ㅤ

[BlackHatCoiner]

I'm almost definitely missing some background history here, but since when did they start doing these collaborations you're talking about? (and with whom?)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389567.0

[1714024198]

1714024198

[o_e_l_e_o]

I'm almost definitely missing some background history here, but since when did they start doing these collaborations you're talking about? (and with whom?)

In addition to the link BHC has provided, this entire thread from the start of the second page is discussing that Wasabi is now anti-privacy and pro-censorship. Note that the account nopara73 belongs to Adam Ficsor, the CEO of Wasabi. His responses are quite telling, and reveal a lot about how Wasabi view their customers now. Other key statements:

Adam Ficsor said this on Telegram.

We'll have to hire a bc anal company and filter out coinjoin input registrations with them

Max Hillebrand (CEO of zkSNACKs) said this in an interview.

if you, as a CoinJoin coordinator, if you want to work with institutional clients, hedge funds, insurance funds, Michael Saylor, and all these people, well, even if ZKSnacks were not to be regulated, those customers might very well be, maybe because they’re custodians of other people’s money or whatnot. And then these regulated entities can only become users of a coordinator—arguably, I’m not sure—if such a blacklisting is involved.

In short, Wasabi now cooperate with blockchain analysis to spy on and censor their users so they can cater to institutional clients so they can maximize their own profits.

Is it that you are running low on clients after we all left due to the new surveillance features of the wallet or is it that your Blockchain Analysis collaborator needs more clients to spy on?

Perhaps spying on their users and sharing this data is even more lucrative than their blockchain analysis partners originally thought, and so they are happy to bank roll a signature campaign to harvest even more data.

[Poker Player]

I have had a quick look at this thread and the one about censoring transactions of supposedly illegal origin and I really had no idea.

I have been invited to participate in the new wasabi signature campaign by icopress and I was coming here to get some information because I had not used it until today. I've just downloaded it, lol.

In any case I will study the case and if I believe that what they are doing is not acceptable, I will not participate in the campaign.

[ABCbits]

Does anyone know whether there's attempt to fork Wasabi Wallet (which remove connection to company coordinator)? Both the code[1] and CoinJoin protocol[2] use MIT License, so there shouldn't be any copyright problem.

[1] https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi
[2] https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WabiSabi

[icopress]

All I can say is.  This is disgusting.  Wasabi, may I ask how come you did not launch a Signature Campaign this BEFORE kneeling to and collaborating with anti Bitcoin institutions and corporations?  Is it that you are running low on clients after we all left due to the new surveillance features of the wallet or is it that your Blockchain Analysis collaborator needs more clients to spy on?  Or maybe both?  Have not seen this much interest from you before in promoting this, ehm..  now anti-privacy 'private' wallet.

I'll be honest and tell you right off the bat that I don't like your tone, even though I'm not part of the Wasabi team. But still, I will answer ...

Negotiations about launching the campaign began on Feb 1 (long before the events you mentioned), and during this time our history of correspondence is at least 20 letters, and yes, we discussed all the thorny issues, including the fact that Wasabi focuses on elementary household caution. The launch of the campaign has been postponed at least 3 or 4 times due to the fact that it had to be timed with the release of Wasabi 2.0, the release of which was repeatedly postponed for one reason or another.

And while I may not be as tech-savvy as you, I still think that Adam just decided to look into the future, thereby taking care of an impeccable reputation now (after all, we live in the real world). In addition, I still consider launching a campaign the right decision, if only for the reason that the forum needs some kind of advertising variety (in the context of the unprecedented advertising superiority of bookmakers).

[PrivacyG]

I'll be honest and tell you right off the bat that I don't like your tone, even though I'm not part of the Wasabi team. But still, I will answer ...

I appreciate your explanation, but my reply might have been misunderstood.  My apologies if this sounded like some sort of attack directed towards you, icopress.  My questions were in fact for Wasabi's team.  I have and had no reason to question you at all, you are only doing your job.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[BlackHatCoiner]

I still think that Adam just decided to look into the future, thereby taking care of an impeccable reputation now

I think Adam decided to look into his and the devs' pockets, solely, because what he did is completely against the concept of mixing coins, enhancing privacy - Wasabi in general. Cooperating with a chain analysis company and blacklisting "illegal" outputs arbitrarily contradicts with the "Reclaim your privacy now" sign and their beliefs that privacy is a fundamental human right.

