Do You Know The Basics of Mixer
Reason of Compilation: I was checking the stats of hacks took place in the 2022 year and there i hear a term "MIXER" well i started to look into all the Questions related to MIXER that came to my mind. watched some videos. So, I thought i must made a post of what i learnt and may be it will benefit you.
THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT WE ALL SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MIXERS. That's what i am going to write here in short way.
IntroductionWhat is a MIXER?"As name suggests mixing up of things but in cryptocurrency case. it's the mixing up of bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. It uses many cryptographic techniques to hide user's personal identities who are involved in digital/cryptocurrency transactions. These transactions take place after some delay which is beneficial for anonymous transactions."
Why do we need MIXER?The one who prefer anonymity to his/her transactions, needed MIXER. But we have been taught that transaction took places on CEXs and DEXs are total anonymous than what need of MIXER remains there. Well Answer is, no transaction is anonymous. all of the transactions can be traced. How? Let start from basics. We can check the address of sender and receiver by searching the transaction address on the "EXPLORER". But wait, third person can only see your sending or receiving address not your name or personal information. Well he/she can. How? That's some technical reading purified to general terms. We can simply search the address on the google and anywhere in the whole internet the address is pasted you can see that place in the results and can find any personal account associated to that address and on the technical way, The one who want to know the personal identities of sender/buyer have to deal with the exchanges to get them give you the data you want but that's not an easy task unless you belong to regulatory organizations run by government.
How Does a MIXER works?Let's understand it by an example. IF a user "A" wants to send BTC to "B" then instead of sending Directly. "A" will use mixer in which the mixer platform will mix up your assets with the existing assets so that no one could track the origin of assets and send them to user "B". Let's say if the organization does not know from where the assets are coming and to where are going then there will be no case to study there.
Type of MIXERThere are 2 types of mixer which are
Centralized and
Decentralized.
Centralized is the one controlled by single entity
Cons of Centralized MIXER1. if that single entity faces failure then the whole system will shut down and the amount of money that will be in the pool of that system will also be shut down and no one can access that pool to pix thing up until the centralized platform restored.
2. Whole control are under that single entity. if that platform compromised or hacked by third parties than whole of your money will be gone.
Decentralized MIXER developed by many peer-to-peer entities who make pool of assets and then your assets are mixed up to eliminate the trail of your money.
Pros of Decentralized MIXER1. There will be no cons as of CEX Mixers instead there is less fees here. you only have to pay 0.3% for the 0.01 BTC and if your assets is less than that than it's free of cost while on the CEX side you have to pay 0.6% to 2.5% of you assets.
Examples of MIXERSThere are many MIXERs are there in the market. For example COINJOIN, TORNADO, SINDBAD, Yo!Mix, Mixtura, etc. You must be wondering most of them started there journey on BITCOINTALK. Like Coinjoin, Sinbad, Yo!Mix etc. If there are more, do let me know.
COINJOINCoinjoin is the decentralized MIXER which means you would need lot of peer to start mixing up your assets plus it has some
extra protection layer SinbadYou all must be aware of it, there is bounty running on this platform, It's either a decentralized or centralized i am not sure but after visiting the website i think it's decentralized platform with quick interface where you just have to insert receiver address and add delay time with liquidity fee and boom you are good to go after some time your transaction will reach the destination without leaving any trail.
You can further read about SinbadYo!MixIt's an Centralized MIXER which has multiple benefits over others in some ways and vice versa. Well it even deletes all the logs to remove trail of money.
You can further read about Yo!MixMixturaIt's also an Centralized platform to mix crypto assets which have it's own benefits.
These are the list to all the BTC MIXERsThings That you Should Know About Mixers and BitcoinOne thing we should know that everything transaction leaves trail and can be trace. So what factor make payment system of bitcoin or any other asset anonymous if one can be traceable. That's why some people tend to use MIXERs. Some thought of it as illegal platform but it's not unless you are not laundering. Secondly there are those people who just are certain of the idea not to be found by others or there countries do not allow it. what ever the conditions are for you. So you want to use MIXER/tumbler, But there are 2 Cryptographic technique that are applied on MIXERs for security purposes. Deep Analysis of all the MIXER on the List mentioned above is too lengthy to discuss so just shed light on the two main cryptographic techniques to get idea. those who do not know what is cryptographic technique or what is cryptographic can read
this post by Hamza2424
Two Main Techniques are:1. obfuscation-basedAs the name suggest obfuscation means unclearness in the transaction. It also known as decoy-based mixers. The biggest drawback of this technique is that, tools like
OXT can easily get all the data of transactions and can draw graph of it. These graphs make it easy for others to draw conclusions and predict that either this person is using MIXER or not how? this can be understand by
watching this vide0 As for easiness, you can see in the picture below these spider web like lines making graph of transactions trail made by MIXER. In this video person took the example of HACKER's Transaction Detail that looted BTC from Binance.
2. zero-knowledge-based (ZKP)Zero-Knowledge-Based Mixer uses the cryptographic technique of Zero-Knowledge-Proof (ZKP) which means also unclear things. The most advantage of this technique is that it removed the option of making any tool to draw graph. Which in return will cause barriers for the ones who want to trace you down.
Detailed overview of ZKPs can be read here.
Conclusion:Overall, these are the basics of MIXERS and the terms used in MIXERs that you should know about. On the other hand, MIXER do have good use-cases if you use it for good purpose just like visiting the DARK WEB is not crime while doing Illegal activities is a crime in the same way MIXER' usage is not prohibited but doing illegal activities are Prohibited.
Disclaimer* This post is just for educational purposes and i am not advising anyone to try MIXER or interact with it in any way.
