Wasabi blacklisting update - open letter / 24 questions discussion thread

[n0nce]

For anyone out of the loop, a quick introduction. On the 13th of March, 2022, the CoinJoin-enabled Bitcoin wallet WasabiWallet.io announced they will start blacklisting certain UTXOs.
More on this here.

The tweet: https://twitter.com/wasabiwallet/status/1503091503207432193



Essentially, they will start refusing UTXOs associated with illegal activities, preventing them from participating in CoinJoin transactions. The list of what they are considering illegal can be found here: https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1503141547071754242

It is not clear how they will determine if certain UTXOs are illegal or not, but it all definitely can be called an attack on fungibility and privacy. If this news is true, the default coordinator run by zkSNACKs company is no longer a reliable solution to coinjoin your transactions.

Since icopress was speaking to them regarding a signature campaign for multiple months prior to that, and it went live recently, he had a good contact at Wasabi and offered to send a list of questions directly to Wasabi's CEO.

For full transparency: icopress contacted me and he kindly offered me to send him a concise list of questions which he'd directly forward to the Wasabi CEO.
I'm partly speculating myself in this thread, but also gave Wasabi the benefit of the doubt in some cases and generally try to be as objective as I can. Therefore I thoroughly read everything you guys are writing and will summarize a list with the 'top questions'..

We now got our answers, so I created this thread to talk about them, as not to clutter the main WasabiWallet.io thread.


I posted my questions just when I sent them to icopress, here:

[...]

The answers are below. I'm not really satisfied with them, since they don't really explain the discrepancy between privacy and surveillance, between fungibility; supposedly allowing everyone to use the service, but employing a blacklist, and don't explain the reason behind the switch either. What do you guys think?

• Guys, below are the answers to 24 questions that n0nce formulated on behalf of the public.

These answers are 100% coming from the decision maker (I was asked who should answer the questions, I said I expect a response directly from the CEO). I also hope that these answers can shed some light on some of the nuances, and cool the discussion (or make it even hotter).  

1. Who is your target audience / target user demographic? Due to the recent changes, we must assume it's people who are interested in mixing coins, while at the same time not having a problem with the mixer discriminating between UTXOs. Mixing with a blacklist seems like an oxymoron to us and we struggle to see the use case.

Answer: Our target audience is Bitcoiners.

Many people seem to struggle understanding what zkSNACKs blacklisting really means and why we are doing it, so let’s start from the basics. ZkSNACKs is a company that sponsors the development of an open-source project called Wasabi Wallet. This company also runs the default coordinator that is needed to create coinjoin transactions in Wasabi. This coordinator service can be run by other entities too, as everything is open and available. Users are able to choose which coordinator they want to communicate with but unfortunately there are not many options, as running one has its risks and not many people are willing to do it.

The zkSNACKs coordinator is clearly the largest and has substantially more liquidity than others; hence, this is why most people use it. Wasabi Wallet was built in a way that the developers and zkSNACKs don't collect any data about their users. We do not care who you are and what you do with your bitcoins! We don't want to know. Unfortunately, some people do collect data, attach it to bitcoin addresses and make decisions based on that information. The company is getting in trouble and harassed because apparently some of the users of our coordinator are so-called “criminals”, according to the people keeping up these databases.

We are not saying that the database is correct, as we do not agree with most of the classifications but we want to be able to see the same information that apparently others already have. We don’t want to do any chain surveillance ourselves, so we would rather just buy that information from others. We are not interested in applying sanctions or other immoral crap. We are exercising our right as a company to choose not to serve those people who could get us in trouble and the ones whom we wouldn’t want to support for ethical reasons. This includes known thieves like politicians.

Ostracization is, in our opinion, a libertarian way to react to the problems that have occured because of these high profile users. We are still not collecting data about our users nor are we revealing anything new to chain analysis companies. The blacklisting has no effect on users' privacy. If you knew a pedophile/murderer was eating at your restaurant, would you serve him? Especially if serving him gets you in trouble? Basically, are you willing to sacrifice yourself and your restaurant for him?

2. Related to point 1, we found comments on your own Twitter profile from presumably former Wasabi users, like:

What's the point of a washing machine that only washes clean laundry?

- do you have a response for that?

Answer: It’s the same as having a washing machine that by default collects xpubs. Privacy. All implementations have tradeoffs, pick your poison.

3. Is it correct that you now officially focus on institutional investors and chose to implement a blacklist for this reason? Your blog post and other statements make it seem like this is the case. For example in this interview: https://stephanlivera.com/episode/364/, Max Hillebrand said: '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.'

Answer: No, we’re certainly not exclusively focusing on institutional investors and this has nothing to do with why we are implementing a blacklist. Just like Bitcoin adoption, there are different levels of users and we feel like Wasabi Wallet is the best way to improve privacy within Bitcoin. Therefore, we would like our wallet to be used by any user: institutional or recreational.

4. If institutional investors are now your target audience, why didn't you communicate this openly and transparently - maybe even continued running Wasabi 1.0 for the vast majority of users, without all this tainting and blacklisting and explicitly stated that this 'Wasabi with blacklisting' is dedicated to such investors that are regulated and thus aren't allowed to use a mixer that has no blacklist?

Answer: Lots of loaded assumptions again in this question. Institutional investors are not our main target audience, bitcoin users in general are. Institutional investors are of course part of that group. We are extremely transparent and that’s the problem. We inform our users about blacklisting as soon as we know we are going to implement it, without actually knowing how or when. Some might say we should have informed users about it only when it's implemented but we didn't feel comfortable keeping it a secret.

5. We believe:

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.

Did you consider taking such a course of action instead of the pretty low-key Twitter announcement that got very little visibility and no changes to the website (front and docs page)?

Answer: Regarding the company’s regulatory situation, more info will be shared when possible. We’re always happy to share information about how to change coordinators when someone asks about it but there is no decentralized one. Here’s a link for instructions on How to Connect to Chaincase Coordinator from Wasabi? · Discussion #119. More info about the blacklisting will also be provided once it’s closer to being implemented.

6.

Why do the institutions of all people need to use CoinJoin on their assets in the first place? Do they have something to hide too?

It seems odd that institutional investors want to use a mixing service; since they usually rather prefer to keep their Bitcoin investments in the hands of a broker / exchange or hold Bitcoin ETFs. Or are the 'institutional clients, hedge funds, insurance funds' trying to hide something from their customers?

Answer: Privacy is not about secrecy. It’s an ability for you to choose what information you share with others. Institutional adoption for our wallet is more than just investors. It’s also the several exchanges conducting thousands of transactions daily. It’s the banks who are wanting to offer their customers the privacy that was commonplace in the banking industry for hundreds of years. It also includes all the companies who are paying their employees in Bitcoin and are obligated to conceal each employee’s compensation.

7. Your website still says:

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.

This stands in direct contrast to your blacklisting update. Has your opinion on blacklists changed or how is this view compatible with providing a Bitcoin anonymity service that only allows certain UTXOs to use it?

Answer: Hopefully all users, wallets and services won't have to “consult a centralized blacklist before accepting bitcoin”. But it’s their choice if they want to discriminate against a certain coin, user or service. That’s part of the freedom of association if it's their decision. If this would be mandated by authority, it would be bad. But that’s not the case in our blacklisting, like I explained in the first answer.

We are implementing our own blacklist, as we dont care to become martyrs by serving thieves. We want to keep building the best privacy tools for bitcoiners to take advantage of. Instead of social justice warrioring on behalf of politicians, shitcoiners and other thieves, people should be grateful for the tools that zkSNACKs has built and take advantage of the situation by capturing the market. Instead of all the whining we’re hearing.

8. WasabiWallet also states this; which we all agree with.

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.

- Now Chainalysis is the one providing such a list and you're asking them which UTXOs are on the list and which are acceptable. Don't you think you're helping set a precedent which may lead exactly to the scenario described, where everyone will be stuck checking blacklists upon blacklists, published by tons of different authorities, which will make Bitcoin less valuable as money? Are you now making Bitcoin less valuable as money?

Answer: Even though we have the saying “Don’t trust, verify” embedded in the bitcoin culture, very few seem to be actually doing that. We have not said that we would be buying services from the Chainalysis company. This is, again, projecting/assuming. We are going to buy info from a chain analysis company, but not from Chainalysis. We are not asking them which inputs we can include in a coinjoin, but what they know about these inputs.

We decide who we serve. It’s absurd for people to even think that bitcoin would already be fungible when it’s so easy to gather and attach data to the event in the chain. Without privacy, there’s no fungibility. Only after we fix the first one, can we dream of the latter.

9. This statement on your website also strongly implies you are not censoring users, which you now clearly are doing.

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.

In general, it seems like you intentionally never changed the website until the latest redesign (which didn't affect the docs page quoted here, though). Why was there so little communication around this huge update and everything kept so 'on the low'? (big credit to o_e_l_e_o for digging these out)

Answer: What you are looking at is 1.0 documentation. 2.0 docs are still under construction. Blacklisting is still not implemented.

10. Many users were puzzled about your very minimalistic Twitter announcement; and what the image is trying to convey isn't clear either. Was this intentional? Some of us speculate that you believe WasabiWallet to be something like a 'last glimmer of hope' for Bitcoin privacy or something like that, since it sounds like that in various interviews and Twitter voice calls, too. Or are you aware that other, even better solutions exist, especially for the people who need privacy the most?

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.

Such statements make it appear like you believe yours is the only privacy solution and that there is no privacy in Bitcoin without Wasabi. Would you confirm this? Actually, later you admit that LN has better privacy, so this already seems like a contradiction.

Answer: We sincerely see WabiSabi as the best on-chain privacy technology in bitcoin today. We are aware of various other projects but in all honesty, they are shooting very low. Once you understand WabiSabi, you’ll see why we think it’s on a completely different level. Lightning is nice but not for on-chain privacy.

11. We're talking about political refugees, government critics and investigative journalists for example; these are amongst the ones needing privacy the most (and therefore switching to Bitcoin in the first place). But in https://twitter.com/HillebrandMax/status/1537503087987937283, at 1:32:10, Aviv Milner says that 'the average person who's using the product especially if you're not in a situation where you're your life depends on it and there's a large government organization that's well funded that's looking to to find you and hunt you down if you're not in that extreme situation then wasabi provides an incredible amount of privacy'. So it means WasabiWallet is not the 'ultimate privacy solution' for Bitcoin after all; just maybe for 'getting a little privacy' or how should we call that? Someone who really, really needs actual privacy cannot rely on Wasabi then? What should they use in your opinion? On one hand, you say Wasabi is the only / best option for privacy, but then admit it doesn't provide enough privacy if someone's life depends on it; so what's the point of it all then? We don't believe privacy is something quantifiable; it's more a yes-or-no kind of deal. Either your UTXOs and transactions are private or they're not.

Answer: Privacy is not black and white. Name a service that promises you 100% guaranteed privacy? Thought so too, there is none or they are lying. Privacy is not a simple matter. There are always risks and tradeoffs. Everyone is just trying their best. Wasabi is far from perfect but it’s one of the only options and compared to other wallets, it’s privacy is very, very good.

12. We noticed your download numbers have almost collapsed since the blacklisting announcement; did you expect this and how does this reflect on the anonymity set? https://tooomm.github.io/github-release-stats/?username=zkSNACKs&repository=WalletWasabi

Answer: Not sure what you mean, we’ve been working on 2.0 for a long time and havent been working on 1.0, hence no feature updates.

We launched 2.0 on the 15th of June during Tor DDoS attack and it took a few days to get coinjoins running but we already have a lot more than 5k downloads at this point, which is very nice. The amount of users using 1.0 is expected to drop as people move to 2.0. The biggest coinjoin we’ve conducted now has 250 inputs and a bit less than 300 outputs, so from an ambiguity perspective, coinjoins look better than ever.

• https://twitter.com/wasabiwallet/status/1539871087609237504

13. Are there any insights on how you blacklist? Do you rely solely on the data from Chainalysis or do you pre- and / or post-process the data? Since we assume blacklists are used to block coins from illegal origins; which laws or rules are used to determine if an origin or past activity is legal or not? Since Bitcoin is a global currency tied to no nation in particular, it appears impossible to declare 'legality' in this context. For example, copyright laws differ widely across the world; or when it comes to anything sexual, some stuff is illegal in certain countries, but totally legal in others. How can a legal ground be found to determine which UTXOs are 'good' and which are prohibited?

Answer: Chainalysis! = chain analysis. Let’s say we have 200 inputs wanting to register for a coinjoin. We take those and 200 other random bech32 UTXO’s that we send to their API. We get back a response where they let us know if any of these UTXOs match any of the categories and criterias zkSNACKs has set. Those addresses that we accept will proceed to the input registration, those that are blacklisted will get a notification that this UTXO is blacklisted. As a reminder, Wasabi coinjoin is built in a way that the user never loses control of their coins. The coordinator is never custodying users’ money, therefore it can not seize them etc. The querying process doesn’t affect users' privacy.

