ㅤ

[Kruw]

Explain to me how zkSNACKs funding chain analysis company is a good thing for anyone other than the chain analysis company itself.

You are confused, the coinjoin services zkSNACKs sells are a bad thing for chain analysis companies because their coinjoins create a huge hole in their data set that breaks their ability to track participants.

zkSNACKs can't say they believe in privacy if they're spying on you at the same time.

zkSNACKs isn't spying on you. zkSNACKs can't spy on ANYONE due to the IP address and xpub address protections built into the open source Wasabi client:

=========================================
II. PRIVACY POLICY
=========================================

    This policy describes the ways zkSNACKs collects, stores, uses and protects personal information. The purpose of this policy is to ensure that zkSNACKs complies with applicable European Union (EU) and other statutory data protection laws and regulations, and ensures that users are provided privacy protection.
    Data protection laws are generally relevant in case any processing of personal data is concerned. The terms used within the scope of this data protection declaration are defined in and by the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. As such, the wide definition of "processing" of personal data means any operation or set of operations performed on personal data.

Personally Identifiable Information
===================================

    “Personally identifiable information” (“personal information”) is any information that can be directly associated with a specific person and can be used to identify that person. A prime example of identifiable information is a person’s name.

Handling Information
====================

   Since we are working on privacy, and our mission is to regain personal privacy, our Services are designed to be used without indication of any personal data. For this reason we do not have any kind of data collecting solutions built into our products. There may only be one personal data processing in our Service, for customer support in case of technical problems: visitors may, indicate their email addresses voluntarily to get notifications in case of any potential technical problems or other inquiries. These e-mail addresses are solely used to answer users’ questions and are erased after 100 days. In this case, the processing of the data is based on a freely given consent to Article 6 (1) (a) of the GDPR and is aimed at the effective handling of the complaint.
    We use GitHub as the main platform for users’ technical questions and issues, and we do not retain any data that can be subsequently identified / associated with the user.
   We expressly declare that we do not manage or store any other personally identifiable information.
    By visiting the Website and using our Services, You agree with this policy, in accordance with Section 1.2 of the Terms and Conditions

All User Information is Confidential
====================================

    Because we cannot link Your wallet and Your personal information (such as Your name and IP address) provided under the Service, Your personal information is safe and cannot be accessed by our staff or third parties.
    zkSNACKs will protect processed data in the customer Service process adequately against unauthorized access (of third parties) in accordance with the provisions of the legal framework of Republic of Seychelles. We will only process data which are essential to provide our Services. Data will not be used or stored by other means than set out in this document and are made accessible only to a restricted and necessary number of persons. We do not transfer any personal data to third parties.
    All employees of zkSNACKs have been informed about applicable data protection provisions as well as data security measures and are bound to our privacy practices. All staff are bound by confidentiality agreements.

Use of Cookies
==============

    A cookie is a small piece of data that a website asks Your browser to store on Your computer or mobile device. The cookie allows the website to “remember” Your actions or preferences over time.
   We expressly declare that we do not use cookies.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Explain to me how zkSNACKs funding chain analysis company is a good thing for anyone other than the chain analysis company itself.

It's also a good thing for zkSNACKs, since they are using it to attempt to attract investment or even acquisition, and therefore once again line their own pockets at the expense of all their users and indeed at the expense of bitcoin's fungibility itself. Who cares about attacking the very fundamentals of bitcoin when you can make profit from doing so, am I right!?

This whole thread is pretty eye opening: https://nitter.cz/SamouraiWallet/status/1708064789388304815#m

Also:

zkSNACKs has the potential to become the most profitable company in the world.

Lmfao. Same kind of reasoning as "If you don't use Wasabi you have zero privacy." Are the zkSNACKs team actually insane?

Can't wait to see zkSNACKs take a big investment from a blockchain analysis company and then come and gaslight us all about how this great for privacy and great for bitcoin.

[jon_flop_boat]

yep! he knows nothing 

[Kruw]

Now show me a Samourai address reuse since they implemented the fixes you linked to, and I'll be happy to tell everyone to swap to JoinMarket instead.

o_e_l_e_o, here's some more Samourai address reuse I discovered since the last two Samourai address reuse bugs - https://kycp.org/#/075224a5f39388188daea9ab97cbe507bf807ef162221d2d3e5890a6755e1374

[Medusah]

What's worrying ppl is their spying with blockchain analysis companies.