Those who need Wasabi the most can't, because those who need Wasabi the most are blacklisted. As I've already said,

Therefore, if a person uses, say, Binance, and wants to have this "little privacy" we previously outlined, can't achieve it, because their outputs have to, now, get approved by those who wants to get hidden from.

And they haven't made it clear. They're really silent when it comes to this "new feature" they've added, for the sake of their... Well, pockets solely, again.

So, let's summarize. Private? I wouldn't say so; the coordinator works with the people who work day and night to de-anonymize you. Cheap? Well, now you're paying for your own surveillance, so no. Censorship resistant? Nope. Trustworthy developers? I wouldn't, personally, trust a person who officially sells my privacy out while, ironically, preserving it is the purpose of their project.

(after all, we live in the real world)

What is this supposed to mean? What happened to Wasabi's CoinJoin before this new update? Didn't it work properly? Do you admit there can't (or shouldn't?) be privacy in the real world, 'cause that's what it seems like?

[Poker Player]

I have been studying the case and it seems to me that the key is here:

zkSNACKs' Blacklisting Update

Such claims by mainstream media have travelled far and ultimately led to legal challenges, which forced the company to choose between discontinuing its operations or introducing blacklisting so that the coinjoins can continue.

This has been commented on in the other thread as a probable reason and I think it is clear that this was the case.

It has also been commented that they should have acted differently, and I am not going to go into this, at least for the moment. But this case is making me think in a more global way about the problem.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Cooperating with a chain analysis company and blacklisting "illegal" outputs arbitrarily contradicts with the "Reclaim your privacy now" sign and their beliefs that privacy is a fundamental human right.

Pretty much this. It is disgusting enough that they are now anti-bitcoin and pro-censorship, but to add more insult to injury, they continue to blatantly lie in their advertising, and their website still includes such incredibly hypocritical statements such as this one:

The aim of bitcoin is to be a decentralized digital currency, but if all users are eventually required to consult centralized blacklists before accepting bitcoin, then its decentralization will be destroyed.

Wouldn't it be horrendous for your wallet to have to consult a centralized blacklist before allowing you to coinjoin your bitcoin. Right!?

Or maybe this one:

If Bitcoin fungibility is too weak in practice, then it cannot be decentralized: if someone important announces a list of stolen coins they won't accept coins derived from, you must carefully check coins you receive against that list and return the ones that fail. Everyone gets stuck checking blacklists issued by various authorities because in that world we'd all not like to get stuck with bad coins. This adds friction and transactional costs and makes Bitcoin less valuable as money.

So by their own admission, they are working to make bitcoin less valuable as money.

And of course, absolutely no mention on their website that they are cooperating with blockchain analysis and censoring their users. In fact, they strongly imply that they are not doing such a thing here:

The only known possible 'malicious' actions that the server could perform are two sides of the same coin;

• Blacklisted UTXO's: Though this would not affect the users who are able to successfully mix with other 'honest/real' peers.

This is incredibly dishonest. Using the language of "Here is a thing we could do" strongly implies they are not doing it, when we know that the exact opposite is true.

I have been studying the case and it seems to me that the key is here:

But they admitted that there are no court cases, laws, or regulations which are forcing them to do this:

However, zkSNACKs co-founder and CEO Bálint Harmat told Bitcoin Magazine that the decision to prevent some users from leveraging Wasabi for their privacy needs was a proactive one as there is no current legislation obliging them to do so.

Wasabi's anti-privacy and pro-censorship stance is entirely voluntary.

[n0nce]

All I can say is.  This is disgusting.  Wasabi, may I ask how come you did not launch a Signature Campaign this BEFORE kneeling to and collaborating with anti Bitcoin institutions and corporations?  Is it that you are running low on clients after we all left due to the new surveillance features of the wallet or is it that your Blockchain Analysis collaborator needs more clients to spy on?  Or maybe both?  Have not seen this much interest from you before in promoting this, ehm..  now anti-privacy 'private' wallet.

Oh wow; I suspect enough 3-letter-agency-dollarydoos are suddenly available for advertising; while fees from legit users are tumbling. Just a theory, of course.

[...]

To icopress: don't worry, this isn't against you; you're doing your job (and doing it good) as a campaign manager and if they wouldn't have hired you, they would've hired someone else.
We're just very concerned about privacy in here as we believe it's one of Bitcoin's core fundamentals. And many in this thread feel betrayed after having trusted Wasabi to be just as adamant about privacy as them, just to find themselves being 'sold out' by the Wasabi team who decided to undergo changes that (as quoted by others above) aim at increasing their profits by being able to work with large investors. But as I said, I personally don't think you need to fully endorse or fully condemn a project to organize an ad campaign for them, as long as you've made sure of basic stuff like it not being an actual scam project.

