Enhanced privacy with Wasabi & Samourai wallets

[tranthidung]

• Using CoinJoin increases your privacy but you have to read rules of platforms before sending your funds to them. Platforms tend to restrict CoinJoin transactions.
• Only use Coin Join transactions if you have fully control.
• Avoid using Coin Join transactions on third-party platforms that don't allow it.^[e].

"Not your keys, not your bitcoin" ^[3]
It is a vital rule, so if one want to enhance privacy, s/he should learn to use non-custodial wallets that provide enhanced privacy, like Wasabi and Samourai. There are so many mixing platforms but it is risky to store your coins too long on those platforms. Someone made that mistake and lose their coins on scam mixing platforms.

There are two wallets for this purpose:

• Wasabi wallet
• Samourai wallet

They are both use Coinjoin to give users modification options to enhance their privacy.

It is worth to warn you all that those wallets only enhance your privacy, and not give your completely privacy. Additionally, the personal practice of user will determine level of privacy they have.

Now, let's see what is Coinjoin

• CoinJoin: Bitcoin privacy for the real world
• CoinJoin is a trustless method for combining multiple Bitcoin payments from multiple spenders into a single transaction to make it more difficult for outside parties to determine which spender paid which recipient or recipients. Unlike many other privacy solutions, coinjoin transactions do not require a modification to the bitcoin protocol. ^[1]
• In very simple terms, coinjoin means: “when you want to make a transaction, find someone else who also wants to make a transaction and make a joint transaction together”. ^[2]

Wasabi wallet
Wasabi Wallet 1.0 Is Released
Website: https://wasabiwallet.io/
FAQs

Why Wasabi ?

Wasabi Wallet is an open source, non-custodial, privacy-focused, desktop Bitcoin wallet offered by zkSNACKs Ltd. It differentiates itself from many other wallets for its strong focus on user privacy.

#1 - Wasabi wallet

The Wasabi wallet uses CoinJoin in order to anonymize BTC.

 - Pros: Easy to use; fairly cheap ~0.15% fee; pretty good privacy; automatically uses Tor
 - Cons: ~0.1BTC minimum; with a great deal of effort and investigation, transaction analysis may still be possible, especially if you leave other traces; the coordinator could possibly do an active sybil attack against specific coins

Wasabi wallet has processed 5372 Coinjoin transactions as of writing

What's the legal status of Wasabi/CoinJoin? ^[5]
USA: On May 9, 2019, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an interpretive guidance that stated the following in section 4.5.1(b):

An anonymizing software provider is not a money transmitter. FinCEN regulations exempt from the definition of money transmitter those persons providing "the delivery, communication, or network access services used by a money transmitter to support money transmission services."

Wasabi is an Anonymizing software provider so it is not a money transmitter, thus not under Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations. Basically we can continue to operate like now and it is compliant.

Anonymity sets
What is anonymity set?
The anonymity set is effectively the size of the group you are hiding in. ^[4]

If 3 people take part in a CoinJoin (with equal size inputs) and there are 3 outputs then each of those output coins has an anonymity set of 3.

There is no way to know which of the anon set output coins are owned by which of the input owners. All an observer knows is that a specific anon set output coin is owned by one of the owners of one of the input Coins i.e. 3 people - hence an anonymity set of 3.

Your Wasabi software has limited information on what the anonymity set should be, so the anonymity set that the software presents you is just an estimation, not an accurate value. With Wasabi we are trying to do lower estimations, rather than higher ones.

Both Wasabi and Monero can be thought of in terms of "anonymity sets". If you're spending some BTC with an anonymity set of 50, this means that an observer can see that the sender is one of 50 people, but they can't tell which. So someone investigating a particular transaction you sent would have you "in their sights" to a certain extent from the start since you're among the 50, but in order to prove that you sent it, they'd have to either eliminate 49 other people from consideration or find some other evidence linking you to it.