What is worrying people is that they were one of the best privacy companies, until they started funding and giving permission to a surveillance company with the aim to de-anonymize everyone.  Needless to say that it makes no bloody sense.

You are confused, the coinjoin services zkSNACKs sells are a bad thing for chain analysis companies because their coinjoins create a huge hole in their data set that breaks their ability to track participants.

You have literally given them the permission to reject any coin that requested to be coinjoined.  What the fuck are you talking about?

[Kruw]

What is worrying people is that they were one of the best privacy companies, until they started funding and giving permission to a surveillance company with the aim to de-anonymize everyone.  Needless to say that it makes no bloody sense.

You're wrong.  zkSNACKs themselves cannot deanonymize anyone, therefore, they do not have the power to give permission to a surveillance company to deanonymize anyone.  This privacy is enforced by your open source Wasabi client, you do not have to trust zkSNACKs' claims that they do not collect or share any data since you can verify the code yourself.

[Medusah]

I did not say they can deanonymize.  Read what I said.  I said they can reject coins from being coinjoined.  Reply again, but on-point.

[Kruw]

I did not say they can deanonymize.  Read what I said.  I said they can reject coins from being coinjoined.  Reply again, but on-point.

I already acknowledged that, try to keep up:

zkSNACKs queries a data aggregation company to attempt to avoid accepting stolen funds for their coinjoin service.

[nopara73]

In context of coordinator run by zkSNACKs, aren't there any better or less controversial option for compromise? For example,

• Shut down mainnet coordinator and list community coordinator on Wasabi wallet instead.
• Doesn't take any money from running mainnet coordinator in order to  get extra legal protection as non-profit.
• Switch to non-interactive CoinJoin instead which doesn't require any coordinator or server.

There might come a time when we have to go with one of these "less controversial options," but we should be ready to say goodbye to innovation.  As it stands, Wasabi Wallet ranks just behind Bitcoin Core in terms of development activity for a single project within the open-source Bitcoin ecosystem, if not the entire Bitcoin landscape and these less debatable paths would bring that progress to an abrupt conclusion.

[Medusah]

I already acknowledged that

Do you also acknowledge that you have shared your permission to reject coinjoins with them?  One baby step at a time.

How do you respond to the allegations that, quite clearly, zkSNACKs is in one way or another funding and cooperating with blockchain analysis company/companies? This is what you seem to be avoiding while addressing other questions.

zkSNACKs queries a data aggregation company to attempt to avoid accepting stolen funds for their coinjoin service. I don't know how effective or ineffective this precaution is in regards to false positives or false negatives.

How can we verify your claim?  zkSNACKs has never asserted they are trying to avoid accepting stolen funds.  In their blog, they only said they sacrificed censorship resistance for the survival of their butts.  They left it there.

There might come a time when we have to go with one of these "less controversial options," but we should be ready to say goodbye to innovation.

You should be ready to say goodbye to innovation if the default coordination shuts down...  Totally decentralized.   

[ABCbits]

In context of coordinator run by zkSNACKs, aren't there any better or less controversial option for compromise? For example,

• Shut down mainnet coordinator and list community coordinator on Wasabi wallet instead.
• Doesn't take any money from running mainnet coordinator in order to  get extra legal protection as non-profit.
• Switch to non-interactive CoinJoin instead which doesn't require any coordinator or server.

There might come a time when we have to go with one of these "less controversial options," but we should be ready to say goodbye to innovation.  As it stands, Wasabi Wallet ranks just behind Bitcoin Core in terms of development activity for a single project within the open-source Bitcoin ecosystem, if not the entire Bitcoin landscape and these less debatable paths would bring that progress to an abrupt conclusion.

Thanks for response, although it's rather vague. Although i don't understand why you said "we should be ready to say goodbye to innovation" since on all example i mentioned zkSNACKs still works on Wasabi Wallet and CoinJoin protocol (whether it's WabiSabi or something else). And what metrics you use to compare development activity between Wasabi Wallet and Bitcoin Core?

[Kruw]

Do you also acknowledge that you have shared your permission to reject coinjoins with them?  One baby step at a time.