Such claims by mainstream media have travelled far and ultimately led to legal challenges, which forced the company to choose between discontinuing its operations or introducing blacklisting so that the coinjoins can continue.

This has been commented on in the other thread as a probable reason and I think it is clear that this was the case.

I think people theorized this may be the case, but they later actually confirmed themselves (can't find the source right now) that they have in fact not (yet) faced an ultimatum such as 'introduce blacklisting or shut down your business' yet. If they had, and really cared about the project's main purpose (mixing any coins without blacklists or whitelists), they could have worked out other solutions, like phasing out the centralized coordinator for something more decentralized just as one possible example.

Edit:

But they admitted that there are no court cases, laws, or regulations which are forcing them to do this:

However, zkSNACKs co-founder and CEO Bálint Harmat told Bitcoin Magazine that the decision to prevent some users from leveraging Wasabi for their privacy needs was a proactive one as there is no current legislation obliging them to do so.

Wasabi's anti-privacy and pro-censorship stance is entirely voluntary.

[NotATether]

In addition to the link BHC has provided, this entire thread from the start of the second page is discussing that Wasabi is now anti-privacy and pro-censorship. Note that the account nopara73 belongs to Adam Ficsor, the CEO of Wasabi. His responses are quite telling, and reveal a lot about how Wasabi view their customers now. Other key statements:

Adam Ficsor said this on Telegram.

We'll have to hire a bc anal company and filter out coinjoin input registrations with them

Max Hillebrand (CEO of zkSNACKs) said this in an interview.

if you, as a CoinJoin coordinator, if you want to work with institutional clients, hedge funds, insurance funds, Michael Saylor, and all these people, well, even if ZKSnacks were not to be regulated, those customers might very well be, maybe because theyre custodians of other peoples money or whatnot. And then these regulated entities can only become users of a coordinatorarguably, Im not sureif such a blacklisting is involved.

In short, Wasabi now cooperate with blockchain analysis to spy on and censor their users so they can cater to institutional clients so they can maximize their own profits.

Is it that you are running low on clients after we all left due to the new surveillance features of the wallet or is it that your Blockchain Analysis collaborator needs more clients to spy on?

Perhaps spying on their users and sharing this data is even more lucrative than their blockchain analysis partners originally thought, and so they are happy to bank roll a signature campaign to harvest even more data.

OK, now that's really disgusting.

So basically up to this point, whenever somebody asked here how to do CoinJoins, we'd just point them over to Wasabi wallet and we had no idea the peril we were endangering them to. Even now, some people who haven't seen that thread (and the really-new developments in this one) are still pointing to their CoinJoin service in answers unknowing that they have been compromised.

It means that CoinJoin providers are just as susceptible to blockchain analysis compromise as mixers are and also, (fortunately) its usually easy to tell when they are compromised because they will be forced to make an announcment like that.

[I'm not sure if ChipMixer has an API for prgramatically opening sessions, but in light of this Wasabi wallet scandal, let's renew interest in a v2 CM Electrum plugin.]

[o_e_l_e_o]

If they had, and really cared about the project's main purpose (mixing any coins without blacklists or whitelists), they could have worked out other solutions, like phasing out the centralized coordinator for something more decentralized just as one possible example.

Exactly this. If Wasabi were actually being targeted by laws and regulations, then the correct course of action is to let all their users know about it, inform all their users how to mitigate it, explain to their users how to swap to a decentralized coordinator, create easy tutorials for people to set up and run their own coordinators, and shut down their centralized coordinator long before they are forced to start cooperating with blockchain analysis. But by doing that, they make less profit, so they instead chose to sell out their users.

And bear in mind this would only be the case if Wasabi were actually being forced in to doing this. Remember that actually none of this needed to happen at all because Wasabi are doing it voluntarily so they can make more profit by sacrificing your privacy.

Even now, some people who haven't seen that thread (and the really-new developments in this one) are still pointing to their CoinJoin service in answers unknowing that they have been compromised.

Wasabi should no longer be recommended to anyone in any situation. Any wallet which cooperates with blockchain analysis is bad enough; a self styled "privacy" wallet doing it is unforgivable. If you want to coinjoin, then at present the best solution is JoinMarket.