Wasabi always aims for an anonymity set of 50 when mixing. Monero has an anonymity set of 11 per transaction. If you cascade transactions as I suggest above, then this multiplies, so after two transactions you have an anonymity set of 11*11=121, and after a cascade of three you'd have an anonymity set of 1331.

The quality of each member in the anonymity set isn't quite comparable, though. Monero is able to hide transaction amounts, which is helpful, but I tend to consider the quality of Monero anonymity-set-members to be lower on average, since many are probably owned by hosted wallets or other possible global adversaries.

See also

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy

Fees for Coinjoins

You currently pay a fee of 0.003% * anonymity set. If the anonymity set of a coin is 50 then you pay 0.003% * 50 (=0.15%). If you set the target anonymity set to 53 then Wasabi will continue mixing until this is reached, so you may end up with an anonymity set of say 60, and you will pay 0.003% * 60 (=0.18%).

There are also edge cases where you do not pay the full fee or where you pay more. For example if you're the smallest registrant to a round, you will never pay a fee. Also when you are remixing and you cannot pay the full fee with your input, then you only pay as much as you have, but if the change amount leftover would be too small, then that is also added to the fee. Currently the minimum change amount to be paid out is 0.7% of the base denomination (~0.1BTC.)

It is also possible that you get more back from mixing than you put in. This happens when network fees go down between the start of the round and its end. In this case, the difference is split between the active outputs of the mix.

Avoid to recombine mixed coins

It is advisable to limit the recombining of mixed coins because it can only decrease the privacy of said coins. This links all the consolidated UTXOs in one transaction, creating only one output, which then clearly controls all these funds. That said, if you combine less than 1 BTC it is less likely to reveal your pre-coinjoin transaction history. The potential issue comes when you spend that coin. Depending on what you do with the coin you might reduce the privacy of the resulting change (if you send half your coin to an exchange for example, as they will know that you own the coin change). As a result it is best not to recombine ALL your mixed change, though you may wish to recombine some coins if you are planning on hodling for many years as this will reduce the fees required to spend the coins later.

More guides on Recombine mixed coins

Verify first, before installing
It is the same rule with other wallets, verifing package first before installing (if wallets have that option).

It is strongly recommended to VERIFY PGP SIGNATURES of the downloaded packages before installing Wasabi. This protects you against malicious phishing sites giving you back-doored Wallet software. Don't trust - Verify!

There are different wallets, for: MacOs, Windows, Linux, Ubuntu / Debian. Download here

How to install?
Install Instruction
Youtube guide

Choose other Bench32-support wallets that have coin control features
Wasabi wallet only supports to generate Bench32 address, but it does not support to send your bitcoin to others Bench32-address, so you have to choose other alternative wallets to do this.
Suggested wallets ^[4]:

• Mobile (Android): Samourai, Electrum
• Desktop: Bitcoin Core, Electrum

Read more: Why does Wasabi only use SegWit bech32 addresses?

Some notes on Wasabi wallet

• Wasabi wallet implement bitcoin transactions through Coinjoin inputs and Coinjoin outputs, but the wallet is unable to know which outputs of belong to which inputs. This is why it brings more privacy to users.
• Practice of coin control after mixing will identify the level of privacy users have. That depends on practice of users, not the Wasabi wallet.
• Wasabi wallet uses Tor by default, and users don't have to set up Tor. ^a

• Do not turn off Tor in Settings, because it might damage their privacy by IP address.
• Verify first, before installing
• Wasabi wallet only generate Bench32 address (with prefix bc1 at the start of address), but unable to send BTC to other Bench32 address
• Don't send all of your bitcoins to a new wallet, instead import your seeds into new wallet in order to protect your privacy.

^a

All Wasabi network traffic goes via Tor by default - no need to set up Tor yourself. If you do already have Tor, and it is running, then Wasabi will try to use that first.