14. Are all UTXOs sent to Chainalysis for inspection, whenever someone wants to do a CoinJoin or only if after some pre-filtering you have some suspicion?

Answer: Chainalysis != chain analysis. Fresh bitcoins are queried only for coinjoin.

15. Let's take an example: An investigative journalist uncovered a government or other wealthy entity's dirty secrets and now they're after them. People want to donate to the whistleblower or they want to spend their donations through WasabiWallet. However you get a notice to block those UTXOs, so you do exactly that; isn't this exactly the target audience? Isn't this exactly the person who needs a Bitcoin privacy solution? (This refers back to point 1). Don't you also go straight against Bitcoin's original goal of pseudonymous, fungible currency that can be received from and sent to anyone, anywhere, anytime? What's the use of a privacy solution if the ones needing privacy are not allowed to use it? (this refers back to point 2)

Answer: Nothing prevents users from using the open-source wallet to receive and send payments however they want. ZkSNACKs coordinator implementing blacklist does not affect any other wallet features than coinjoin. The company is not implementing a government sanctions list or blocking users like the Canadian truckers.

16. We believe that starting censoring some users opens the door to censoring anybody and everybody. Would you agree with this?

Again: Bitcoin is either censorship resistant, or it isn't. You cannot pick and choose who it is censorship resistant for. If you, like Wasabi, start censoring some users, then you open the door to censoring anybody and everybody

Answer: Luckily we are not making changes to Bitcoin protocol but to our very own server. Every Bitcoin node has the right to choose which transactions it includes in its mempool or relays. Every node has blacklists for nodes that behave badly for one reason or another. ZkSNACKs coordinator has always banned the coins of misbehaving users, as that’s part of the DoS protection. None of these are censorship, as only a government can do such a thing. Everything else is personal preference under the freedom of association.

17. Let's take a step back to the beginnings. Did you consider building something decentralized instead of the current coordinator model? As we can see now, it created a central point of failure.

Answer: Nopara73 actually got into an argument with Scamourai originally because he wanted to explore the possibility of creating decentralized coinjoins without any coordination fee. Scamourai didn’t like that so as usual, they started attacking him. Eventually Nopara73 gave up on that idea and decided to use a centralized but trustless server. To this day, there’s no decentralized version, other than in people’s dreams.

18. You already said this isn't the case; so you don't have to confirm or deny if this happened; but if we're being skeptic, we have to consider the idea that you were pressured by authorities after all, with an extra clause that you're not allowed to say anything about it. Did you ever consider that a privacy-enhancing service would sooner or later be targeted and pressured by authorities? Other similar services explicitly made sure from the beginning that the creators and developers are anonymous, pseudonymous or generally unknown, to make sure such pressure can't be exterted on the project. Actually, satoshi himself may have left Bitcoin to remove such a central point of failure (through pressure on the creator).

Answer: Information about pressures will be posted later. Satoshi is one of the few people who have actually stayed anonymous and left the project. Otherwise, I’m not sure who you mean. Working on a privacy project in today's day and age is very risky. If the project succeeds and grows, it’s only a matter of time before the people involved get harassed. This is expected and that’s why it’s important that we build as much as we can before the worst comes. Even though there’s not necessarily a law forbidding a privacy focused business, it’s only a matter of time before regulators find a way to try to shut the project down. We want to try to distance ourselves from these problems as much as possible, by avoiding unnecessary negative attention.

19. Did you pay for this post? https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/wasabi-wallet-2-contains-new-features-for-optimizing-bitcoin-coinjoins We wonder how it completely ignores the blacklisting update, given the generally bad reception by the (vocal, even on Twitter) community. There is no mention of collaboration between WasabiWallet and blockchain analysis companies.

Answer: No. But as the announcement has nothing to do with blacklisting, it’s no wonder why the blacklisting topic was ignored.

20. Another question quoted directly from the community:

I'm also interested in the scenario (which will definitely happen sooner or later) where someone is allowed to mix their coins and then afterwards Wasabi decide that their inputs were tainted and they shouldn't have been allowed to mix them at all, since the document linked to above also invites you to inform them of any illegal transactions and states that they will fully cooperate with any investigations. Why would reporting an illegal transaction to Wasabi achieve anything at all, unless they have the ability to track those coins and are going to share that information with law enforcement?

Answer: We will share everything we can, which is nothing. That’s the point of zero-knowledge software. Legal papers have all kinds of formalities. False positives and false negatives on blacklisting is unfortunate, but we will try to minimize those as best we can, of course.

21. Automatic CoinJoin and the removal of manual UTXO selection altogether is a deal-breaker for some users (especially in the context of the whole update). We believe it's unexpected behaviour of a wallet to automatically (without user opt-in) send all of a user's UTXOs to a blockchain analysis company for vetting (whether blacklisted or not) and afterwards be mixed. Some users are worried that the very act of mixing makes the UTXO 'tainted' in the eyes of the exchange and that it will freeze those funds. By the way: this is exactly what you predicted in your old docs pages; if everyone starts coming up with 'taint definitions' and blacklists, using (moving) Bitcoin will become infeasibly cumbersome.

Answer: Automatic coin selection and auto coinjoin are a good option for newbies who have no idea what they are doing but we totally understand that advanced users would like to have more insights and control. Features that enable these will very likely be added in the future in one way or another. Before users even open the wallet, they see our terms and conditions, which they have to accept in order to use the software. Coinjoins are considered inherently high risk by many chain analysis services and they are advocating their clients to block them all. Let’s see if a “blacklisted coinjoin” can get a lower score and we can remove the stigma from coinjoins.

22. Another quote from the same recent Twitter group chat: https://twitter.com/HillebrandMax/status/1537503087987937283 (at 1:32:40) - Aviv Milner says that 'Maybe there is a little more privacy in Lightning'; and elaborates that LN is tricky to use though, so he implies that Wasabi is actually less anonymous / less private than Lightning, but just easier to use? Would you confirm that, that Wasabi CoinJoin privacy is lower than Lightning privacy? So if I need the absolute most privacy, you would recommend to create a Lightning channel and / or doing a submarine swap instead of doing a WasabiWallet CoinJoin? This is practical, important information for a lot of users who need as strong privacy guarantees as possible.

Answer: For strong onchain privacy I don’t know anything better than coinjoin. You never know who’s coin you end up with in a swap. You should also open all your Lightning channels with coinjoined coins. Everything is shit, but this is the best we got. Better get to work if we want something more.

23. Right before, he also says that it's much more private than the vast majority of alternatives; what are those alternative privacy solutions that are much worse than WasabiWallet? Or did he talk about the 'alternatives' as non-privacy-promising, plain and normal non-custodial wallets, with no CoinJoin implementation in them; that these are less private?

Answer: See above.

24. For the last point, we have an important observation:

Wasabi Wallet doesn't utilize any post-mix spending tools, and if part of the users practices bad spending behavior (like spending directly to a centralized exchange), then the other part of the users (more advanced) can potentially be deanonymized in a process of elimination.

If I recall correctly, this is also a potential issue / attack on other such mixing technologies; where bad behaviour (unintentional or even intentional) can put the privacy of other users at risk. This sounds like a loophole / security issue just looking to be exploited. Would you confirm this issues and if yes, are there any plans yet to improve this?

Answer: Regarding the linked, no wallet can prevent users from consolidating coins if they want to. In Wasabi Wallet 1.0 users see a big warning when they try to spend private and non-private coins together. If they want to do it anyway, we should allow it. In 2.0 they see who knows about the transaction they are making but we should add more warnings. Creating a separate wallet for private coins doesn’t help as the user can still consolidate outside the wallet and it’s a very bad UX if sending all coins is urgent. Wasabi Wallet coinjoins are designed to be very large to make sure that even if many users consolidate, you’ll still have plenty of ambiguity from non-consolidated outputs. Deanonymization is a problem in smaller coinjoins with very few participants and low remix rate. Especially if users by default send the server their xpubs, like in Samourai Wallet.

What are these post-mixing tools exactly? Ricochet is very expensive and doesn’t provide you any privacy. 6 hops between cj and exchange is something you can do manually with 10x lower price if you think that helps. Or do you mean small coinjoins after the main coinjoin that is supposed to make sure even the people who leak xpubs can get a little bit privacy from the service provider? Otherwise it’s just a crappy coinjoin.

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[n0nce]

I'm quoting the first reply from our community to their answers from o_e_l_e_o:

Thanks for doing this icopress, but they are pretty disappointing answers, to be honest. Don't really clear up very much, and continue to beat around the bush without giving any firm answers in terms of why they decided to start blacklisting, what pressures they were facing, which blockchain analysis companies they will work with, what criteria they are using, and so on.

These answers are 100% coming from the decision maker (I was asked who should answer the questions, I said I expect a response directly from the CEO).

Who is the "decision maker"? nopara73?

We do not care who you are and what you do with your bitcoins!

I mean, that's just simply not true. If you didn't actually care, then you wouldn't be implementing blacklisting, would you?

The company is getting in trouble and harassed because apparently some of the users of our coordinator are so-called “criminals”, according to the people keeping up these databases.

So fight the harassment rather than selling out your users. Other privacy focused projects manage it.

We are not saying that the database is correct, as we do not agree with most of the classifications but we want to be able to see the same information that apparently others already have. We don’t want to do any chain surveillance ourselves, so we would rather just buy that information from others. We are not interested in applying sanctions or other immoral crap.

And in supporting, cooperating with, and even paying blockchain analysis firms, you are absolutely complicit in applying sanctions and plenty of other "immoral crap".

If you knew a pedophile/murderer was eating at your restaurant, would you serve him?

Strawman. Restaurant food isn't supposed to be a fungible currency, and a restaurant owner isn't supporting and paying a mass surveillance operation for intimate details about all their customers.

It’s the same as having a washing machine that by default collects xpubs. Privacy. All implementations have tradeoffs, pick your poison.

Honestly, what does this even mean? A childish attack at Samourai without answering the question whatsoever.

Hopefully all users, wallets and services won't have to “consult a centralized blacklist before accepting bitcoin”. But it’s their choice if they want to discriminate against a certain coin, user or service.

Absolutely. But the exchanges which spy on where their users' coins are coming from and discriminate against ones they don't like also don't market themselves as a privacy solution. You can't have it both ways.

If this would be mandated by authority, it would be bad. But that’s not the case in our blacklisting, like I explained in the first answer.

You said you were "getting in trouble and harassed". If not by the authorities, then by whom?

people should be grateful for the tools that zkSNACKs has built and take advantage of the situation by capturing the market. Instead of all the whining we’re hearing.

Honestly laughed out loud at this. How childish.

What you are looking at is 1.0 documentation. 2.0 docs are still under construction.

And yet you still host the 1.0 documentation and you still link to it quite visibly on your website.

The querying process doesn’t affect users' privacy.

You send off 200 outputs to your blockchain analysis partners. They say that 195 of them are fine, but 5 are blacklisted because they are all associated with gambling. Turns out, they were all withdrawals from the same gambling site, which the blockchain analysis company will be able to clearly see. Congrats, they've just linked all 5 of those outputs to the same person.

Every node has blacklists for nodes that behave badly for one reason or another.

If you honestly can't see the difference between blacklisting a node which is DoSing you and blacklisting users who you have unilaterally decided shouldn't be allowed to coinjoin their outputs, I don't really know what to say.

Nopara73 actually got into an argument with Scamourai originally because he wanted to explore the possibility of creating decentralized coinjoins without any coordination fee. Scamourai didn’t like that so as usual, they started attacking him. Eventually Nopara73 gave up on that idea and decided to use a centralized but trustless server. To this day, there’s no decentralized version, other than in people’s dreams.

Scamourai? Was this written by a 12 year old? Also what is JoinMarket, if not a decentralized coinjoin?

We will share everything we can, which is nothing.

Didn't answer the question. To remind you, here is a direct quote from your documents:

If You find any reason to violate the law during Your transaction (for example, in a transaction with a third party), please let us know at one of the contacts listed at the end of this document.
The Service Provider shall assist the investigation in any case, if so instructed by an authorized body, a final court judgment or a final regulatory decision.

Why would you invite people to let you know about an illegal transaction if you actually have no data to share? How will you assist the investigation?

Everything is shit, but this is the best we got. Better get to work if we want something more.

A blockchain analysis supporting, blacklisting, pro-censorship, anti-fungibility wallet is absolutely not the best we have got. If we want something more, then better to go use and work on projects which are actually offering something more.