[n0nce]

If they had, and really cared about the project's main purpose (mixing any coins without blacklists or whitelists), they could have worked out other solutions, like phasing out the centralized coordinator for something more decentralized just as one possible example.

Exactly this. If Wasabi were actually being targeted by laws and regulations, then the correct course of action is to let all their users know about it, inform all their users how to mitigate it, explain to their users how to swap to a decentralized coordinator, create easy tutorials for people to set up and run their own coordinators, and shut down their centralized coordinator long before they are forced to start cooperating with blockchain analysis.

Even in a worst-case scenario, like a 'cease and desist' type situation where they have to comply or shut down everything immediately, they could (in my opinion should) shut it down, inform everyone about the reasoning and provide guides and solutions (as you explained) as soon as possible. Education and openness should be the #1 priority in a project that deems itself open-source and privacy-enhancing.

But by doing that, they make less profit, so they instead chose to sell out their users.

This is my only explanation; though I'd love to be proven otherwise. Unfortunately, nopara73 (or anyone else) couldn't provide any satisfying answer in this regard.

Even now, some people who haven't seen that thread (and the really-new developments in this one) are still pointing to their CoinJoin service in answers unknowing that they have been compromised.

Wasabi should no longer be recommended to anyone in any situation. Any wallet which cooperates with blockchain analysis is bad enough; a self styled "privacy" wallet doing it is unforgivable. If you want to coinjoin, then at present the best solution is JoinMarket.

I get NotATether's point, though. Wasabi was very effective at keeping it on the low, so I feel it's crucial for us as a community to spread the word (e.g. through a blacklist - I hope the irony in this topic title was appreciated! ).
Their Twitter announcement was literally one sentence and judging from the comments, many users didn't understand what it meant.

Regarding the Twitter statement though, I am still a little puzzled when it comes to the attached image. It looks like a (the last?) candle in total darkness; as if it's about to be blown out - an air of 'death' (of privacy?). At first sight I thought that between the lines, it tries to convey that they're forced to do this and see it as a kind of 'death' of their project. But as they later defended their move on the web (saying they're doing it voluntarily) and on this forum through nopara73, it doesn't seem like they were 'forced to kill their dream project' or something like this. So I'm confused by the image, still. What do you guys think?

[o_e_l_e_o]

I get NotATether's point, though. Wasabi was very effective at keeping it on the low, so I feel it's crucial for us as a community to spread the word (e.g. through a blacklist - I hope the irony in this topic title was appreciated! ).

The fact that their website not only doesn't admit that they are blacklisting, but in fact strongly implies that they aren't blacklist as I outlined above, is bordering on scam territory as far as I am concerned.

So I'm confused by the image, still. What do you guys think?

nopara73 and the Wasabi team are all under the delusion that they are the only viable privacy solution for Bitcoin and the last bastion of hope for the very existence of privacy. Without them, privacy is dead, in their minds. For example:

The alternative, discontinuing zkSNACKs would have set back Bitcoin privacy for decades. Blacklisting by the default coordinator, while undesirable, is a small price to pay for the future of Bitcoin's privacy.

That's exactly why we introduced blacklisting: so we can continue to operate and users can still have privacy using Bitcoin.

Wasabi Wallet 2.0 is decades ahead of other privacy solutions in Bitcoin.

I assume this is what the candle is supposed to be. Them valiantly spying on and blacklisting their users is our last hope against the darkness.

[DireWolfM14]

I haven't used Wasabi Wallet for a couple of years, so I largely ignored this thread.  @n0nce, no the irony of the thread title didn't escape me, but I didn't know why until I just got caught up on what's going on.  One of the reasons I didn't use Wasabi for long was that I didn't trust it.  Maybe it was due to my ignorance, I still don't know exactly how CoinJoin is decentralized, and I'm not comfortable with claims that it is.  Maybe I'm missing something.

What I don't understand about this whole debacle is why zxsnacks is the only viable coordinator.  If it's a decentralized service wouldn't some other coordinator owned by a Russian mafioso running on a VPS out of Curaçao just start getting the majority of join requests?  Why is a wallet that claims to be "decentralized" locking it's users into one CENTRAL join providor?

ELI5.

[n0nce]

What I don't understand about this whole debacle is why zxsnacks is the only viable coordinator.  If it's a decentralized service wouldn't some other coordinator owned by a Russian mafioso running on a VPS out of Curaçao just start getting the majority of join requests?  Why is a wallet that claims to be "decentralized" locking it's users into one CENTRAL join providor?