You can turn off Tor in the Settings. Note that in this case you are still private, except when you coinjoin and when you broadcast a transaction. In the first case, the coordinator would know the links between your inputs and outputs based on your IP address. In the second case, if you happen to broadcast a transaction of yours to a full node that is spying on you, it will know the link between your transaction and your IP address.

Samourai wallet
It is important to note that at beginning, lead developers of Wasabi and Samourai wallets worked together to build one application, then their vision to develop diverged and they splited to develop different wallets. From that, we have Wasabi and Samourai wallets.

Read more there: https://www.coindesk.com/a-battle-between-bitcoin-wallets-has-big-implications-for-privacy

Website: https://samouraiwallet.com
Download: https://samouraiwallet.com/download
Blog: https://blog.samouraiwallet.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/samouraiwallet
Support: https://samouraiwallet.com/support

There are so many different features with Samourai wallet, from there you can have a quick comparison between them. Please click on Details link to see detail explanation of each feature.

DOJO
Among them, Dojo is the one that makes Samourai wallet is different and help users conveniently and easily to set up their Bitcoin full nodes.

Offline
With Samourai wallet, users can easily switch between online and offline mode to use their bitcoins. That is an amazing feature from Samourai.


References:
^[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin
^[2] https://wasabiwallet.io/
^[3] https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/
^[4] https://wasabiwallet.io/#faq
^[5] https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/FAQ/FAQ-UseWasabi.html#what-s-the-legal-status-of-wasabi-coinjoin

Wasabi developer
https://medium.com/@nopara73
https://twitter.com/nopara73?lang=en[/list]

Theymos' opinion on privacy
[1] [Guide] Decent mixing methods (on Wasabi-CoinJoin and Monero)

[2] Technically aspects of Monero, Grin and potential for future developments

Relating to Mimblewimble and Grin, I’ve come across a couple of recent interesting reads, fresh from the oven:

https://medium.com/dragonfly-research/breaking-mimblewimble-privacy-model-84bcd67bfe52
https://medium.com/grin-mimblewimble/factual-inaccuracies-of-breaking-mimblewimbles-privacy-model-8063371839b9 (counters arguments to the former link).

I don’t really know how much certainty the above articles provide, but it casts some doubt as to exactly how far the anonymity goes. At least if it’s what I was after, I’d keep reading these sort of articles for a few days to get a better idea of the extent.

AFAIK, that medium post is nothing new.

Base mimblewimble isn't really designed to be a "black box of reliable anonymity" in the way that Monero or Wasabi-CoinJoins are, where connections are hard-broken. It's more of a framework on which you could build solid anonymity using techniques that have largely not yet been perfected, plus major scaling benefits. Monero = CT + stealth addresses + ring signatures. Grin = CT + "stealth addresses" + mimblewimble. Because grin replaces ring signatures with mimblewimble, its privacy is less reliable than Monero's. Probably the grin developers have tried to make their mimblewimble transaction aggregation methods good, but I currently wouldn't put much faith in it, and IMO it'll take many years of research to get something really solid. That said, CT + stealth addresses offer a certain base level of privacy, and grin's method of handling stealth addresses (using an interactive protocol, exchanging "slates") is both more scalable than Monero and probably more private.

If your goal is to mix coins, grin is definitely not for you right now, and it may never be. Monero's goal is maximal privacy, regardless of the cost. Grin's goal is excellent privacy, consistent with scaling.

^[e]:

• Binance User Receives Frozen BTC After DIscontinuing Coinjoin Use
• Bitsler's TOS shows restriction on Coin Join transactions

[GreatArkansas]

With the enchanced privacy of Wasabi using coin join feature, I have read some topic in this forum that some parts of addresses used in coinjoin may used with some criminals, that's why coinjoin is illegal in some countries. (I don't know if this is true, I just read those before)

Here is the topic before about that.

some exchanges have terms (or at least suspected policies) against mixers. but i've never seen any terms specifically against coinjoins, and i've never heard of anyone getting their account closed over it.