[witcher_sense]

Answer: Regarding the linked, no wallet can prevent users from consolidating coins if they want to. In Wasabi Wallet 1.0 users see a big warning when they try to spend private and non-private coins together. If they want to do it anyway, we should allow it. In 2.0 they see who knows about the transaction they are making but we should add more warnings. Creating a separate wallet for private coins doesn’t help as the user can still consolidate outside the wallet and it’s a very bad UX if sending all coins is urgent. Wasabi Wallet coinjoins are designed to be very large to make sure that even if many users consolidate, you’ll still have plenty of ambiguity from non-consolidated outputs. Deanonymization is a problem in smaller coinjoins with very few participants and low remix rate. Especially if users by default send the server their xpubs, like in Samourai Wallet.

What are these post-mixing tools exactly? Ricochet is very expensive and doesn’t provide you any privacy. 6 hops between cj and exchange is something you can do manually with 10x lower price if you think that helps. Or do you mean small coinjoins after the main coinjoin that is supposed to make sure even the people who leak xpubs can get a little bit privacy from the service provider? Otherwise it’s just a crappy coinjoin.

Wait, they think that "post-mix tools" is an invention of Samourai Wallet's devs? Or that, if the question like this is raised during discussions, it necessarily comes from Samourai's sockpuppet? Otherwise, why do they behave childishly attacking other developers instead of giving a clear answer to a justified question?

Yes, a privacy-oriented wallet with in-built CoinJoin functionality must do everything it can to prevent users from consolidating mixed outputs with unmixed change. And yes, advanced users will always find a way to merge privacy coins with toxic change, but who cares if your target audience is newbies who aren't even allowed to coin-control the coins they control (what a wordplay, huh)? And if they are your main audience, then you must protect them first, not advanced users.

[LoyceV]

I'll post my (mildly sarcastic) response to the CEO's answers here instead of in Wasabi's thread:

We do not care who you are and what you do with your bitcoins! We don't want to know. Unfortunately, some people do collect data, attach it to bitcoin addresses and make decisions based on that information. The company is getting in trouble and harassed because apparently some of the users of our coordinator are so-called “criminals”, according to the people keeping up these databases.

We are not saying that the database is correct, as we do not agree with most of the classifications

So you're telling me someone harassed the company until you paid them for data that you don't want and may not even be correct? Isn't that extortion?

we want to be able to see the same information that apparently others already have. We don’t want to do any chain surveillance ourselves, so we would rather just buy that information from others.

It sounds to me like someone created a business of pointing fingers and now forces people to buy their idea. Just don't do it. If nobody would do it, nobody else would be "forced to join".

If you knew a pedophile/murderer was eating at your restaurant, would you serve him?

If I told you to give me 20 bucks, so I can tell you which one of your customers is a murderer without any evidence, would you pay me? I've done the same to other restaurants in your area, so you should join the mob mentality, right?

[NeuroticFish]

From what I see:
* they try hard to minimize what blacklisting means
* they try hard to cover their blacklist under noble/good reasons (don't you just love politics?)
* they contradict themselves - first they say they buy info from others (info that will lead to same conclusions and blacklists others may have), then they say that's not about centralized blacklist. Well, imho it's just 1mm away from centralized blacklist

But all in all, it's unfortunately expected. I am surprised that they do it publicly, I would expect at least some of mixing services analyze the inputs and, if they're 100% sure from hacks, seize them and return them to rightful owners. It's not normal, I don't know if it happens at all, but it will happen rather soon.

We have to stop fooling ourselves, Bitcoin, by design, is not fungible. Some already use this, some will do. Sadly, against us.

[PrivacyG]

Thank you, n0nce for the effort.  I truly appreciate it.  So many wrong things with their answer I could not wrap my head around it.

We do not care who you are and what you do with your bitcoins! We don't want to know. Unfortunately, some people do collect data, attach it to bitcoin addresses and make decisions based on that information.

We don’t want to do any chain surveillance ourselves, so we would rather just buy that information from others.

We do not care who you are and what you are doing in life.  Unfortunately, some people care who you are.  We do not murder ourselves, so we would rather just pay a hit man to do the job.

This explanation does not make it in ANY way better than I thought it is before their reply.

The company is getting in trouble and harassed because apparently some of the users of our coordinator are so-called “criminals”, according to the people keeping up these databases.

We are exercising our right as a company to choose not to serve those people who could get us in trouble and the ones whom we wouldn’t want to support for ethical reasons. This includes known thieves like politicians.

First off.  If you are choosing whether to serve someone or not based on harassment, then it is not 'exercising your right'.  A right to serve or not is when you choose one or the other.  When you are harassed to make a decision, that is enforced.

And then I go back to what I said in the other thread.  I am well aware some politicians are thieves.  But here is what I would call a conflict initiated by powerful politicians and figures where as a small politician you can get screwed by just one bribe towards these 'people keeping up these databases'.  If there was a system to decide whether you are a criminal or not by 100% accuracy, it would be one thing.  This system can easily be brought to discrepancy between powerful and less powerful Elites by bribe and other tools of power.  There are also many other ways this can happen and not only between politicians.  Anyway, you get the idea.

If you knew a pedophile/murderer was eating at your restaurant, would you serve him? Especially if serving him gets you in trouble? Basically, are you willing to sacrifice yourself and your restaurant for him?

If my restaurant promised to be the best and only solution for privacy while eating without discrepancy and I wanted to exclude a client then what I would do is either change what my restaurant promises or, if I think this is incorrect and does not fit my principles then I would abolish the idea of owning a restaurant.  We are living in an increasingly authoritarian world where you have to make sacrifices that put you in one boat or the other.  By blacklisting, Wasabi put themselves in the authoritarian boat by leaving ours, turning to the enemy and sacrificing their own beliefs and promises for monetary gain.

Your answers are very conflicting.  Someone please correct me if I am wrong.  But this is what they said.  We do not care who you are but we decided to work with a company instead who does.  We do not like censorship and all that crap but we are exercising our right to choose who to serve or not.  In fact, would you serve a bad guy if you were us?

Pick a side.  If you do not want censorship, why are you censoring?  If you do not like spying on users, why have you collaborated with someone who does it for you?  Because in my world and set of mind, if you are doing what you say you do not like doing then you either blatantly lied all along or you are doing it all just for the monetary gains!  And what frustrates me even more is what you said in the answer for the third question.  'we feel like Wasabi Wallet is the best way to improve privacy within Bitcoin'.  How is it the best way to improve privacy when you said yourself that you had to make changes you do not like to the way Wasabi works?

Hopefully all users, wallets and services won't have to “consult a centralized blacklist before accepting bitcoin”. But it’s their choice if they want to discriminate against a certain coin, user or service. That’s part of the freedom of association if it's their decision. If this would be mandated by authority, it would be bad. But that’s not the case in our blacklisting, like I explained in the first answer.

This definitely does not make things better for me.  You already said you are being harassed to exclude certain UTXO's out of your wallet, you are working with someone who spies on users.

In the answer to the first question, you said this.  'If you knew a pedophile/murderer was eating at your restaurant, would you serve him? Especially if serving him gets you in trouble?'.  Then in the answer to the seventh question you said this.  'we dont care to become martyrs by serving thieves'.  Tell me again why you would NOT blacklist a 'criminal' by 'exercising your right to serve someone' when you are being told they are definitely a criminal.  I repeat.  If you are being harassed to do something, it is NOT exercising your right!

I can not express how frustrated I am after reading just a small part of your answers.  You are actually avoiding the answer by telling us it is fine for now since this is not a mandated blacklist and it is your right to choose whether to have an UTXO go through or not.  But, you choose to not be 'martyrs by serving thieves'.  So you are going to censor everything this great spying company tells you to, just put it like that!

We have not said that we would be buying services from the Chainalysis company. This is, again, projecting/assuming. We are going to buy info from a chain analysis company, but not from Chainalysis. We are not asking them which inputs we can include in a coinjoin, but what they know about these inputs.

Oh, right.  You are not working with the police.  You are working with the authorities, which makes it SO MUCH different, right?

You said you do not care who we are and what we are doing with our Bitcoins.  Then what the f*ck are you doing by asking this chain analysis company what they know about the inputs?  Not caring at its finest?

Without privacy, there’s no fungibility. Only after we fix the first one, can we dream of the latter.

And you found the best solution to fix the lack of privacy.  Blacklisting!  Congratulations, Wasabi.

I am not even going to bother continuing to read the rest of the answers.  They are calling us stupid right in our faces.  F*ck this, I am not having it.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[LoyceV]

We have to stop fooling ourselves, Bitcoin, by design, is not fungible. Some already use this, some will do. Sadly, against us.

Bitcoin is fungible as long as people act like it is. If you treat Bitcoin as if it's not fungible, you risk that the payment you receive today becomes worthless tomorrow when you find out the previous owner had stolen it. Treating Bitcoin as if it's not fungible seems to be the most successful attack on Bitcoin so far.
1BTC=1BTC. The end.

[o_e_l_e_o]

We have to stop fooling ourselves, Bitcoin, by design, is not fungible. Some already use this, some will do. Sadly, against us.

Bitcoin, by design, is fungible. As soon as a transaction has more than one output, it is impossible to say which bitcoin ended up where. It cannot be done. Everyone who claims to be able to do it is guessing, lying, or both. All blockchain analysis companies, all centralized exchanges, and now Wasabi too (which is particularly hilarious considering they base their whole existence on coinjoins). They have made up a system based on guesswork, and have successfully marketed it for their own profit to large parts of this space as some infallible law. It is not, and the only way to get rid of it is for the community to agree to shun companies and entities which support and enforce this made up nonsense.

Your answers are very conflicting.  Someone please correct me if I am wrong.  But this is what they said.  We do not care who you are but we decided to work with a company instead who does.  We do not like censorship and all that crap but we are exercising our right to choose who to serve or not.

This is what I took away from it as well. This crazy doublespeak, deliberately used as they think it absolves them of the consequences of their decisions and the responsibilities of their actions. We don't care what you do with your bitcoin (but lots of other people do and we are going to assist them). We aren't spying on you (we are just paying someone else to do it for us). We aren't against fungibility (we are just partnered with a bunch of people who are).

It's like when Coinbase say "Coinbase don't sell your data"; technically it's true, because it's actually Coinbase's blockchain analysis subsidiary which is selling all your data, not Coinbase themselves, but that hardly makes it any better.

I am fairly sure the Wasabi team know this is all a pack of lies, but will obviously never come out and say "Yup, our wallet is bad for privacy and bad for bitcoin."


I have long fought against any company which treats bitcoin as non-fungible. Almost all centralized exchanges (use a DEX like Bisq instead), some payment processors like BitPay (use BTCPay instead), and so on. But this is the first time I've seen a service market themselves as a privacy solution while also treating bitcoin as non-fungible. It is unforgivable.

[NeuroticFish]

We have to stop fooling ourselves, Bitcoin, by design, is not fungible. Some already use this, some will do. Sadly, against us.

Bitcoin is fungible as long as people act like it is. If you treat Bitcoin as if it's not fungible, you risk that the payment you receive today becomes worthless tomorrow when you find out the previous owner had stolen it. Treating Bitcoin as if it's not fungible seems to be the most successful attack on Bitcoin so far.
1BTC=1BTC. The end.

Imho fungible means that no matter how hard you try, you cannot distinguish one BTC from another BTC.
Somehow I feel that you want to convince me about something. Somehow I feel that you see my post as an attack against Bitcoin. But what I've done was only to state the reality.
I would love to see everybody act like 1BTC=1BTC. But as I said, Bitcoin, by design, allows people make certain decisions. And some companies do that. And I don't see any massive boycott against them (although they'd deserve it).

As soon as a transaction has more than one output, it is impossible to say which bitcoin ended up where.

It's a very interesting point of view, 10 levels better than any explanation I've seen until now.

Still, we both know that before getting into a mixer, the chances are very high to have the full funds from a hack, for example.
And having blacklisting exactly when one tries to mix those funds may be more precise in detecting.. things.
And the others tend to already blacklist mixed funds as a whole (which is utterly stupid), or go by "shades of gray" (I don't know how to say it better) and by the rule "the stream's water can be considered clean if it went over 7 stones" (again, I don't know how to say it better and more concise).


Again, it's not a situation I like. I just state what I've seen/heard of.
Maybe we, as community, should start boycotting the services who don't go by 1BTC=1BTC. Because unless it starts hurting their business, they may do that more and more, to stay on the safe side, just in case.

[LoyceV]

Imho fungible means that no matter how hard you try, you cannot distinguish one BTC from another BTC.

I don't think that definition is correct. Dollar bills are fungible, but you don't have to try very hard to distinguish one from another. They even have serial numbers for that.

