could take over the project? If so when do we start the relaunch project?

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

@zodomo good question. the most promising avenue to decentralizing the relay would be account abstraction. the entire Firn contract would be a "smart account"; its withdrawal rule would be the Firn ZKP. in fact AA was designed for exactly this kind of usecase.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻-𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲. We've now released our full codebase, as a public good to the community, as promised below. This includes the most critical remaining part: the front-end / client-side prover. https://t.co/7OCIZQOuZk

anyone is now free to spin up a Firn pool of his own, run his own relay, and host his own deployment. if you are interested in doing exactly this, reach out, and I may be willing to help.

[Firn Protocol @firnprotocol]

hi all, I have made the difficult decision to begin winding down Firn. as recent events (see quoted tweet) have made clear, the personal risk to me—i.e., @captainmcateer—of continuing to singlehandedly run, host and manage Firn is simply too great. I have transitioned https://t.co/yOmmE7QBv1 to be a withdrawal-only service. I will continue running the relay, in order to facilitate withdrawals, until the end of this year. I have readjusted liquidity, so as to create a uniform buy wall at the fixed cashout rate of 0.0014 ETH / FIRN. every FIRN Token holder can feel free to sell at his leisure; it does not matter the order that you sell, or when you sell. Shortly, I will fully open-source the Firn codebase, including its front-end. Firn will continue to live on as a public good. Anyone will become free to spin up his own Firn pool and run his own relay, if he wishes.

creating and running Firn was difficult, and I am grateful to our devoted, enthusiastic and smart community members. as the recent events showed, it is simply impossible to please everyone while running a privacy service. I made Firn because I love math, cryptography and privacy. I never bargained for the level of risk and stress that I would be personally undertaking. I never personally participated in buying or selling FIRN, and strictly wrote, deployed and maintained code throughout.

the cashout rate of 0.0014 ETH / FIRN may lead to ETH-denominated losses for some token holders. to explain these losses, I must recall an event that happened two years ago, which some already know. in late 2022, an initial cofounder of Firn—who was promptly removed from the team—embezzled about half of Firn's initial fundraise into his personal control, without my knowledge, permission or consent. though I fought this theft vigorously, I was ultimately unable to recover the funds. The evidence that this embezzlement was carried out by my cofounder—and not by myself—is visible publicly onchain for everyone to examine. As a result, 0.0014 ETH / FIRN represents what I am currently able to return to FIRN Token holders. this is the vast majority of the remaining half. as I already said, everyone will receive the same cashout rate. If I am able to eventually recover some or all of my former cofounder's funds, I will correspondingly increase the cashout rate, as well as retroactively reimburse those token holders who have already sold.

Once again, I am grateful to all of you! Let me know if you have any questions.