I don't think it is or claims to be decentralized. They just claim to be trustless and anonymous, but nothing about decentralization, to their credit.

Wasabi creates trustless coinjoin transactions over the Tor anonymity network. The coinjoin coordinator cannot steal from, nor breach the privacy of the participants.

In theory, since the project is open source, you (or a Russian mafioso running on a VPS out of Curaçao) can indeed spin up a coordinator and give people the IP to connect to. However, there is no GUI option for entering an alternative coordinator's IP / domain and it has to be done through command line. In my opinion this is a deliberate choice, since it would be a trivially easy addition.

[DireWolfM14]

I don't think it is or claims to be decentralized. They just claim to be trustless and anonymous, but nothing about decentralization, to their credit.

I just had a look at their website again, and you're absolutely right.  They do mention non-custodial which is true, and the trustless part is technologically over my head.  It is open source and I trust the community, for what that's worth.  I don't remember exactly what it was about the wallet that turned me off, but something about it did creep me out.  Maybe it was fear of taint, lol!  I was much "younger" then, and I'm not afraid to admit that it may have crossed my mind.  I've read through this thread, and I can't help but agree with you and the like-minded-others on the issue, however.

Any attempt to avert tainted coins does a dis-service to privacy and anonymity for all of us, and will play into the governments hands.  The end goal is to blacklist all bitcoin UTXOs that can't be confirmed by BCA as having been thoroughly taxed.

Funny thing about this quote you posted (emphases mine.)

Wasabi creates trustless coinjoin transactions over the Tor anonymity network.  The coinjoin coordinator cannot steal from, nor breach the privacy of the participants.

 

Half of the bolded sentence, if not patently false, it's intentionally misleading.  I guess one could argue that if they're blacklisted they're not "participants."

[witcher_sense]

Funny thing about this quote you posted (emphases mine.)

Wasabi creates trustless coinjoin transactions over the Tor anonymity network.  The coinjoin coordinator cannot steal from, nor breach the privacy of the participants.

 

Half of the bolded sentence, if not patently false, it's intentionally misleading.  I guess one could argue that if they're blacklisted they're not "participants."

It all depends on what you mean by "participants" of a CoinJoin transaction. If you think of participants as independent inputs registering for a transaction, then yes, we can say that some participants will not end up being so after actual blacklisting occurs. If by participants you imply users who control one or more inputs, then it is only partially correct because "legal" inputs will still get past "censors."

It is claimed in the statement you quoted that a coordinator can't breach the privacy of participants, but this is also only partially true. While a coordinator can't see which inputs correspond to which outputs, he can see which inputs belong to a particular Tor-identity (person), information that is not available to public and can be sold to a chain surveillance company.

[o_e_l_e_o]

What I don't understand about this whole debacle is why zxsnacks is the only viable coordinator.  If it's a decentralized service wouldn't some other coordinator owned by a Russian mafioso running on a VPS out of Curaçao just start getting the majority of join requests?  Why is a wallet that claims to be "decentralized" locking it's users into one CENTRAL join providor?

ELI5.

The whole implementation of Wasabi coinjoin depends on connecting to a single centralized coordinator. For pretty much everyone that single coordinator is owned and operator by zkSNACKs, and that is the coordinator which is now spying on people and blacklisting inputs. The coordinator is responsible for collating all the coinjoin inputs, creating the necessary transactions, collecting signatures, and so on.

Anyone else in the world can spin up their own coordinator if they wanted, but there are two main issues with that. Firstly, the liquidity on your coordinator depends on how many users connect to it. If no one else connects to your coordinator, then you have no one to coinjoin with. Secondly, your coordinator is still centralized. It might be owned and operated by someone other than zkSNACKs, but it is still owned and operated by a single entity.

It would take a redesign of Wasabi to implement a decentralized coinjoin, such that every user effectively runs their own coordinator which then communicates with everyone else's coordinator. Given that this is never going to happen, then the better option is to switch to JoinMarket instead, which does pretty much this, and communicates directly with other JoinMarket clients peer to peer rather than via a centralized coordinator.

[Poker Player]

Any attempt to avert tainted coins does a dis-service to privacy and anonymity for all of us, and will play into the governments hands.  The end goal is to blacklist all bitcoin UTXOs that can't be confirmed by BCA as having been thoroughly taxed.

It is precisely to that destination that I am convinced we are heading.