Aantonop said in one recent video that coinjoin is even considered "illegal" in some countries. I wasn't able to find something backing this up in a quick search.

[Baofeng]

You may want to include the following reference:

nopara73 - One of the creator of Wasabi wallet. He is a regular on our forum.

https://medium.com/@nopara73
https://twitter.com/nopara73?lang=en

Wasabi Wallet 1.0 Is Released - Discussion thread about Wasabi wallet (self-moderated).

[LeGaulois]

There are so many mixing platforms but it is risky to store your coins too long on those platforms. Someone made that mistake and lose their coins on scam mixing platforms.

Mixing platforms do not store your coins, they obfuscate the transaction history. He got scammed by a service, still, it doesn't mean they store your coins.

With the enchanced privacy of Wasabi using coin join feature, I have read some topic in this forum that some parts of addresses used in coinjoin may used with some criminals, that's why coinjoin is illegal in some countries. (I don't know if this is true, I just read those before)

Here is the topic before about that.

some exchanges have terms (or at least suspected policies) against mixers. but i've never seen any terms specifically against coinjoins, and i've never heard of anyone getting their account closed over it.

Aantonop said in one recent video that coinjoin is even considered "illegal" in some countries. I wasn't able to find something backing this up in a quick search.

It would be stupid for an exchange to block CJ, for multiple reasons (too long to explain but an example, it's like if the banks refuse deposits in cash because the banknotes are tainted with cocaine) But if they do, it's not difficult to bypass it, just need to add a few "hops"
Aantopnop was wrong by saying CJ is illegal, simply because it's not a centralized service but rather a mixing protocol (or a transaction model). But he corrected himself later about this

The video concerned is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soeFxWkM5qI

CORRECTION: At 1:57 I say that the European Union has deemed CoinJoin to be illegal. This is completely false. While various centralized / custodial mixing services have been shut down (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/...), there are a few CoinJoin wallets which are not custodial and there has not been any European Union legislation banning CoinJoin.

[RapTarX]

There are so many mixing platforms but it is risky to store your coins too long on those platforms. Someone made that mistake and lose their coins on scam mixing platforms.

Mixing platforms do not store your coins, they obfuscate the transaction history. He got scammed by a service, still, it doesn't mean they store your coins.

Here is a transaction picture I want to share which may help to learn how the mixer transaction goes on.

As blockchain is public, everyone can see what Alice is doing with their BTC. If Alice sends BTC to Bob, people can easily trace. Here's the normal transaction.



But, since Alice doesn't want to let people know Alice sent BTC to Bob, Alice will use Coinmixer, which will be executed as follow-



Alice will send BTC to mixing service with the information where to send BTC, Mixing service will send BTC to Bob from another preloaded address. So, there's no way to trace, theoretically. However, mixing services don't guarantee privacy all the times.

[tranthidung]

Aantonop said in one recent video that coinjoin is even considered "illegal" in some countries. I wasn't able to find something backing this up in a quick search.

I checked on the official site of Wasabi wallet, and found. I also updated OP with this section.

What's the legal status of Wasabi/CoinJoin? ^[5]
USA: On May 9, 2019, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an interpretive guidance that stated the following in section 4.5.1(b):

An anonymizing software provider is not a money transmitter. FinCEN regulations exempt from the definition of money transmitter those persons providing "the delivery, communication, or network access services used by a money transmitter to support money transmission services."

Wasabi is an Anonymizing software provider so it is not a money transmitter, thus not under Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations. Basically we can continue to operate like now and it is compliant.

[naska21]

snip

There are so many different features with Samourai wallet, from there you can have a quick comparison between them. Please click on Details link to see detail explanation of each feature.

As I got it samourai is mobile-only wallet and I am comfortable with all its  features described on the official page you refer to. But the question remains whether it has the coin control option? That is of great importance for me as I"m used to  choose UTXO rather than relying on wallet itself.