Somehow I feel that you want to convince me about something. Somehow I feel that you see my post as an attack against Bitcoin. But what I've done was only to state the reality.

Investopedia gives this definition:

What Is Fungibility?

Fungibility is the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type. Fungible assets simplify the exchange and trade processes, as fungibility implies equal value between the assets.

It continues with some examples:

Fungibility vs. Non-Fungibility

Another example of a fungible asset is money. If Person A lends Person B a $50 bill, it does not matter to Person A if he is repaid with a different $50 bill, as it is mutually substitutable. In the same sense, Person A can be repaid with two $20 bills and one $10 bill and still be satisfied, since the total equals $50.

Conversely, as an example of non-fungibility, if Person A lends Person B his car, it is not acceptable for Person B to return a different car, even if it is the same make and model as the original car lent by Person A. Cars are not fungible with respect to ownership, but the gasoline that powers the cars is fungible. Assets like diamonds, land, or baseball cards are not fungible because each unit has unique qualities that add or subtract value.

By this definition, I'd say Bitcoin is fungible. Nobody on the Lending board expects the same Bitcoin to be returned, just like it would be with dollar bills, gasoline or corn. The fact that you can see a different (on the blockchain) doesn't matter (unlike when someone returns a different car).

I would love to see everybody act like 1BTC=1BTC. But as I said, Bitcoin, by design, allows people make certain decisions. And some companies do that. And I don't see any massive boycott against them (although they'd deserve it).

And I'm advocating to change that There's no need to choose for one Bitcoin to be different than another. I fear that would be the only thing that could end Bitcoin, because people stop trusting money that can be "tainted".

Maybe we, as community, should start boycotting the services who don't go by 1BTC=1BTC. Because unless it starts hurting their business, they may do that more and more, to stay on the safe side, just in case.

Does that mean I succeeded in trying to convince you? Let's do it! To improve my earlier quote:

Bitcoin is only fungible as long as people act like it is.

[DaveF]

Is anyone really surprised at the answers? They did what they did and now are forced to defend their actions.

We can spend hours picking apart what was said but in my view it comes down to "This is what we are doing, if you don't like it le me show you the door [points] there is the door"

There have been and still are other ways of hiding where your inputs came from. There have been and still are other ways of mixing / coinjoining your coins. Wasabi, for the moment is still looking like one of the larger ones. BUT, as more people move away from them and recommend others they will shrink.

It's just me, but when I saw the news about this originally I only gave a shrug since I figured this or something similar would happen sooner or later anyway.
Now, I am just waiting for someone to launch their own larger coordinator OR another way of doing things.

For those people who ONLY relied on them for their service and had no other plan, then now is the time to start thinking about it.

As for going through all the Q&A I only have 2 comments

The 1st is question 4 about institutional investors. How about large investors. It's a bit of semantics / wordplay but if they are just getting funds and have people using their services that are not 'institutions' but rather people with a lot of BTC and or fiat it's a true answer that it's not about institutional investors but rather bitcoiners. Just a bunch of really really rich ones.

The 2nd comment is just about 22 with the 'you should also open all your Lightning channels with coinjoined coins' is complete crap. But that's just my opinion. If you are really running your own lightning node then you probably know better ways that are more technical to hide things.

-Dave

[o_e_l_e_o]

And the others tend to already blacklist mixed funds as a whole (which is utterly stupid), or go by "shades of gray" (I don't know how to say it better) and by the rule "the stream's water can be considered clean if it went over 7 stones" (again, I don't know how to say it better and more concise).

Which is another good point as to why blacklisting is just plain wrong, in addition to the point I made above in which it is all based on guesswork. What happens if I combined a tainted input with a clean input in the same transaction? What about a tainted input with 100 clean inputs? Are all the outputs still tainted? Are they all 1% tainted? What about if a tainted input moves through 5 transactions? What about 100? What about 1,000? Is it still tainted? When does it become clean again? We've been able to trace some stolen coins to Binance. Does that mean the entirety of Binance's hot wallet is tainted? Or does the taint magically disappear once Binance have touched the coins?

Go far enough in to the future, and every bitcoin in active circulation will be tainted in some way or another.

Blacklisting is arbitrary nonsense based on provably false assumptions, and it is an affront to bitcoin.

Maybe we, as community, should start boycotting the services who don't go by 1BTC=1BTC.

I've advocated this for a long time, and I will continue to do so. Wasabi is just the latest to be added to the list.

Is anyone really surprised at the answers? They did what they did and now are forced to defend their actions.

Not at all. As I said above, Wasabi know fine well what they are doing is shitty, and they also know fine well that continuing to try to justify their shitty actions is also shitty. But it makes them money, so (in their words) we "should be grateful" and stop "whining".

[suchmoon]

Not at all. As I said above, Wasabi know fine well what they are doing is shitty, and they also know fine well that continuing to try to justify their shitty actions is also shitty. But it makes them money, so (in their words) we "should be grateful" and stop "whining".

How exactly do they make money? Coordinator fees? How is paying for some shitty service helping them with that?

I don't understand the whole "institutional investors" thing. The idea that Microstrategy would mix coins via Wasabi, or that Wall Street would invest into a wallet that kinda sorta helps with privacy but not really - sounds utterly absurd. It seems they're getting swindled in more than one way, or it's all just a steaming pile of baseless speculation.

[o_e_l_e_o]

How exactly do they make money? Coordinator fees?

Yes. They have claimed in multiple interviews and blog posts, including in the answers above, that they are being pressured or harassed to stop accepting certain inputs. We don't know by whom, when, why, or in what way, because they haven't chosen to answer those questions. They made it clear that the only two possible solutions to this in their view was to either stop running their centralized coordinator and therefore lose out on their revenue stream, or start surveilling their users and censoring their inputs. They chose the latter.

How is paying for some shitty service helping them with that?

By allowing them to continue running their centralized coordinator against the unknown harassment they claim they are facing.

Having said all that, they have also said on more than one occasion that they aren't actually being forced to do this at all, and this is a proactive decision on their part, so it is impossible for us to know for sure:

In a Bitcoin Magazine article, one of the owners of zkSNACKs Ltd., Bálint Harmat said the decision to blacklist was done proactively. While it is correct that there's no legislation that specifically says coinjoin coordinators must blacklist their customers' UTXOs, the challenges encountered operating the business in even the most liberal jurisdictions are numerous and multiplying.

But one other thing is that: 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. Again, the major feedback that I got from institutionals regarding CoinJoin adoption was, I don’t want to mix with criminals—my compliance team is gonna take me apart on that one. Now, I don’t know if there is an actual concern here or if this is just, again, some preemptive speculative compliance, but arguably there is. So we might see this world where ZKSnacks specifically has a bunch of liquidity from institutionals that are just not comfortable to CoinJoin with another coordinator which has the Anyone can join policy, including criminals. And so there’s really a lot of nuance here. So yes, this alienates a lot of users—me being one of them—but also this will encourage a lot of new users to come in. And that is why it was a preemptive step from ZKSnacks, because the question was—I mean, we’re already really big, but we want to get even bigger—how do we not just attract more liquidity, but how do we also ensure that our legal set up will survive in the long run and we’re just not completely overwhelmed with court cases and things like this.

The second quote is also relevant to your second point, where they say they primarily want to cater to financial institutions.

[ABCbits]

Answer to question 9 and 21 clearly show Wasabi 2 isn't ready for release.

--snip--

Users are able to choose which coordinator they want to communicate with but unfortunately there are not many options, as running one has its risks and not many people are willing to do it.

Most users aren't even aware they can choose different coordinator, unless they're advance user who open Wasabi wallet configuration file.

Answer: Chainalysis! = chain analysis. Let’s say we have 200 inputs wanting to register for a coinjoin. We take those and 200 other random bech32 UTXO’s that we send to their API. We get back a response where they let us know if any of these UTXOs match any of the categories and criterias zkSNACKs has set. Those addresses that we accept will proceed to the input registration, those that are blacklisted will get a notification that this UTXO is blacklisted. As a reminder, Wasabi coinjoin is built in a way that the user never loses control of their coins. The coordinator is never custodying users’ money, therefore it can not seize them etc. The querying process doesn’t affect users' privacy.

1. Adding 200 other random Bech32 UTXO is pointless when they can just see Wasabi CoinJoin transaction on blockchain later.
2. If certain UTXO doesn't meet zkSNACKs criteria, that means owner of the API know owner of that UTXO attempt to use CoinJoin at specific date/time.
3. We need to trust about how the blacklist works.

[suchmoon]

The second quote is also relevant to your second point, where they say they primarily want to cater to financial institutions.

That's what I was referring to as "baseless speculation". Is there any plausible explanation why "financial institutions" would want to mix their coins at all? Even with the best chain analysis there is a massive reputational risk for them to get tangled up with some "unclean" coins or just generally getting blamed for helping launder bitcoins, and I don't think coordinator fees (assuming the talk about providing liquidity means they'd get a share of those fees) are sufficiently lucrative to outweigh that.

[NeuroticFish]

And the others tend to already blacklist mixed funds as a whole (which is utterly stupid), or go by "shades of gray" (I don't know how to say it better) and by the rule "the stream's water can be considered clean if it went over 7 stones" (again, I don't know how to say it better and more concise).

Which is another good point as to why blacklisting is just plain wrong, in addition to the point I made above in which it is all based on guesswork. What happens if I combined a tainted input with a clean input in the same transaction? What about a tainted input with 100 clean inputs? Are all the outputs still tainted? Are they all 1% tainted? What about if a tainted input moves through 5 transactions? What about 100? What about 1,000? Is it still tainted? When does it become clean again? We've been able to trace some stolen coins to Binance. Does that mean the entirety of Binance's hot wallet is tainted? Or does the taint magically disappear once Binance have touched the coins?

Go far enough in to the future, and every bitcoin in active circulation will be tainted in some way or another.

I completely agree to this.

Blacklisting is arbitrary nonsense based on provably false assumptions, and it is an affront to bitcoin.

It's indeed arbitrary. Whether it's nonsense or how bad those assumptions can be debatable - not between you and me, but between us and them.

Maybe we, as community, should start boycotting the services who don't go by 1BTC=1BTC.

I've advocated this for a long time, and I will continue to do so. Wasabi is just the latest to be added to the list.

I guess that you have to shout louder about this. The average bitcoin user (I won't call it bitcoiner just as easy) doesn't know about this and probably doesn't care much either (you know the "I have nothing to hide" mantra) until something happens to them, obviously.

How exactly do they make money? Coordinator fees?

This answers it, I hope it's not old. (Is it only me who find it odd that they are boasting they're sponsoring, but they actually charge for their service?).

The company sponsors the development of Wasabi Wallet and makes its income by taking a fee (0.003% * anonymity set) from each CoinJoin transaction. The anonymity set is essentially the size of the group you are coinjoining in. 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.

Does that mean I succeeded in trying to convince you?

As I said, you must have been misunderstanding something. I was stating that some companies do, not what I do. (It could be seen as sort of devil's advocate to say so). For me any satoshi is identical to any other satoshi. I've never avoided mixers, I've never cared about the source of this or that UTXO and I don't see any good reason I'd change that.
So "I'm convinced" long before this talk. 

[o_e_l_e_o]

and I don't think coordinator fees (assuming the talk about providing liquidity means they'd get a share of those fees) are sufficiently lucrative to outweigh that.

I have no idea, but Wasabi have obviously reached the conclusion that the profit they will make from any potential institutional money is enough to justify censoring the average user. One more relevant quote:

Without the zkSNACKs company, it would be more difficult, if not impossible, to continue funding the developers working on Wasabi 2.0. So after researching the options and a lot of thinking and debating, zkSNACKs Ltd, the company sponsoring the development of Wasabi Wallet, announced that the default coinjoin coordinator will start blacklisting certain unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs.)

[dkbit98]

...

Good questions, but we got the same old expected answers from Wasabi team members, and most important things sadly remained unanswered.
I understand that Wasabi and zkSNACKs coordinator are looking on all this as a business and maybe they didn't have other choice but to operate like this with blacklisting, but they should come up and say that honestly.
They said they are not using Chainalysis but I never saw what other company they plan to use for this, I don't understand why would they hide something like this.
Oh and calling Samourai wallet Scamourai is childish and totally immature, so they can't expect us to take them seriously with anything they say.

I tested new Wasabi 2.0 wallet few days ago in THIS topic, and I have to say that my experience was not very good.
There is no coin control option in new version, my Trezor hardware wallet was not working with Wasabi or it is not supported, and I couldn't even perform coinjoin after two full days of running Wasabi wallet.
I wanted to give Wasabi a fair chance but I think this new version is step back in every way, and my hope is that some new better coordinator will show up in future.

