What software exists to run a CoinJoin server? [Wasabi debacle]

[NotATether]

This is probably a belated recognition of the threat posed by blockchain analysis companies crawling all over the user data of Wasabi Wallet, and specifically transactions, but their announcement of a signature campaign has caused a public uproar on this forum (thanks especially to PrivacyG for warning everyone).

The situation map is currently thus:

- The Wasabi wallet itself is still clean and uncompromised.
- But the default CoinJoin server used by Wasabi wallet (zksnacks) is now blacklisting "tainted" coins, an action which is intolerable to the community.
- Ignore the signature campaign for now, it is irrelevant to remedying the situation.


This thread exists to gather open source software on Github/Gitlab/etc. which allows the running of a Wasabi-compatible CJ mixing server. Software that cannot be plugged in to Wasabi should not be listed here. Since this battle is being fought against their main CJ server, and not analysis companies/exchanges/governments, we still have a chance for winning this, even if we are 3 months behind schedule (the announcment for the blacklisting was made last march).

Discussion on how to make such CJ software work for Wasabi (as well as the other way around) is also welcomed. Special attention should be given to getting these to run on low-powered Linux servers (think 8GB of memory or less).

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[witcher_sense]

Wasabi Coordinator is open-source, you can run your own if you like: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/tree/master/WalletWasabi.Backend


Examples of publicly known coordinators that don't censor incoming utxos:


https://twitter.com/sakewallet

Tutorial to switch in wasabiwallet 1 from chainanalysis zkSNACKS-coordinater to censorshipfree SAKE-coordinator:
1 Open Wasabi
2 From menu bar: File/Open/Config File
3 Replace the following line:
from: "MainNetBackendUriV3": "http://wasabiukrxmkdgve5kynjztuovbg43uxcbcxn6y2okcrsg7gb6jdmbad.onion",
to: "MainNetBackendUriV3": "http://sakeazyzcx6gcmyv7ijduvogwpieewsk6mrjzgxciu2x2sfsyij6ogid.onion",
4 Replace the following line:
from: "MainNetFallbackBackendUri": "https://wasabiwallet.io",
to: "MainNetFallbackBackendUri": "http://sakeazyzcx6gcmyv7ijduvogwpieewsk6mrjzgxciu2x2sfsyij6ogid.onion",
4 Restart Wasabi
4 Congratulations you are now using a free and censorship-resistant coordinator for your coinjoins with minus 50% fees.

https://chaincase.app/

Connecting to Chaincase Backend with Wasabi to CoinJoin coins smaller than 0.1 BTC:

    Open Wasabi
    From menu bar: File/Open/Config File.
    Replace the relevant lines in the config:

    From "MainNetBackendUriV3": "http://wasabiukrxmkdgve5kynjztuovbg43uxcbcxn6y2okcrsg7gb6jdmbad.onion/",
    To "MainNetBackendUriV3": "http://cmekpfcgcdmaegqdsj4x4j6qkdem2jhndnboegwhf3jwr2mubafjl3id.onion/",

    restart Wasabi
    You can just delete the line if you want to set it back later to the zkSNACKs default.

I tested both these coordinators: they had literally zero liquidity, which is a clear indication that people either don't care about blacklisting or aren't aware they are being surveilled by a chainanal company.

[o_e_l_e_o]

As witcher_sense has pointed out, you can spin up your own coordinator if you wanted and as others have done, but a complete lack of liquidity will mean you can't actually coinjoin anything. If you want to use coinjoin right now, then JoinMarket is the best option.

I also wouldn't recommend using Wasabi at all, even with a non censoring coordinator. The Wasabi devs have revealed very clearly where their priorities lie: Those priorities are not with their users or protecting privacy, but solely with making profits. Obviously Wasabi is open source, but I'm still not going to use a wallet which is run by a team who are willing to voluntarily sell out their users for profits.

[NotATether]

As witcher_sense has pointed out, you can spin up your own coordinator if you wanted and as others have done, but a complete lack of liquidity will mean you can't actually coinjoin anything. If you want to use coinjoin right now, then JoinMarket is the best option.