What do you mean?  zkSNACKs doesn't need my permission for anything other than my signature on coinjoin transactions. If I don't see the amount of money I expect in the output addresses I specified, then I do not sign the transaction.

[xtests]

While I understand some concerns of members behind mass-cancelling Wasabi for performing AML screening of submitted UTXO's because I also consider it a bad practice, I am not sure why nobody haven't launched a non-AML community coordinator yet and haven't made a PR at Wasabi's Github adding a switch between zkSNACKs and community coordinators to the UI, since all the stack is fully open-source.

All I have found was some other thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5402254.0 with o_e_l_e_o convincing everyone for not doing so with the one and only argument of supposedly not having enough liquidity, where a whole thread followed and agreed with it, which seemed to be a dubious decision after all, based on the continuous popularity of this particular thread here and its current page count of 49. Instead of all that energy spent to blame and cancel Wasabi, someone at least could've tried to launch an alternative coordinator already and promote it in this thread in order to try gaining liquidity.

Cancelling a whole open-source solution doesn't seem correct just because a maintainer's backend instance has weird policies. With this same logic, you can go raid BestChange's thread blaming them for widespreading an idea that confiscaing users funds for high risk scores is good, which is actually evil because they punish and exclude exchanges who don't want to make scam-oriented ToS and participate in "dirty bitcoin" propaganda, lead by BestChange and their close (if not directly-related...) partner AMLBot with their outdated databases since Elliptic has dropped them as a customer. Almost on every exchange's review page there are people who lost their funds to scam-oriented ToS among "AML/KYC incidents".

Wasabi's private coordinator seamlessly checks submitted UTXO's at Coinfirm's AML API and rejects high-risk ones without asking for identity or confiscating user funds. Rejected UTXO's can't be linked to any identity. This also can be used to check a risk score of your funds for free without recurring to scam services like AMLBot who even freeze their own users funds for purchasing AML checks with high-risk coins.

Given that same users who blame and cancel Wasabi in this thread participate in BestChange's thread without blaming and cancelling BestChange for attacking Bitcoin's fungibility and spreading scam services is absolutely ridiculous. Bitcointalk members who cancel Wasabi but use BestChange are hypocrites. If your idea is to cancel all services who attack Bitcoin's fungibility, then please do it properly (like also stopping to use centralized exchanges who do AML screening and practice funds freezing) and not selectively.

[o_e_l_e_o]

All I have found was some other thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5402254.0 with o_e_l_e_o convincing everyone for not doing so with the one and only argument of supposedly not having enough liquidity, where a whole thread followed and agreed with it, which seemed to be a dubious decision after all, based on the continuous popularity of this particular thread here and its current page count of 49. Instead of all that energy spent to blame and cancel Wasabi, someone at least could've tried to launch an alternative coordinator already and promote it in this thread in order to try gaining liquidity.

Still, why would I go through the effort of setting up a coordinator, having zero volume, trying to entice people to my coordinator, all so I can run inferior coinjoins which suffer from address reuse and identifiable outputs, when I can just run JoinMarket instead?

[Kruw]

While I understand some concerns of members behind mass-cancelling Wasabi for performing AML screening of submitted UTXO's because I also consider it a bad practice, I am not sure why nobody haven't launched a non-AML community coordinator yet and haven't made a PR at Wasabi's Github adding a switch between zkSNACKs and community coordinators to the UI, since all the stack is fully open-source.

All I have found was some other thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5402254.0 with o_e_l_e_o convincing everyone for not doing so with the one and only argument of supposedly not having enough liquidity, where a whole thread followed and agreed with it, which seemed to be a dubious decision after all, based on the continuous popularity of this particular thread here and its current page count of 49. Instead of all that energy spent to blame and cancel Wasabi, someone at least could've tried to launch an alternative coordinator already and promote it in this thread in order to try gaining liquidity.

Very perceptive observations, you are correct, there's a reason that o_e_l_e_o wants all the liquidity to go to his mixing sites instead of having the liquidity go to his WabiSabi coinjoin coordinator:  He can't steal from those customers if they are coinjoining, but he can steal from them (and spy on them) if they send their coins to his mixing site address.

If they are unable to run a censorship-free coordinator, then the correct thing to do would be to shut down their centralized coordinator

Shut down mainnet coordinator and list community coordinator on Wasabi wallet instead.

