With reference to an earlier official release on January 6, Firo (previously Zcoin) has activated Lelantus on its mainnet. The protocol went live on block 336888 and introduces “on-by-default” privacy to the network. Consequently, transactions between official Firo wallets will stay private by default.

Speaking on the new development, Firo’s steward, Reuben Yap, said that the milestone was a major one in blockchain privacy since it deploys the highest levels of “practical privacy without compromising on trustlessness."

The zero-knowledge proofs used in Lelantus employ well-established cryptographic assumptions, and don't require a trusted setup, and use a simple, intuitive construction.

Lelantus employs a burn-and-redeem framework to achieve privacy. Users are allowed to burn any number of coins, including partial coins. Coins can thereafter be redeemed using a special receipt that is issued when the coins are burned.

As a testament to its high utility, Firo claims that its Lelantus protocol has received accolades from cryptographers and blockchain developers for being intuitive and easy-to-use. Its innovation also opened the door to a new family of privacy protocols including Lelantus-MW by Beam and Triptych by Monero Research Labs.

In comparison with other protocols such as Zerocoin, Sigma, and RingCT, Lelantus scales nicely and has been able to lower transaction verification times to less than 15-50 ms.

Regarding what the future holds, Yap stated that work is still ongoing. Firo will work towards releasing a light wallet support of Lelantus and enable direct anonymous payments.