Darn it. I completely forgot about liquidity. It's not like anyone wants to put their personal funds on the line to run a coordinator.

This is sympthom of a greater problem where the BTC community is gradually being split up into two factions of whales and everyone else, and people are finding out that the whales are the ones who can create exchanges, mixers and coordinators (assuming there is no 3rd party VC involvement which I will ignore for this analysis) and when these services get stung, we can't make alternatives because we got no liquidity of our own.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Darn it. I completely forgot about liquidity. It's not like anyone wants to put their personal funds on the line to run a coordinator.

It's not so much that, but you need other users to coinjoin too. I could spin up a coordinator right now and load it up with 100 outputs ready to be coinjoined. Anyone using it would obtain zero privacy since their outputs could be completely de-anonymized by process of elimination.

[DaveF]

The Wasabi devs have revealed very clearly where their priorities lie: Those priorities are not with their users or protecting privacy, but solely with making profits....

Darn it. I completely forgot about liquidity. It's not like anyone wants to put their personal funds on the line to run a coordinator.

Makes me wonder if that is part of the problem. If you have to put some of your own BTC on the line and since a large amount of the funds for their coordinator did come from Wasabi themselves if they found themselves in a financial hole. And as much as we would like to think we are all good people and would donate to the cause we know that is not the case. Not defending what they did, just putting it out there to think about.

-Dave

[ABCbits]

I tested both these coordinators: they had literally zero liquidity, which is a clear indication that people either don't care about blacklisting or aren't aware they are being surveilled by a chainanal company.

There are different reason about their zero liquidity, such as
1. Chaincase only available for iOS device and still on TestFlight/beta phase. As for sakewallet, i can't even find their website.
2. Both of them has very little publication. I just heard existence of sakewallet from your posts.
3. Wasabi Wallet only use their own CJ server. If the software force user to choose CJ server which show several alternative, i expect few user would choose different CJ server.

Makes me wonder if that is part of the problem. If you have to put some of your own BTC on the line and since a large amount of the funds for their coordinator did come from Wasabi themselves if they found themselves in a financial hole. And as much as we would like to think we are all good people and would donate to the cause we know that is not the case. Not defending what they did, just putting it out there to think about.

IMO if the problem is only money, they could increase coordinator fee or launch aggressive donation campaign.

[NotATether]

Makes me wonder if that is part of the problem. If you have to put some of your own BTC on the line and since a large amount of the funds for their coordinator did come from Wasabi themselves if they found themselves in a financial hole. And as much as we would like to think we are all good people and would donate to the cause we know that is not the case. Not defending what they did, just putting it out there to think about.

IMO if the problem is only money, they could increase coordinator fee or launch aggressive donation campaign.

o_e_l_e_o mentioned that it's a problem of not enough outputs, but this can be solved by forking Wasabi Wallet, getting enough developers and contributors behind it, change its name, branding and website, and launch an aggressive advertising campaign to get Wasabi users to switch to a truly private wallet.Then the problem would be reduced to a purely funding one as you have described.

[fillippone]

Darn it. I completely forgot about liquidity. It's not like anyone wants to put their personal funds on the line to run a coordinator.

It's not so much that, but you need other users to coinjoin too. I could spin up a coordinator right now and load it up with 100 outputs ready to be coinjoined. Anyone using it would obtain zero privacy since their outputs could be completely de-anonymized by process of elimination.

This.
For the moment being you should assume every liquid coordinator is in reality a “three letter agency honeypot” to break your privacy.

Regarding the Wasabi debacle, please remember that the risk in a centralised company were clear even to the founders on day one.

I tend to separate responsibilities from Wasabi the software developers, zkSNACKs (the company running the coordinators) and Wasabi the wallet.

Wasabi is an open software project funded by zkSNACKs. This same company appeared to run the default coordinator.
Having a “default” choice for coordinator was a good choice for privacy, as this maximised liquidity to an “honest” coordinator, but was a poor choice for the resilience of the system to legal threat. This trade off was very clear from the beginning both to the developers and zkSNACKs (Riccardo Masutti confirmed that on a live cast in the outbreak of the news).