[DireWolfM14]

Introducing HorseRadish, the CoinJoin/JoinMarket privacy wallet that doesn't cockblock any UTXOs...

Really, what's wrong with offering two or more products that provide different services?  Lincoln, Mercury, Ford, Mazda...  They all compete against each other, but they're all owned by the same entity.  How difficult would it be to have two separate products/services that offer different types of obfuscation?

[suchmoon]

Introducing HorseRadish, the CoinJoin/JoinMarket privacy wallet that doesn't cockblock any UTXOs...

Really, what's wrong with offering two or more products that provide different services?  Lincoln, Mercury, Ford, Mazda...  They all compete against each other, but they're all owned by the same entity.  How difficult would it be to have two separate products/services that offer different types of obfuscation?

It looks like wasabists don't think users would care (and they're probably right) so it's not worth splitting scarce liquidity into multiple services. And it doesn't look like there are any competitors lining up to ridicule them for chain analysis and to take their non-caring users.

BTW Mercury is dead and Mazda is not owned by Ford anymore

[DireWolfM14]

It looks like wasabists don't think users would care (and they're probably right) so it's not worth splitting scarce liquidity into multiple services. And it doesn't look like there are any competitors lining up to ridicule them for chain analysis and to take their non-caring users.

It might still be too early to count out any competition, but Wasabi's dwindling download numbers suggest that customers do care.

BTW Mercury is dead and Mazda is not owned by Ford anymore

Say What?  Next your going to tell me that Fiat owns Jeep!?!?!  

[DaveF]

Thinking about it a bit more. The *only* reason I could see a "financial institution" caring about using a service like this is to hide the amount of BTC their clients have, If everything is in one big mix then when they send others can't really know what else they have. Their keys stay with the institution but when sending it's all muddled.

Other then that I go back to the individuals with a lot of BTC

Or, something happened that they don't want to or just can't talk about. So they are doing this.

But lets face it, even if we hate the outcome it is fun to speculate.

-Dave

[suchmoon]

It might still be too early to count out any competition, but Wasabi's dwindling download numbers suggest that customers do care.

Speaking of, is it even available in e.g. Play Store? I can't find it.

I'd like to believe that users care but I don't see any discussion about it in their subreddit.

Say What?  Next your going to tell me that Fiat owns Jeep!?!?!  

Not anymore LOL

[witcher_sense]

Despite the fact that Wasabi 2.0 made CoinJoins more affordable for the average user (one no longer needs 0.1 btc to participate) , the volume of mixed bitcoins continues dropping steadily.


Source: https://www.bitcoinkpis.com/privacy

And the others tend to already blacklist mixed funds as a whole (which is utterly stupid), or go by "shades of gray" (I don't know how to say it better) and by the rule "the stream's water can be considered clean if it went over 7 stones" (again, I don't know how to say it better and more concise).

Which is another good point as to why blacklisting is just plain wrong, in addition to the point I made above in which it is all based on guesswork. What happens if I combined a tainted input with a clean input in the same transaction? What about a tainted input with 100 clean inputs? Are all the outputs still tainted? Are they all 1% tainted? What about if a tainted input moves through 5 transactions? What about 100? What about 1,000? Is it still tainted? When does it become clean again? We've been able to trace some stolen coins to Binance. Does that mean the entirety of Binance's hot wallet is tainted? Or does the taint magically disappear once Binance have touched the coins?

Go far enough in to the future, and every bitcoin in active circulation will be tainted in some way or another.

Curiously, I used pretty similar reasoning as you when tried to explain why it is utterly stupid and absurd to deem bitcoin transactions or particular UTXOs dirty, tainted, or non-fungible.

Another shower thought about tainted bitcoins and why it is pointless to call certain bitcoins dirty, illegal and for criminals. Imagine a transaction coming from twitter hackers, for instance. All the UTXOs involved in given transaction are now considered illicit. All bitcoins are now dirty. But what about a fee hackers need to pay in order to have their transaction mined?

Basically, imaginary twitter hackers used dirty bitcoins to incentivize miners, they merely bribed them. Fees is a part of coinbase transaction  (coinbase transaction is a transaction with which miners are paying rewards to themselves, it consists of block subsidy (new bitcoins) + transactions fees (sum of all commisions from all included transactions).

What is really interesting about a coinbase transaction is the fact it does not consume any existing UTXOs. What it means is that surveillance company like Chainalysis cannot figure out what part of fees included in coinbase transaction is still dirty. Now they have to call all bitcoins from given coinbase transaction illicit. Even "virgin bitcoin" can now be called illicit because some of the transactions included in a block were involved in criminal activity.

Mining can now be considered a means to launder money, since miners take dirty bitcoins and return clean ones via coinbase transactions. Every block is now tainted, demonized and is potentially serving criminals. Bitcoin is a tool for criminals. If your transaction is in the same block as imaginary twitter hackers' one, you are in trouble, you are criminal.

But I came to a different conclusion, namely, that eventually, given bitcoin's active circulation, all coins once again become "pristine" since they are continuously being "laundered" by miners via transaction fees. I think this is part of the reason why mining in general and PoW, in particular, are being targeted by the ESG mafia - this is essentially a legal and very efficient way to get rid of "dirty" bitcoins and thus destroy completely stupid narratives of taintness and non-fungibility of money.


However, if miners stop acting, as LoyceV put it, "as if bitcoin is fungible" (e.g. reject transactions from OFAC list or refuse to build block-candidates on top of blocks containing transactions from such addresses), we are in trouble.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Despite the fact that Wasabi 2.0 made CoinJoins more affordable for the average user (one no longer needs 0.1 btc to participate) , the volume of mixed bitcoins continues dropping steadily.

Note that the same site also reports a decrease in volume for Samourai and JoinMarket for the last week, though. Not sure if it's a problem with their data or due to the market conditions, but I don't think we can take this as evidence of falling Wasabi volume.

But I came to a different conclusion, namely, that eventually, given bitcoin's active circulation, all coins once again become "pristine" since they are continuously being "laundered" by miners via transaction fees.

Which again just highlights how stupid the whole thing is. If we take tainted coins and turn them in to a fee, then all services agree those coins are now clean since they can no longer be accurately tracked due to being consolidated with other coins. But for some reason, the exact same logic does not apply to coinjoins? Because reasons?

[tainted_love]

What is chain analysis?  I searched multiple engines and two common results are companies selling a service. One of the companies claims to be building trust in blockchains lolz. The blockchain is already trusted that's the point.  By what method to these companies determine which coins are tainted? Are their methods audited for accuracy?  Why are they trusted?  Does Wasabi Wallet do their own chain analysis?  Sorry for all the questions.

[witcher_sense]

What is chain analysis?

It is when individuals or companies take advantage of the fact that blockchain is fully transparent, trying to figure out and subjectively interpret what is occurring inside it.

I searched multiple engines and two common results are companies selling a service.

Yeah, some companies make money selling their subjective interpretation of what's happening to other companies, exchanges, law enforcement agencies, governments, dictators, and also surveillance-oriented wallets like Wasabi Wallet.

One of the companies claims to be building trust in blockchains lolz. The blockchain is already trusted that's the point. 

This one is a ridiculous claim that they employ to siphon money off from people who naively believe surveillance companies provide valuable services and actually know what's going on.

By what method to these companies determine which coins are tainted?

The point is they do not "determine", they gave themselves the power to unilaterally decide which coins are to be deemed clean and which aren't.

Are their methods audited for accuracy? 

How would you audit subjective interpretations?

Does Wasabi Wallet do their own chain analysis? 

Of course, they do, how else can they determine that some inputs came from Wasabi 1.0 or that particular UTXO has a particular anonymity set if not by looking at analyzing blockchain data?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Are their methods audited for accuracy?

Just to add to witcher_sense's good answer above: The methods aren't audited because their methods aren't even known. Most of these services will just take an address one of their paying customers feed them, and then return some breakdown of the percentage of coins from various places, such as centralized exchanges, DEXs, casinos, scams, etc., with absolutely no information about how they reached that conclusion, and then their customers will treat that as gospel. There's nothing stopping anyone from spinning up their own blockchain analysis service and charging extortionate rates to tell other people where you think coins have come from based on complete guesswork. And as we regularly see, they often get things wildly wrong.

There was a post I made a few months ago about how one such service shows that large amounts of coins in the hot wallet of large centralized exchanges are "tainted": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5395035.msg59905002#msg59905002

[LoyceV]

There's nothing stopping anyone from spinning up their own blockchain analysis service and charging extortionate rates to tell other people where you think coins have come from based on complete guesswork.

I can do that for free Here's a list of all taint free Bitcoin addresses! I can evey share how I came to this conclusion. It's quite simple: 1BTC=1BTC

[PrivacyG]

By what method to these companies determine which coins are tainted? Are their methods audited for accuracy?  Why are they trusted?  Does Wasabi Wallet do their own chain analysis?

Mind boggling.  Even if local authorities did the investigation instead of whoever Wasabi is working with, how many times has the wrong person been called a criminal and thrown in jail for doing nothing wrong?  On the other hand, how many of the real criminals got a pass and never been put in jail just because they were wealthy and powerful, just because they bribed the right party?

Why would Blockchain Analysis be ANY different if this is happening at the highest levels with authorities, politicians and everyone else involved?

Look, maybe if there was a way to stop all crimes with 100% accuracy I would support it.  Hell, put it straight on top of Bitcoin's blockchain if that is the case.  But if we are talking about freedom and censorship free, there is no way we can start censoring Bitcoin users and transactions based on guessing and investigations with who the heck knows how much accuracy and still call it censorship free because that is so contradictory and then Bitcoin becomes useless really.

If I get to be treated as a criminal and wrongfully censored for my actions then why the hell would I even use Bitcoin at all when I have banks that under some conditions are faster and even cheaper than Bitcoin is.  They can censor me, they can question me.  I sure do know they can.  And at least I then know who I am talking to and what I put myself into rather than finding myself in a situation where I can not move money around due to a stranger telling another stranger that I am not a good guy.

After all, Bitcoin is here to set us free from the heavy chains of our current monetary system.  We are a community of people who supposedly and theoretically want just that, if we exclude the speculative investors.  I do not mind Bitcoin sitting at $20,000 for the next 20 years.  I just want it to offer me the same freedom it did so far.

But do not try making me accept that censorship should be part of a censorship free system because that immediately shows me what your intentions are and never in this life will I agree censorship is fair or works against crime.  Because at about any given time in history we know that a little censorship always led to more censorship and then ultimately led to some of the worst rules, regimes and choices that were definitely not for the people but against it.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[Pmalek]

After all, Bitcoin is here to set us free from the heavy chains of our current monetary system.

But that's exactly what you are not supposed to be in their eyes. That's why there is so much focus on destroying what Bitcoin is and it has nothing to do with stopping criminals, pedophiles, and whatnot. It's about stopping all of us using and trusting something out of their reach. It's the same as with the POW mining objectors. It's not about having people move to clean energy sources or incentivizing them to do so, it's about attacking a core feature of Bitcoin in an attempt to give it a hard hit that would be difficult to recover from.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I can do that for free Here's a list of all taint free Bitcoin addresses! I can evey share how I came to this conclusion. It's quite simple: 1BTC=1BTC

Don't do it for free, though! You can extort the clueless charge $0.50 - $1 for every single address someone looks up! That's what AMLBot charges for their provably incorrect guesswork, after all.

Why would Blockchain Analysis be ANY different if this is happening at the highest levels with authorities, politicians and everyone else involved?

Here's the thing, though: Wasabi don't care. They are not doing this out of some misguided attempt to stop criminals or anything like that. They are doing it simply because they want to protect their income at the expense of their users.

That's why there is so much focus on destroying what Bitcoin is and it has nothing to do with stopping criminals, pedophiles, and whatnot.

Absolutely this. Just like when they push mass surveillance under the guide of "stop the terrorists" or "think of children", despite there being absolutely no evidence that mass surveillance actually prevents any crimes whatsoever. This isn't about preventing crime; this is about control.

[NotATether]

Regarding the murderer/pedo analogy:

If I had a restaurant it is not my duty to not service them because the restaurant as a company is not responsible for apprehending these people, that's the police's responsibility!

Let's put this in slightly less extreme terms:

If there is a law in some country forbidding LGBT+ activity (or maybe black people if this was still 1950), and one of them comes to my restaurant, it is not my obligation to deny them service because the restaurant is not the law enforcement. The restaurant is responsible only for providing their customers with food & drink, and nothing else.

So now that we have gotten that out of the way, let us get to the crux of the issue.


The entire debacle of zkSNACKs blacklisting certain UTXO inputs from their co-ordinater is apparently due to pressue put on them (by who, specifically?) to stop serving what they call "suspect criminals".