^ As you can see, the very existence of coinjoin coordinators providing non custodial privacy reveals that these users are trying to scam people out of their data and coins with their "mixing sites".  Since zkSNACKs proved that anyone can provide privacy without taking custody by running a coinjoin coordinator, this eliminates any doubt that the mixing sites are purposely designed as trust holes.  This is why these scammers are insisting that noncustodial privacy services no longer be offered to anyone so their scamming sites can gain plausible deniability as potentially legitimate services.

Almost on every exchange's review page there are people who lost their funds to scam-oriented ToS among "AML/KYC incidents".

Yep, you can read the below ToS of the new mixing site o_e_l_e_o is using for taking people's money now that he's already gotten Bitcointalk users to lose their coins to both Chipmixer and Whilrlwind.money:

MixTum can confiscate your funds and turn over your data to the government when you trust them with your "naughty" coins:

2.1. Privacy Policy

Please refer to our Privacy Policy to get an understanding of our confidentiality obligations. You consent to the collection and use of information as described in the Privacy Policy.

2.2 Suspension or termination of services

[banned mixer] reserves the right to suspend or terminate access to services at any time at its own discretion, with or without reasons, with or without notification assuming no responsibility whatsoever.

For example, services may be suspended or terminated due to the following reasons:

    an actual or suspected violation of these Terms and Conditions;
    use of the service in such a manner that is conducive to the legal liability of [banned mixer] or Service malfunction;
    planned or unplanned maintenance, etc.

2.3 Unacceptable use

You agree that you personally will not commit, encourage or support the committal of:

    use of any unauthorized means to access the [banned mixer] service or use of any automated process or service (for example, spider, crawler or periodic caching of information stored or generated by [banned mixer]) except for the functions described in our API, as well as distribution of instructions, software or tools with this aim in view;
    modification, change, distortion or any other interference in work of the [banned mixer] service;
    disturbing or interference in operation of servers or networks used by [banned mixer] to deliver the Services;
    disabling, overload or degradation of [banned mixer] performance (or any other network connected to the service);
   use of the [banned mixer] service or website for any other purposes other than those specifically provided by these Terms and Privacy Policy;
    any illegal or fraudulent activity, as well as use of this Service in order to legalize illegal income, financing of terrorism, participation in schemes of phishing, forgery or other such falsification or manipulation;
    unauthorized spamming, pyramid schemes or any other activity duplicating unwanted messages should they be commercially oriented or of other nature.

2.4 Service updates

At any time and at its absolute discretion [banned mixer] can carry out unscheduled works related to the service modification, update and enhancement. We are liable to add or remove functions and cease activities of the service and website.
2.5 License and restrictions

[banned mixer] provides you with a personal nontransferable nonexclusive license to use the Service as it is stipulated for you by [banned mixer]. This license is provided under conditions and restricted to the provisions, stipulations and constraints stated in these Terms. Therewith, such license is intended for personal, noncommercial use. You may not copy, modify, create a derivative work of, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the service or any part thereof, exclusive of data permitted by law, or expressly allowed by the [banned mixer] platform (use of templates, API, etc.). You may not reassign (or grant a sublicense of) your rights to use the service, or otherwise transfer any part of your rights in accordance with these Terms. These Rules do not provide you with any license or permission to copy, distribute, change or otherwise use any applications programming interface despite any provisions to the contrary. No property rights or ownership rights related to the Service are not granted to you according to these Terms. [banned mixer] reserves all rights that have not been expressly granted.

And the funny part is, o_e_l_e_o goes on to blame WabiSabi coinjoins for the address reuse and identifiable outputs created by a completely different coinjoin protocol called Whirlpool:

Still, why would I go through the effort of setting up a coordinator, having zero volume, trying to entice people to my coordinator, all so I can run inferior coinjoins which suffer from address reuse and identifiable outputs, when I can just run JoinMarket instead?

Whirlpool suffers from address reuse:

Now show me a Samourai address reuse since they implemented the fixes you linked to, and I'll be happy to tell everyone to swap to JoinMarket instead.

o_e_l_e_o, here's some more Samourai address reuse I discovered since the last two Samourai address reuse bugs - https://kycp.org/#/075224a5f39388188daea9ab97cbe507bf807ef162221d2d3e5890a6755e1374

And Whirlpool suffers from being able to link your addresses together:

The first is the fee to Whirlpool itself, which is a flat fee depending on the pool you are joining.