Wallet developers, were in any way agreeing to the implementation of those techniques which are a “choice” of the coordinator. The wallet itself, as a front-end do not implement any of those.

So, while I condemn zkSNACKs, I cannot blame no para and the other developers who gave us such a great product for many years.

[witcher_sense]

There are different reason about their zero liquidity, such as
1. Chaincase only available for iOS device and still on TestFlight/beta phase. As for sakewallet, i can't even find their website.
2. Both of them has very little publication. I just heard existence of sakewallet from your posts.
3. Wasabi Wallet only use their own CJ server. If the software force user to choose CJ server which show several alternative, i expect few user would choose different CJ server.

1. Chaincase app coordinator is available for all platforms where Wasabi Wallet can run, or do you mean iOS users, in general, aren't that interested in making CounJoin transactions? As for sakewallet's website, I only found this:
https://trustedrevie.ws/reviews/sakewallet.com, but the domain has been suspended, so my guess is that this project has failed.
2. Again, this only indicates that very few are really interested in finding alternatives to default coordinator.
3. I don't know what those users would have chosen had they been given such a choice, but you can't expect zkSNACKS to add alternative coordinators to the client because their income depends on not including anything alternative.

[ABCbits]

There are different reason about their zero liquidity, such as
1. Chaincase only available for iOS device and still on TestFlight/beta phase. As for sakewallet, i can't even find their website.
2. Both of them has very little publication. I just heard existence of sakewallet from your posts.
3. Wasabi Wallet only use their own CJ server. If the software force user to choose CJ server which show several alternative, i expect few user would choose different CJ server.

1. Chaincase app coordinator is available for all platforms where Wasabi Wallet can run, or do you mean iOS users, in general, aren't that interested in making CounJoin transactions? As for sakewallet's website, I only found this:

What i meant is very few people use Chaincase and even fewer people interested to make CoinJoin (probably due to 0 liquidity). sakewallet looks like is dead since their last tweet was on March 17.

2. Again, this only indicates that very few are really interested in finding alternatives to default coordinator.

Fair point, but how many Wasabi Wallet user know there's option to change coordinator?

[DireWolfM14]

Makes me wonder if that is part of the problem. If you have to put some of your own BTC on the line and since a large amount of the funds for their coordinator did come from Wasabi themselves if they found themselves in a financial hole. And as much as we would like to think we are all good people and would donate to the cause we know that is not the case. Not defending what they did, just putting it out there to think about.

IMO if the problem is only money, they could increase coordinator fee or launch aggressive donation campaign.

o_e_l_e_o mentioned that it's a problem of not enough outputs, but this can be solved by forking Wasabi Wallet, getting enough developers and contributors behind it, change its name, branding and website, and launch an aggressive advertising campaign to get Wasabi users to switch to a truly private wallet.Then the problem would be reduced to a purely funding one as you have described.

Is it really worth the effort?  I mean if privacy and anonymity are the goals, aren't there better options than CoinJoin?  In the other thread n0nce mentioned one could even code in an easier way to add coinjoin coordinators, so you could even have a whole list to choose from.  Even if you had a whole list of coordinators, they are each a centralized entity which requires trust in those entities.  Wasabi told us they're using BCA, what's to prevent another coordinator from pretending they're not.  Would we know?

[NotATether]

Is it really worth the effort?  I mean if privacy and anonymity are the goals, aren't there better options than CoinJoin?  In the other thread n0nce mentioned one could even code in an easier way to add coinjoin coordinators, so you could even have a whole list to choose from.  Even if you had a whole list of coordinators, they are each a centralized entity which requires trust in those entities.  Wasabi told us they're using BCA, what's to prevent another coordinator from pretending they're not.  Would we know?

The problem here is that other wallets will follow Wasabi's precedent, also voluntarily.

Sure, we could just use mixers and that would be the end of it, but we are trying to discourage this trend by demonstrating that actions hostile to the bitcoin community will be punished.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Even if you had a whole list of coordinators, they are each a centralized entity which requires trust in those entities.

I feel like I've written this word about 600 times over the past few days, but the answer is JoinMarket. Run your own JoinMarket client, connect to other JoinMarket clients peer to peer, and bypass any centralized coordinator with the power to blacklist your inputs.