This particular term, these two words, are so loaded that it is almost impossible to understand exactly who is being blocked, which is imparative if somebody wanted to provide some real security.

- It could refer to the US government's No-Fly list.
- It could refer to the CIA's own "criminal and suspect criminal" list.
- It could also refer to some hastily drawn up notes in some governor or chain analysis chairman's office which violently hate some partcular group of people that they want to classify them as criminals [example: Texas state government vs. women who want abortion => they are magically criminals].

The word "criminal" is thrown about by everyone from protestors to high cabinet officials to news reporters & guest commentators to your 70-year-old grandpa, even, who all have different notions about who represent criminals.

That's why you see such strange things as people welcoming the Taliban to afghanistan, or happily welcoming suppressions to non-binaries/vaccines/journalists/bitcoin. Because their definition of criminals is wildly different from our own. In some cases, the contrast between them is even a color-inversion.

So that is why that you should not trust people's definitions of the word "criminal" apart from an official government statement (and intelligence agencies who are too cowardly to confirm official statements do not count [this bold part was supposed to be in the original post, but the electricity went out for hours before I could finish this sentence and I forgot to include it afterwards. Fuck.]).

The community is still not very happy that you have created a UTXO blacklist, even if it came from institutional pressure and its not implemented yet. You should not be buckling down to such pressure and bending to people's own definition of "criminals". We also understand that you are not the perpretrator of such change - it came from your sponsor.

But since you have already decided which path to take, you need to follow it straightly, so that Wasabi can stay in one piece when it reaches the other side. You are at the point of no return, and there is no going back.

edit: spelling snafu

[BlackHatCoiner]

I've stopped trusting Wasabi developers since the blacklisting update, but thanks to this letter, I can confirm how clown they are. I haven't seen such childish and undignified responses for a while, especially that flawed analogy with the restaurant.

Dude, the restaurant's job is to serve you food. Not to protect your privacy. Do I need to remind you, you have a "PRIVACY BY DEFAULT" sign up there? Your default coordinator is said to preserve privacy at all times, remember? Cut the crap.

We're talking about zero coding ethos.

[n0nce]

There's nothing stopping anyone from spinning up their own blockchain analysis service and charging extortionate rates to tell other people where you think coins have come from based on complete guesswork. And as we regularly see, they often get things wildly wrong.

This just gave me the idea to make a website where you put in a transaction ID and it gives you a 'taint score' (just like those other blockchain analysis services), but this score is simply always 100%, with a nice green background and informative text saying 'This UTXO is wonderfully clean; it is yours if you have the private key to spend it and you can send it anywhere you like.'..

Then whenever someone is accused of having dirty coins, they can pull up a screenshot of this site and it will be 'word against word'.

Edit: I should read all replies first...

There's nothing stopping anyone from spinning up their own blockchain analysis service and charging extortionate rates to tell other people where you think coins have come from based on complete guesswork.

I can do that for free Here's a list of all taint free Bitcoin addresses! I can evey share how I came to this conclusion. It's quite simple: 1BTC=1BTC

[NotATether]

This just gave me the idea to make a website where you put in a transaction ID and it gives you a 'taint score' (just like those other blockchain analysis services), but this score is simply always 100%, with a nice green background and informative text saying 'This UTXO is wonderfully clean; it is yours if you have the private key to spend it and you can send it anywhere you like.'..

Then whenever someone is accused of having dirty coins, they can pull up a screenshot of this site and it will be 'word against word'.

Heh, I think I can spin up a JS template on a subdomain of mine for that , but my dev schedule is as notoriously congested as a traffic jam.

[LoyceV]

This just gave me the idea to make a website where you put in a transaction ID and it gives you a 'taint score' (just like those other blockchain analysis services), but this score is simply always 100%, with a nice green background and informative text saying 'This UTXO is wonderfully clean; it is yours if you have the private key to spend it and you can send it anywhere you like.'..

That's not enough for taint believers, you should add the parent addresses to convince people they're also 100% clean Even better if you can add some history: "parts of these funds were mined in the years 2012, 2014 and 2018". All 100% clean, of course

[o_e_l_e_o]

So that is why that you should not trust people's definitions of the word "criminal" apart from an official government statement

I wouldn't trust that either. There are governments in the world who enforce capital punishment for LGBT individuals, for speaking out against the government, or for drinking alcohol. And anyone thinking "Well, that would never happen in the West" - there are various US states which now criminalize woman seeking life-saving healthcare and providers for providing that healthcare. Governments are not the arbiters of morality or truth, and Wasabi (and their blockchain analysis buddies) certainly aren't either.

Then whenever someone is accused of having dirty coins, they can pull up a screenshot of this site and it will be 'word against word'.

This is not a bad idea, especially when we consider that many entities which buy in to taint analysis do not have the slightest clue as to how taint analysis actually works or how the whole thing is (bad) guesswork.

Even better if you can add some history: "parts of these funds were mined in the years 2012, 2014 and 2018". All 100% clean, of course

Either that or go the other way to highlight the stupidity of the whole thing. "Approximately 2% of the coins in this output were once used in a casino, and have transacted through 592 addresses in over 10 years since then!"

[LoyceV]

Either that or go the other way to highlight the stupidity of the whole thing. "Approximately 2% of the coins in this output were once used in a casino, and have transacted through 592 addresses in over 10 year since then!"

2%? Why not add it all up? 230% of the coins have been used in a casino, 412% has been mixed, 100% came from miners and 0.0002% was touched by LoyceV

[BlackHatCoiner]

Top-level domain name recommendations:

• taintobjective.ly
• tainted-defac.to
• coinri.sk

taintanalys.is is available for registration. 

[DireWolfM14]

Mind boggling.

It is indeed mind boggling.  There's absolutely no excuse for any crypto exchange to trust third-party chain analysis organizations.  If these exchanges love bitcoin and crypto in general, they have inherent motivation to limit the power of chain analysis organizations.  Their financial future is dependent on keeping bitcoin fungible.  

Chain analysis isn't here to help bitcoin, it's rather obvious the intent is the opposite.  Having governments and regulatory bodies oversee chain analysis isn't the solution either.  Governments are threatened by bitcoin; their power is largely determined by how well they can control the flow of wealth within their jurisdictions.  The less control they have over money, the less power they can enforce.  How do we know that it isn't the FBI, CIA, NSA, or the SEC behind these taint proclamations?  We do know that they stand to benefit from hurting the fungibility of bitcoin.

Speaking specifically about the US government, many of these organizations are abusing their power by implementing rules and regulations that, constitutionally speaking, are an over-reach.  Many of these regulations, if they are to be legally enforced would need to codified by Congress, not left to unelected officials to implement.  But, members of congress have to answer for their proposals and congressional votes.  They have constituents that can vote them out of office if they're unresponsive to their constituents' needs.  Delegating the dirty work to unelected officials is a sneaky tactic, and they've used this tactic to avoid accountability for a number of unpopular regulations.

After all, Bitcoin is here to set us free from the heavy chains of our current monetary system.  We are a community of people who supposedly and theoretically want just that, if we exclude the speculative investors.  I do not mind Bitcoin sitting at $20,000 for the next 20 years.  I just want it to offer me the same freedom it did so far.

That's exactly the threat to their authority they're trying to avoid.  Throughout history authoritarians have struggled to ensure their authority isn't under threat.  Bitcoin is causing them to shake in their boots.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If these exchanges love bitcoin and crypto in general, they have inherent motivation to limit the power of chain analysis organizations.

Most exchanges only love profits, and don't care about bitcoin at all. Take Coinbase as an example. Let's even leave out their pro-surveillance, anti-privacy stance and the fact that the sell all their users' data to a variety of government agencies, and look solely at the technical side of things. They supported BIP101, Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Unlimited, Segwit2x. Basically every hard fork which would make bitcoin less decentralized and give them more control over it, they supported. They took years to implement transaction batching and spammed the network with hundreds of thousands unnecessary transactions. Then, despite being front and center supporting all the hard fork proposals which would give them more power, they took years to support segwit. Most exchanges are no different. They will promote and support forks and legislation which weaken bitcoin, but give them more control. They will list and shill pump and dumps and scams which give bitcoin a bad reputation by association, but make them profits. And they will censor transactions, contrary to the whole point of bitcoin in the first place, if it means they can keep lining their pockets.

Their financial future is dependent on keeping bitcoin fungible.

Maybe. Or maybe on luring the never ending stream of newbies to lose all their money on altcoins ICOs DeFi NFTs whatever shit comes along next.

[n0nce]

Then whenever someone is accused of having dirty coins, they can pull up a screenshot of this site and it will be 'word against word'.

This is not a bad idea, especially when we consider that many entities which buy in to taint analysis do not have the slightest clue as to how taint analysis actually works or how the whole thing is (bad) guesswork.

Even better if you can add some history: "parts of these funds were mined in the years 2012, 2014 and 2018". All 100% clean, of course

Either that or go the other way to highlight the stupidity of the whole thing. "Approximately 2% of the coins in this output were once used in a casino, and have transacted through 592 addresses in over 10 years since then!"

I'm all for adding more information, as long as it's legit like '100% comes from miners' and such; funny, informative, making the page a bit fuller and more similar to previous 'taint analysis sites', and - most importantly - true. This is what should set this site apart from all the previous ones. 100% undebateable truth and facts, opposed to empty speculations and accusations.

Top-level domain name recommendations:

• taintobjective.ly
• tainted-defac.to
• coinri.sk

taintanalys.is is available for registration. 

All sound pretty good to me! Are the previous three available, too?

Honestly, what started as a joke might actually be a very good idea to implement.. Even if just to stand against all that other bullshit that's floating around.
Unfortunately, I'm not a big web developer, but I could try my luck throwing something together and putting it on GitHub for someone to host, if nobody else has time for this.

Edit: I'm OT'ing on my own topic *sigh* - if someone's honestly interested in pursuing this idea, let's create a thread and discuss our options!

[LoyceV]

I'm all for adding more information, as long as it's legit like '100% comes from miners' and such; funny, informative, making the page a bit fuller and more similar to previous 'taint analysis sites', and - most importantly - true.

Why stop at 100%? I used blockdata to check all cumulative transaction fees (up until block 744341). It turns out 256,732.07240401 Bitcoin was paid in fees! With slightly over 19 million Bitcoins mined, that means 101.34% of all Bitcoins currenly in existence came from a miner
Even better if you trace back an exact percentage for each individual input

[NotATether]

Most exchanges only love profits, and don't care about bitcoin at all. Take Coinbase as an example. Let's even leave out their pro-surveillance, anti-privacy stance and the fact that the sell all their users' data to a variety of government agencies, and look solely at the technical side of things. They supported BIP101, Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Unlimited, Segwit2x. Basically every hard fork which would make bitcoin less decentralized and give them more control over it, they supported. They took years to implement transaction batching and spammed the network with hundreds of thousands unnecessary transactions. Then, despite being front and center supporting all the hard fork proposals which would give them more power, they took years to support segwit. Most exchanges are no different. They will promote and support forks and legislation which weaken bitcoin, but give them more control. They will list and shill pump and dumps and scams which give bitcoin a bad reputation by association, but make them profits. And they will censor transactions, contrary to the whole point of bitcoin in the first place, if it means they can keep lining their pockets.

It makes you wonder whether making a new exchange will make things any better or if the new owners will simply become as detrimental to bitcoin's development as the other exchanges.

I don't even see this problem as one about agencies pressuring exchanges anymore, it's more like exchanges doing everything they can to keep their profits high, at the expense of decentralization (even if this includes lending to risky enterprises ang going bust like Voyager and 3AC).

I don't see exchanges as necessary for the support of a cryptocurrency' economy, except as foreign exchange ATMs or as "money transmitters" (as the government calls them). Exchanges cannot fix the price of BTC, because that will either ruin the exchange if they fix it low, or their users will dry up if they fix it too high. They are not miners (i.e. "the decentralized central bank"), so cannot signal or avoid signalling for any activations. So their opposition is mere drum-beating at best.

They also cannot cripple the cryptocurrencies by voluntarilly banning them outright, or their profits will similarly dry up.

So the status of exchanges is that of the unwilling "enabler" of the crypto economy, they cannot overtly withdraw their support so they try to manifest their dislike for it with other means.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Honestly, what started as a joke might actually be a very good idea to implement.. Even if just to stand against all that other bullshit that's floating around.

If anyone does run with this idea, choose a name which does not have "taint" in it please. No point lending credence to their made up nonsense by naming your website after it.