[GreatArkansas]

(...)
That is of great importance for me as I"m used to  choose UTXO rather than relying on wallet itself.

Is this what you mean;
For example in your wallets there are 5 wallet addresses and they have all bitcoin balances, and you want only to 50% balance of the 4th address, you can do it on samourai?
If so, then this is great, this kind of android app with that kind of feature is the app what I'm looking for.

I created a thread before about that on how I can use it with hardware wallet : [HELP] Trezor Wallet using Android
It seems that Samourai wallet still not supported some hardware wallets.

[naska21]

(...)
That is of great importance for me as I"m used to  choose UTXO rather than relying on wallet itself.

Is this what you mean;
For example in your wallets there are 5 wallet addresses and they have all bitcoin balances, and you want only to 50% balance of the 4th address, you can do it on samourai?
If so, then this is great, this kind of android app with that kind of feature is the app what I'm looking for.

I created a thread before about that on how I can use it with hardware wallet : [HELP] Trezor Wallet using Android
It seems that Samourai wallet still not supported some hardware wallets.

Well, that's really not the sort of thing I'm interested in. Each address may have several inputs and I was asking about the option to choose out each one individually  to build my transaction. In that way I could separate inputs relavant to the dust attack to not use  them in the shuffling.

[notblox1]

What wallet is better and easier for someone who is first time using privacy based wallet Wasabi or Samourai?
I also don't see fees and more information for Samourai wallet

[tranthidung]

What wallet is better and easier for someone who is first time using privacy based wallet Wasabi or Samourai?
I also don't see fees and more information for Samourai wallet

Fees for ConJoin transaction depends on anonymity set (you can see full details in OP).

What are the fees for CoinJoins?

You currently pay a fee of 0.003% * anonymity set.
~ Click to link to read more info ~

If you are not an advanced user, don't go to CoinJoin transaction, but if you ask me which one among Wasabi and Samourai wallets are more friendly, I think Wasabi wallet is easier to use.

You can see there are only 5373 CoinJoin transactions broadcasted so far, and total Bitcoin transacted with CoinJoin is nearly 72 BTC. There are unsignificant people who actually use CoinJoin.
If you don't care about your privacy, and don't want to go into technical-advanced features, you can use normal transactions. There is no need to switch to CoinJoin transactions if you totally don't care about your transaction privacy.

[notblox1]

If you don't care about your privacy, and don't want to go into technical-advanced features, you can use normal transactions. There is no need to switch to CoinJoin transactions if you totally don't care about your transaction privacy.

Maybe I would like to use privacy feature in specific cases not all the time.
As I understand both of this wallets are using same CoinJoin tech?

[tranthidung]

Basically they use CoinJoin transactions but they are not the same. They are competitors with each other, so each of them will be uncompetitive if they are completely the same.

It is too long to describe them all here but each wallet has its own advanced features. Historically, lead developers of Wasabi and Samourai worked together at beginning to develop CoinJoin, then they splited to develop their own ones due to difference and disagreement in developmental visions.

Lead developers TDevD (Samourai) and nopara73 (Wasabi) worked together on building an implementation of long-standing bitcoin privacy tech CoinJoin called ZeroLink.

“We just had a difference in implementation desire,” said SW. “So we split. We forked the project and just implemented it the way we wanted to implement it.”

[jseverson]

Since this already got bumped anyway, I'll take the chance to maybe inform some people that Samourai isn't without controversies:

I have seen far too much outright dishonest and extremely incompetent behaviour from Samourai to ever trust it myself.

Samourai has very poor privacy while bragging about having good privacy: It sends your addresses all back to their server. Their "trusted node" mode doesn't change this, it just exposes your Bitcoin node to attacks completely needlessly. (Needlessly because they only use it to relay transactions, which they could do via the public P2P ports of any node, and because since they've already sent your addresses back to their server sending your transactions via something else doesn't increase your privacy.)