The flat pool entry fee structure is designed to incentivize worst privacy practices.  Since fees are not collected directly based on volume, it is cheaper to participate in a smaller pool and create more outputs than participate in a larger pool and create less outputs. Additionally, it incentivizes revealing common inputs ownership of premix UTXOs since it is cheaper to consolidate them to enter the pool once than to enter the pool with each UTXO individually.  Samourai has never explained why they purposely chose a fee structure that heavily penalizes the most private usage of their protocol.

Because of this backwards design, you can easily link premix inputs to postmix outputs in many cases.  Notice how this Whirlpool tx0 premix creates 70 outputs for 0.05 BTC - https://mempool.space/tx/63679c9ec82f246811acbab0c04cc0fc77ba050e1b6c23661d78afcfc13cf8aa

Notice how every single input of this Whirlpool exit transaction is a direct descendant of rounds created by the aforementioned premix transaction: https://mempool.space/tx/ce2f84f7c5ff74fb1da103acb7b279bd34f02f5e9e3a2e1b6417ce8b9b7392db

When many inputs used in the postmix exit transaction are created directly from a round that the premix transaction entered, it makes it trivial to trace the user through Whirlpool.  Fortunately, the user abandoned Whirlpool and upgraded to using the WabiSabi coinjoin protocol instead, which made him completely untraceable: https://mempool.space/address/bc1qjjw5gaglkycu2lm5fskl7qhktk0hec4a5me3da

[Dont Trust Verify]

I've looked at the post but benefits of efficiency can't be better to privacy concerns. If they're giving 40% better anon sets for coinjoin outputs it's impressive. What's worrying ppl is their spying with blockchain analysis companies.

When zkSNACKs rejects coinjoins's it's taking away Bitcoin's creative foundation from fungible origins. zkSNACKs can't say they believe in privacy if they're spying on you at the same time. If Wasabi wallet's got other benefits it doesn't help ppl against their blockchain analysis policy.

zkSNACKs doesn't have the ability to spy on you. I can't really say the same thing about Unijoin which you are promoting. Unijoin basically plagiarized Wasabi's legal documents for their own terms & conditions but what they didn't copy was the open source and non-custodial aspects. Not only are you paying much higher fees but you also give up custody and have to take their word about not having logs when they have every motive to lie since user data is their only leverage when law enforcement decides to shut them down.

[ABCbits]

I am not sure why nobody haven't launched a non-AML community coordinator yet and haven't made a PR at Wasabi's Github adding a switch between zkSNACKs and community coordinators to the UI, since all the stack is fully open-source.

Instead of all that energy spent to blame and cancel Wasabi, someone at least could've tried to launch an alternative coordinator already and promote it in this thread in order to try gaining liquidity.

Have you thought that it's easier or more convenient to install and use different CoinJoin software (such as JoinMarket or Sparrow Wallet)?

[Kruw]

Have you thought that it's easier or more convenient to install and use different CoinJoin software (such as JoinMarket or Sparrow Wallet)?

Joinmarket and Sparrow don't support the WabiSabi coinjoin protocol though.  The other convenient alternatives to Wasabi Wallet are BTCPay Server and Trezor.

[arabspaceship123]

If zkSNACKs hasn't allowed outside firms to organise independent audits of their operations they should. It'll be good if Wasabi Wallet users seek reassurances. I don't know if Unijoin plagiarised Wasabi's legal documents or if Unijoin's functions didn't copy the open source and non-custodial aspects in full. I didn't read posts with those allegations before you've said it.

zkSNACKs doesn't have the ability to spy on you. I can't really say the same thing about Unijoin which you are promoting. Unijoin basically plagiarized Wasabi's legal documents for their own terms & conditions but what they didn't copy was the open source and non-custodial aspects. Not only are you paying much higher fees but you also give up custody and have to take their word about not having logs when they have every motive to lie since user data is their only leverage when law enforcement decides to shut them down.

[Kruw]

If zkSNACKs hasn't allowed outside firms to organise independent audits of their operations it'll be good for Wasabi Wallet users to seek reassurances.

All of the code is open source, anyone can audit it themselves to seek reassurances that no data is ever leaked by their client.  You do not have to trust zkSNACKs at all, you can verify everything for yourself.