It's local-first in the sense that all your financial data is local (synched across your devices), and backed up to your dropbox. Firebase is for auth (e.g. for us to know who you are, manage subscription etc). None of your financial data is kept there. We don't have a decent way to set up and track subscription without that central piece (firebase).
In other words, when the company goes down, there are two concerns:
1st whether you will have access to your data. Yes, and no one else has access to it.
2nd whether you will be able to use the app. We plan to open-source the app when/before that happens. This part, you have to trust us. We don't see an easy way out of this, yet.
i dont see any place for an app like this that is not open source. you can make the sync service payed that gets your bank statements.
I understand your hesitation. But there are already user using it on a regular basis, who care about privacy but trust us to have the auth centralized. It's not for everyone, but it's what we plan to do, at least for near future.
you always find a few users who haven’t been burned before, that does not make it local first or aligned with what is needed in this space
You could use a code escrow service.