If you want strong privacy then as a start you need to run a full node (and use either Bitcoin Core wallet, or run your own electrum server), preferably via tor.

I don't doubt that they want and intend to eventually have good privacy but it seems that they're just unable to stop lying about it, even after previously being caught.

That's from Greg Maxwell, a Bitcoin Core dev. I haven't seen any developments since, so maybe things have changed since then. It must also be noted that this doesn't necessarily make Samourai untrustworthy -- as always, don't trust, verify.

[notblox1]

Both wallet use technology based on CoinJoin (specifically Chaumian CoinJoins), but have different implementation.
Wasabi Wallet uses ZeroLink while Samourai uses Whirlpool

Personally, i would recommend Wasabi Wallet.

Thanks for clarification and recommendation!

Since this already got bumped anyway, I'll take the chance to maybe inform some people that Samourai isn't without controversies

Andreas Antonopoulos was using Samourai wallet before, but I am not sure he is doing the same today.

[tranthidung]

Bump with the latest opinion of theymos on Mimblewimble, Grin and Monero.

AFAIK, that medium post is nothing new.

Base mimblewimble isn't really designed to be a "black box of reliable anonymity" in the way that Monero or Wasabi-CoinJoins are, where connections are hard-broken. It's more of a framework on which you could build solid anonymity using techniques that have largely not yet been perfected, plus major scaling benefits. Monero = CT + stealth addresses + ring signatures. Grin = CT + "stealth addresses" + mimblewimble. Because grin replaces ring signatures with mimblewimble, its privacy is less reliable than Monero's. Probably the grin developers have tried to make their mimblewimble transaction aggregation methods good, but I currently wouldn't put much faith in it, and IMO it'll take many years of research to get something really solid. That said, CT + stealth addresses offer a certain base level of privacy, and grin's method of handling stealth addresses (using an interactive protocol, exchanging "slates") is both more scalable than Monero and probably more private.

If your goal is to mix coins, grin is definitely not for you right now, and it may never be. Monero's goal is maximal privacy, regardless of the cost. Grin's goal is excellent privacy, consistent with scaling.

[ABCbits]

Since this thread is bumped, people should know that you might get some trouble if use Bitcoin from CoinJoin process to exchange or any legal services.
Read this, Binance User Receives Frozen BTC After DIscontinuing Coinjoin Use

[tranthidung]

Since this thread is bumped, people should know that you might get some trouble if use Bitcoin from CoinJoin process to exchange or any legal services.
Read this, Binance User Receives Frozen BTC After DIscontinuing Coinjoin Use

I don't think using CoinJoin or Mixing to directly send funds to exchanges or casinos is the good thing to do. Some platforms don't want to get troubles and they don't want the others compromise their platforms as the one for freely mixing coins from any sources (legal or illegal or shady sources).

Some casinos apply the same approach as Binance, returning funds back to owners if they feel transactions are illegal.

14.7. We reserve the right to apply a wagering requirement of at least one time the deposit amount if we suspect the player is using our service as a mixer. It is strictly forbidden to use our service for any other purpose than entertainment.

14.8. If a user who has deposited funds on Bitlser refuse the KYC verification procedure and/or the wagering requirement, his funds will be sent back to the address from which they come, to make sure that he didn't use Bitsler to mix his coins

I don't experience it myself (I don't want to take risks), above is what I read in TOS of Bitsler. 

[libert19]

Just a bit to add: https://news.bitcoin.com/google-play-store-samourai-wallet-security-features/

Samourai android had some more nifty features, which got removed because Google play didn't allow publishing with them built in.

Ps: Why android version still early access though?

[cygan]

https://www.coindesk.com/europol-bitcoin-privacy-wasabi-wallet

EU’s Europol: Bitcoin Privacy Wallet ‘Not Looking Good’ For Law Enforcement