It makes you wonder whether making a new exchange will make things any better or if the new owners will simply become as detrimental to bitcoin's development as the other exchanges.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. There are so many projects in this space which started out with good ideas and fantastical claims, and have ended up scamming or selling out everything they supposedly stood for. Wasabi is a prime example, given this thread. Or look at all the collapsing platforms like Celsius and Voyager, which made claims of "Unbank yourself" and "Take control of your money", and then leveraged your money even more riskily than banks do. Look at Brave, the so called "privacy browser" that now lets Binance inject code in to your system and whitelists Facebook and Twitter trackers. Look at "DEXs" like LocalBitcoins which sold out and now collect KYC. Or as per my previous comment, all the exchanges which were built on bitcoin and made all their profits from bitcoin, and then actively attack it and everything it stands for.

And to answer your question - we already have good alternatives such as Bisq. The problem is getting enough people to leave all the anti-bitcoin examples I gave above and use these other pro-bitcoin platforms instead.

[NotATether]

It makes you wonder whether making a new exchange will make things any better or if the new owners will simply become as detrimental to bitcoin's development as the other exchanges.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. There are so many projects in this space which started out with good ideas and fantastical claims, and have ended up scamming or selling out everything they supposedly stood for. Wasabi is a prime example, given this thread. Or look at all the collapsing platforms like Celsius and Voyager, which made claims of "Unbank yourself" and "Take control of your money", and then leveraged your money even more riskily than banks do. Look at Brave, the so called "privacy browser" that now lets Binance inject code in to your system and whitelists Facebook and Twitter trackers. Look at "DEXs" like LocalBitcoins which sold out and now collect KYC. Or as per my previous comment, all the exchanges which were built on bitcoin and made all their profits from bitcoin, and then actively attack it and everything it stands for.

And to answer your question - we already have good alternatives such as Bisq. The problem is getting enough people to leave all the anti-bitcoin examples I gave above and use these other pro-bitcoin platforms instead.

"It's an accomplishment if you set out on a project, a grand achievement if you can finish it, and a downright superhuman feat if you can keep it in working order for several years." - Me, reading your reply

Words are my own. I hope someone sets them in stone or brass one day.

[LoyceV]

If anyone does run with this idea, choose a name which does not have "taint" in it please.

Take the opposite: tniat.com. It's available

[witcher_sense]

On the other hand, we probably shouldn't be focusing on non-fungibility and tainted coins because these erroneous and misleading concepts anyway lose their relevance once we completely get rid of the need to use fiat on- and off-ramps. Instead, we should be promoting the advantages of the bitcoin circular economy, which is an economy where all prices are being measured in bitcoin terms, where everyone is transacting and earning exclusively in bitcoin, where all exchanges are voluntary and mutually beneficial, and where government intervention is ineffective, if even possible. In other words, instead of promoting the "store of value" function of money, which makes people think about their future spending and whether their coins are clean enough to spend in the future, we should be promoting the "medium of exchange" feature, because pure P2P interactions without involving nefarious intermediaries result in a healthy economy and also perfectly aligns with core principles of bitcoin. 

[dkbit98]

This just gave me the idea to make a website where you put in a transaction ID and it gives you a 'taint score' (just like those other blockchain analysis services), but this score is simply always 100%, with a nice green background and informative text saying 'This UTXO is wonderfully clean; it is yours if you have the private key to spend it and you can send it anywhere you like.'..

This is actually not a bad idea, but keep in mind that some psycho or regulators could sue or shut down your website you for not providing exact information like it is shown in other analytics services.
You should be fine as long as you add information in footer or in about section that website is created for fun purposes, and that you are not responsible for any coins being frozen on exchanges.

Let's get back on Wasabi wallet topic.
They answered best they could and we can't expect them to change course now when they decided the route they are going.
We can still support the idea of alternative coordinator or some Wasabi fork that would work without any censorship, but someone needs to take risk with this.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Instead, we should be promoting the advantages of the bitcoin circular economy

I don't disagree, and I regularly speak about the benefits of avoiding centralized exchanges and other centralized platforms, of spending bitcoin directly, of avoiding government regulations, of avoiding services which buy in to this taint nonsense, and so on, but reaching the utopia you describe will take decades, if we ever get there at all. Fighting against taint analysis is something that needs to be done now. And if we continue to let faceless organizations dictate how we are allowed to use our bitcoin, then we will never reach that utopia.

We can still support the idea of alternative coordinator or some Wasabi fork that would work without any censorship, but someone needs to take risk with this.

No point. Why take a flawed concept and try to mitigate the flaws, when you have non-flawed projects like JoinMarket you can use today.

[DireWolfM14]

Honestly, what started as a joke might actually be a very good idea to implement.. Even if just to stand against all that other bullshit that's floating around.

If anyone does run with this idea, choose a name which does not have "taint" in it please. No point lending credence to their made up nonsense by naming your website after it.

I agree that the word taint shouldn't be a part of it.  Language matters, and the language applied by detractors shouldn't be adopted by promotors.  I would rather see URLs like "chainhistory.com" or "chainillumination.org," something that doesn't have any derogatory meaning and makes no promises other than providing education and facts.

I'm not a developer of any kind, but if I can help in a project of this type please count me in.  If all I can do is contribute to a fund to hire a developer, I'm willing.

And to answer your question - we already have good alternatives such as Bisq. The problem is getting enough people to leave all the anti-bitcoin examples I gave above and use these other pro-bitcoin platforms instead.

Bisq is great for those of us who are bitcoin maximalists, but to be honest I think they would need a lot of work to make altcoins more easily traded.  The most recent release does a great job implanting XMR sub addresses, but more stuff like that is likely to help.  I don't like the fact that you have to include shitcoins to attract new customers, but that's the world in which we live.

Let's get back on Wasabi wallet topic.
They answered best they could and we can't expect them to change course now when they decided the route they are going.
We can still support the idea of alternative coordinator or some Wasabi fork that would work without any censorship, but someone needs to take risk with this.

There are other options out there, Sparrow wallet has implemented a coinjoin coordinator called Whirlpool.  Samurai Wallet also has coinjoin implementation, but I don't remember the coordinator.  I tend to agree with o_e_l_e_o, there are better alternatives.

[n0nce]

I'm all for adding more information, as long as it's legit like '100% comes from miners' and such; funny, informative, making the page a bit fuller and more similar to previous 'taint analysis sites', and - most importantly - true.

Why stop at 100%? I used blockdata to check all cumulative transaction fees (up until block 744341). It turns out 256,732.07240401 Bitcoin was paid in fees! With slightly over 19 million Bitcoins mined, that means 101.34% of all Bitcoins currenly in existence came from a miner
Even better if you trace back an exact percentage for each individual input

Oh, you count a coin that went back to miners through transaction fees as 'mined twice'? I mean, yeah, I guess that way it's included in block rewards twice and you get a number above 100%.
Whatever curious and actually objective, informative statistics could be put on such a page would be welcome!

Honestly, what started as a joke might actually be a very good idea to implement.. Even if just to stand against all that other bullshit that's floating around.

If anyone does run with this idea, choose a name which does not have "taint" in it please. No point lending credence to their made up nonsense by naming your website after it.

Good point! Something like 'Coin security analysis' or similar would be fine. Each coin should be understood as just as secure and legit, and safe to be accepted as any other, because it is.

And to answer your question - we already have good alternatives such as Bisq. The problem is getting enough people to leave all the anti-bitcoin examples I gave above and use these other pro-bitcoin platforms instead.

I would add that looking forward it's impossible to 100% trust new exchanges popping up, after we had enough companies with presumed 'good intentions' that went bad. So only consider services that don't collect any information about you, such as having no account, no sign-up, having Tor support (or exclusivity) and of course absolutely no KYC / PII information collection.
Two services I've used that ensure this are https://bisq.network/ and Robosats. Even if their devs were to go rogue, sold their souls or whatever, they don't have any information that I'm afraid they could leak or sell.

This just gave me the idea to make a website where you put in a transaction ID and it gives you a 'taint score' (just like those other blockchain analysis services), but this score is simply always 100%, with a nice green background and informative text saying 'This UTXO is wonderfully clean; it is yours if you have the private key to spend it and you can send it anywhere you like.'..

This is actually not a bad idea, but keep in mind that some psycho or regulators could sue or shut down your website you for not providing exact information like it is shown in other analytics services.
You should be fine as long as you add information in footer or in about section that website is created for fun purposes, and that you are not responsible for any coins being frozen on exchanges.

The whole point though is that this site would actually be more exact, more objective and more true to the facts than any of these existing blockchain analysis sites.
Even if something on it was wrong, I don't think anyone can shut down your website or sue you because the information on your webpage disagrees with another website's (e.g. exchange) subjective opinion.

Let's get back on Wasabi wallet topic.
They answered best they could and we can't expect them to change course now when they decided the route they are going.
We can still support the idea of alternative coordinator or some Wasabi fork that would work without any censorship, but someone needs to take risk with this.

Sure, let's stay on topic! I also think we won't hear anything else from Wasabi anymore.
I hope this thread can remain informational for anyone confused about this blacklisting update. They can just read the first page and get a good overview of the questions, responses and the community's reactions and counter-responses as to why the Wasabi team responses are unsatisfactory to say the least.

I'm not sure we should pursue the idea of an alternative coordinator, since as we were able to see first-hand, this central point of failure can and will be exploited unless the whole mechanism changes to something decentralized.

There are other options out there, Sparrow wallet has implemented a coinjoin coordinator called Whirlpool.  Samurai Wallet also has coinjoin implementation, but I don't remember the coordinator.  I tend to agree with o_e_l_e_o, there are better alternatives.

Sparrow simply connects to Samourai wallet's CoinJoin implementation and to Samourai's own coordinator.

There are many kinds of coinjoins, each with different tradeoffs. Sparrow Wallet acts a client for the Samourai Whirlpool coinjoin implementation.

[witcher_sense]

I don't disagree, and I regularly speak about the benefits of avoiding centralized exchanges and other centralized platforms, of spending bitcoin directly, of avoiding government regulations, of avoiding services which buy in to this taint nonsense, and so on, but reaching the utopia you describe will take decades, if we ever get there at all. Fighting against taint analysis is something that needs to be done now. And if we continue to let faceless organizations dictate how we are allowed to use our bitcoin, then we will never reach that utopia.

People entirely avoiding centralized regulated entities that harm bitcoin is also a kind of utopia we may never reach. Both promoting avoiding centralized exchanges subject to government policies and promoting the usage of bitcoin as a medium of exchange implies fighting with established narratives, status quo, and governments themselves, so that all also may take decades.

For example, we are consistently warning people about the dangers of using wallets that directly collaborate with chain surveillance firms. Yet, not only don't they stop using it but also participate in signature campaigns and write positive reviews about these surveillance tools. It may take decades to convince people since, unlike Wasabi Wallet devs, you don't and will not pay people to adhere to your views.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bisq is great for those of us who are bitcoin maximalists, but to be honest I think they would need a lot of work to make altcoins more easily traded.  The most recent release does a great job implanting XMR sub addresses, but more stuff like that is likely to help.  I don't like the fact that you have to include shitcoins to attract new customers, but that's the world in which we live.

I don't care about any altcoin except Monero, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that there are plenty of decentralized swap services out there which will let you swap bitcoin for some other coin directly to and from your wallet without requiring centralized wallets or KYC. The real challenge for DEXs has always been to integrate fiat pairs, since the legacy banking system is so slow and impossible to use with smart contracts or non custodial escrows.

Sparrow simply connects to Samourai wallet's CoinJoin implementation and to Samourai's own coordinator.

Correct. Samourai/Sparrow are obviously better than Wasabi since they aren't pro-censorship an aren't colluding with blockchain analysis, but you must run your own server or else your privacy can be compromised by the centralized server. Which is why I suggest JoinMarket, since it is the closest thing we have to fully decentralized coinjoins at present.

Yet, not only don't they stop using it but also participate in signature campaigns and write positive reviews about these surveillance tools.

It's exactly the same as all the entities I listed above which sell out their principles for profit. The average person is no different. Pump and dump altcoins? Proven scams like YoBit? Surveillance tools like Wasabi? People don't care as long as they get paid.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Yet, not only don't they stop using it but also participate in signature campaigns and write positive reviews about these surveillance tools.

I don't think most of those have taken the time to read what we've debunked here. I don't cross my fingers they even know that the default coordinator will start blacklisting certain inputs in the future, despite us talking about it since March.

And if you aren't willing to read some spicy discussions, you can't acknowledge their upcoming surveillance attitude.


I've also written a review (wouldn't say positive), because:

• of the money
• of my curiosity to test the coordinator with different inputs

Then, I was informed it hadn't started blacklisting. How didn't they want the users' reviews afterwards? 

[PrivacyG]

Which is why I suggest JoinMarket, since it is the closest thing we have to fully decentralized coinjoins at present.