According to https://www.bitcoinkpis.com/privacy, Wasabi coinjoin volume averages around 700-800 BTC per week, while JoinMarket volume averages around 1000-2000 BTC per week. And as an added bonus, if you are in no rush to coinjoin and are happy to be a maker providing liquidity, you can even earn some fees doing it.

Downsides are you need to run your own node, and it is more complicated to set up for the average user than opening a Wasabi wallet.

[DireWolfM14]

The problem here is that other wallets will follow Wasabi's precedent, also voluntarily.

But again, does that really matter?  There are always going to those who try to avoid taint.  You'll know them IRL because they put on latex gloves when handling cash.

Sure, we could just use mixers and that would be the end of it, but we are trying to discourage this trend by demonstrating that actions hostile to the bitcoin community will be punished.

I wouldn't be so naive to believe that a that a mixer couldn't be in cahoots with the government.  And again, how would we know?  Mixers are centralized services.  Any privacy, anonymity, and most importantly, safety that you get from a mixer is purely assumed.  We must trust that the mixer will provide the services as promised.  With the exception of privacy, there is no way to verify and validate the results. 

I feel like I've written this word about 600 times over the past few days...

Okay, okay, JoinMarket, I got it. 

I'll look into it, do my own research.  Thank you.

[dkbit98]

According to https://www.bitcoinkpis.com/privacy, Wasabi coinjoin volume averages around 700-800 BTC per week, while JoinMarket volume averages around 1000-2000 BTC per week. And as an added bonus, if you are in no rush to coinjoin and are happy to be a maker providing liquidity, you can even earn some fees doing it.

This is good source of information and nice comparison between Wasabi, JoinMarket and Whirpool.
However, I think that most small fish lazy people prefer easy one click solutions for privacy, and bigger players are using JoinMarket, that is why they probably have much bigger volume.
In light of current market conditions, I expect volume to go down for all options now.

Downsides are you need to run your own node, and it is more complicated to set up for the average user than opening a Wasabi wallet.

Do you know if it's possible to use this with pruned Bitcoin node as well?
It's not that hard to run this for most of the people.

[o_e_l_e_o]

However, I think that most small fish lazy people prefer easy one click solutions for privacy, and bigger players are using JoinMarket, that is why they probably have much bigger volume.

Maybe. But even if JoinMarket is largely being used by bigger players, there is nothing stopping the average user from getting involved too. It's not like Wasabi where they are sacrificing the privacy of the average user to cater to the bigger players.

Do you know if it's possible to use this with pruned Bitcoin node as well?

I've not tried it myself, but I don't see any reason why not, provided the wallet you are using for JoinMarket is fully synced and up to date. A quick search of their GitHub shows a couple of users who seem to be using pruned nodes without any issue.

[OROBTC]

...

An hour or so ago, author Shawn Amick published this piece on Wasabi's new wallet:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/wasabi-wallet-2-contains-new-features-for-optimizing-bitcoin-coinjoins

He writes nothing about Wasabi working with analysis companies, hmm...

[fillippone]

...

An hour or so ago, author Shawn Amick published this piece on Wasabi's new wallet:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/wasabi-wallet-2-contains-new-features-for-optimizing-bitcoin-coinjoins

He writes nothing about Wasabi working with analysis companies, hmm...

As I said in a previous post, Wasabi Wallet is a free, open source software totally indipendente from zkSNACSn, the e corporation running the default coordinator.
Wasabi wallet (the client) do not implement any of the chain-analysis like techniques because those are implemented in the coordinato itself, and the client has no way to know if the coordinator implements those rules.

So, basically, Wasabi 2.0 is a nice, new, useless software.

[NotATether]

...

An hour or so ago, author Shawn Amick published this piece on Wasabi's new wallet:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/wasabi-wallet-2-contains-new-features-for-optimizing-bitcoin-coinjoins

He writes nothing about Wasabi working with analysis companies, hmm...

Bitcoin Magazine allows you to submit articles to be posted for a fee. I've attempted to do that with some of my own articles before.

What I'm saying is that it's entirely possible that this is a generic piece submitted by Wasabi workers.