How usable is JoinMarket nowadays?  I tried using it about an year ago and I could not even get past the installation process without difficulties.  Failed miserably on multiple Linux devices.  Then I could not get it running properly so I just gave up and continued using Wasabi instead, until this blacklist.

Then, I was informed it hadn't started blacklisting. How didn't they want the users' reviews afterwards?  

You know what, this is a very interesting outlook.  Silently announce the blacklisting, let us all pull off our rant posts and then agree with a review campaign before actually implementing blacklists but AFTER they became public knowledge and guesswork.  Anyone an year from the moment blacklists are introduced that will be checking out the history of these blacklists will think we were just crazy conspiracy people because some paid reviews that were posted after the blacklist became public knowledge actually deny what we were discussing.

Anyway, while I always read both paid and free reviews of stuff that I want to order or use while keeping a neutral view, I can not ignore the fact that public reviews generally tend to be more biased towards the product so I usually take them with a pinch of salt and I sure do hope nobody else takes any review, paid or free for granted.  On the other hand, free negative reviews sometimes do not help either because sometimes they come from people who post one star reviews simply because they did not know how to properly use the service or product.  Check out Trustpilot reviews of any website, most of them have a ton of negative reviews because out of fury you get more willing to post a review when you are extremely mad at and disappointed by something or someone so negative reviews are many times more predominant.  So, to me at least, reviews are just relative.  I do agree though that, for someone in the situation Wasabi currently is, reviews are very helpful especially when you consider that these reviews come BEFORE the blacklists actually get to occur.

I don't think most of those have taken the time to read what we've debunked here. I don't cross my fingers they even know that the default coordinator will start blacklisting certain inputs in the future, despite us talking about it since March.

I do not think most of those have even taken their time to know what Wasabi is all about.  And this is generally speaking, not particularly about Wasabi's campaign.  I am willing to bet on anything that more than half of the applications were users who rolled in particularly due to the high payout.  Remember there was (or maybe still is, I do not know since I have all participants on ignore) a scam Casino with a ton of users willing to roll in for a signature payment just due to high promised payouts.  There are these kind of people in the world, we are actually flooded by them.  And it must suck for campaign managers, I think it is extremely hard to find a number of users that are actually good posters and not just copycats.

And then, I have to guess many Signature Campagin participants prefer to only check out the boards they will be paid to post in, and some of these boards such as Technical Discussions require more brain processes and thoughts than simple boards such as Bitcoin Discussions do so their thinking is, why waste half an hour for a basic post when I can write a post in less than 5 minutes.

Also, while I say this is just guesswork on my side, it becomes more and more evident the more you sit on this forum.  Otherwise, this thread would be flooded by many users that are not Chip Mixer campaign participants or well known users of the forum.  Unfortunately, and you probably know about this much more and better than I do, many of the users active today on the forum are here for the same reasons theymos introduced the Merit system.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[o_e_l_e_o]

How usable is JoinMarket nowadays?  I tried using it about an year ago and I could not even get past the installation process without difficulties.  Failed miserably on multiple Linux devices.  Then I could not get it running properly so I just gave up and continued using Wasabi instead, until this blacklist.

What problems did you have installing it? There are fairly detailed instructions and guides available on GitHub: https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket-clientserver

Anyone an year from the moment blacklists are introduced that will be checking out the history of these blacklists will think we were just crazy conspiracy people because some paid reviews that were posted after the blacklist became public knowledge actually deny what we were discussing.

I suspect will we see more than one thread in the future from someone complaining that their coins are blacklisted and they are not being allowed to coinjoin, followed by a good handful of users calling them a criminal, saying it's their own fault, saying "wHaT aRe YoU tRyInG tO hIdE!?" and other such nonsense. Wasabi team members will obviously ignore these users beyond saying "You agreed to our terms so suck it up".

[DireWolfM14]

Sparrow simply connects to Samourai wallet's CoinJoin implementation and to Samourai's own coordinator.

Thanks for clarifying that for me.  I haven't used Sparrow although I've been seeing it mentioned frequently these days.  I looked into it a couple of days ago and like the features it provides, like an integrated block explorer.  I was hoping it could connect directly to core and wouldn't need to a remote SPV server, but from reading the documents it looks like it just uses Electrum SPV servers for it's connections.  I may install it and play around with it for a bit just get familiarized.

As for CoinJoin, I'm still on the fence about it.  Same with JoinMarket, tbh.  I don't mind using ChipMixer for some things, but usually I rely on Monero to break the link between me and my coins.

I don't care about any altcoin except Monero, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that there are plenty of decentralized swap services out there which will let you swap bitcoin for some other coin directly to and from your wallet without requiring centralized wallets or KYC. The real challenge for DEXs has always been to integrate fiat pairs, since the legacy banking system is so slow and impossible to use with smart contracts or non custodial escrows.

You're not wrong, there are plenty of those types of services around, but I tend to forget about them because I haven't used them.  I have trust issues.  In fact, I mentioned one (ShapeShift) not long ago that I've been meaning to try out, but I still haven't had the guts.

My comments were more about tendencies, i.e. people want convenience; if I was a shitcoiner and I had to go to three of four different sites to trade fiat at one, XMR at another, Shithereum at a third, and Tron at a fourth just to avoid KYC or taint proclamations, I might just give up and hand over all my data to CoinBase.  If Bisq made trading those shitcoins easier, and included "accounts" for multiple smart-chains, more people might find it more attractive.

This could certainly fall into the category of "be careful what you wish for."  I do want to see more trade offers available on bisq, but do I want all these shitcoiners there?  Probably not.

Yet, not only don't they stop using it but also participate in signature campaigns and write positive reviews about these surveillance tools.

It's exactly the same as all the entities I listed above which sell out their principles for profit. The average person is no different. Pump and dump altcoins? Proven scams like YoBit? Surveillance tools like Wasabi? People don't care as long as they get paid.

It is quite sad to see all these reputable accounts running around promoting a wallet that's hurting the fungibility of bitcoin.  Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.  I guess that's what you get when you mix greed with short-sightedness.

[o_e_l_e_o]

My comments were more about tendencies, i.e. people want convenience; if I was a shitcoiner and I had to go to three of four different sites to trade fiat at one, XMR at another, Shithereum at a third, and Tron at a fourth just to avoid KYC or taint proclamations, I might just give up and hand over all my data to CoinBase.

You can trade all of those except Tron on Bisq already. You can add an altcoin account by following the steps here: https://bisq.wiki/Creating_a_payment_account#Creating_an_altcoin_account. Also, I have no data to support this, but the thought occurs to me that the person who is throwing their money away on shitcoins left, right, and center, probably isn't a person who is closely guarding their privacy.

If Bisq made trading those shitcoins easier, and included "accounts" for multiple smart-chains, more people might find it more attractive.

There is simply not enough demand. Bisq used to host even more altcoins than it does, but many were removed because they had literally zero volume over a period of months. The developers have decided that in general it is not worth their time and effort to integrate a new coin if it will have zero volume, which is understandable. There was a big discussion about this here: https://github.com/bisq-network/proposals/issues/153

[dkbit98]

You can add an altcoin account by following the steps here: https://bisq.wiki/Creating_a_payment_account#Creating_an_altcoin_account. Also, I have no data to support this, but the thought occurs to me that the person who is throwing their money away on shitcoins left, right, and center, probably isn't a person who is closely guarding their privacy.

You can't add any altcoins in Bisq for years, it was officially put on hold, and I doubt there would be any volume for other coins without someone making a fake volume like on centralized exchanges.
Someone is working on Bisq fork exchange based on Monero, so there is a chance for listing more coins if that gets some traction and activity.
If you look at Bisq markets you will see that Monero currently have highest trading volume even more than currencies like Euro, Dollar, Pound and Brazilian Real.
https://bisq.markets/

[o_e_l_e_o]

You can't add any altcoins in Bisq for years, it was officially put on hold

It was officially put on hold from the end of 2019 as per the Github issue I linked to above, but that does not mean it is impossible or that no coins have been added since then. Exceptions have been made for notable coins - USDT, GRIN, and RSK are the ones which immediately spring to mind, but there have probably been others. The hold was essentially to stop any and every shitcoin applying to be listed just so they could use the fact they were listed as a marketing gimmick, all the while wasting Bisq developers' time and effort to support these coins/tokens which ended up with zero volume.

Although as we've just discussed in another thread, RoboSats lets you use literally any payment method you like. Someone can always take their Bisq acquired bitcoin over there and list it for any shitcoin they desire. The combination of Bisq and RoboSats is very attractive.

[n0nce]

Sparrow simply connects to Samourai wallet's CoinJoin implementation and to Samourai's own coordinator.

Thanks for clarifying that for me.  I haven't used Sparrow although I've been seeing it mentioned frequently these days.  I looked into it a couple of days ago and like the features it provides, like an integrated block explorer.  I was hoping it could connect directly to core and wouldn't need to a remote SPV server, but from reading the documents it looks like it just uses Electrum SPV servers for it's connections.  I may install it and play around with it for a bit just get familiarized.

Sure; give it a go. It does have a 'direct to Core' connection option. No need to install SPV software.

As for CoinJoin, I'm still on the fence about it.  Same with JoinMarket, tbh.  I don't mind using ChipMixer for some things, but usually I rely on Monero to break the link between me and my coins.

JoinMarket is just a CoinJoin implementation, of course. It's fun that in the original thread there's so much talk about 'taint' and how you get 'clean coins from exchanges' through them. Leaves a sour taste for me..

Because of the incentives of JoinMarket, you have access to a huge amount of clean, untainted bitcoins to mix with at a very low price. Many of the bitcoins you're mixing with will be bought from regulated exchanges, owned by legitimate holders of bitcoin.

Later, though, he claims another thing, no? Anyhow; things might have changed since then.

5. Improves the fungibility of bitcoin, since the distinction between 'clean' and 'dirty' bitcoins will be meaningless. Eliminates this particular systemic risk to bitcoin.

My comments were more about tendencies, i.e. people want convenience; if I was a shitcoiner and I had to go to three of four different sites to trade fiat at one, XMR at another, Shithereum at a third, and Tron at a fourth just to avoid KYC or taint proclamations, I might just give up and hand over all my data to CoinBase.  If Bisq made trading those shitcoins easier, and included "accounts" for multiple smart-chains, more people might find it more attractive.

Personally, I have this little distinction between 'on-/off-ramp' (fiat <> crypto) and 'exchange'. For me, such a 'fiat gateway' doesn't need the more advanced features and multitude of trading pairs that an exchange should offer. The services like ShapeShift (which you mentioned) or FixedFloat do allow basically any trading pair, so you'd only really need 2 services: Bisq and a crypto <> crypto exchange.

[witcher_sense]

I haven't used Sparrow although I've been seeing it mentioned frequently these days.  I looked into it a couple of days ago and like the features it provides, like an integrated block explorer.  I was hoping it could connect directly to core and wouldn't need to a remote SPV server, but from reading the documents it looks like it just uses Electrum SPV servers for it's connections.  I may install it and play around with it for a bit just get familiarized.

You can pair Sparrow Wallet with Bitcoin Core directly; however, this type of connection, from my own experience, appears to be very unstable, and often it is very difficult to identify what's wrong. Of course, like in the case of Electrum wallet, you can use one of the public servers or one of the "trusted" ones that were chosen by Sparrow wallet devs, but it is always recommended to spin up your own Electrum server with the easiest option being Electrum Personal server, especially if you're a Windows user. The other options, such as Electrs, require tinkering with software or hardware and considerable disk space.

As for CoinJoin, I'm still on the fence about it.  Same with JoinMarket, tbh.  I don't mind using ChipMixer for some things, but usually I rely on Monero to break the link between me and my coins.

By using Monero you may break the link between past and future transactions, but essentially you are merely swapping your transaction history with other users like in the case of CoinSwap.

It is quite sad to see all these reputable accounts running around promoting a wallet that's hurting the fungibility of bitcoin.  Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.  I guess that's what you get when you mix greed with short-sightedness.

At least, those users promoting Wasabi Wallet will know for sure that they are getting paid with clean, carefully filtered coins that will never be blocked by regulated entities. sarcasm

[NotATether]

As for CoinJoin, I'm still on the fence about it.  Same with JoinMarket, tbh.  I don't mind using ChipMixer for some things, but usually I rely on Monero to break the link between me and my coins.

That's not a dependency on coins, but a dependency on the exchange that sells the coins to you.

After all, you're not sending an obfuscated Monero transaction, but a regular one that has a bunch of dummy inputs baked in. Authorities that know the source and destination exchange should not have any trouble following the link from source to destination (and hence find your new BTC coins).

[Pmalek]

At least, those users promoting Wasabi Wallet will know for sure that they are getting paid with clean, carefully filtered coins that will never be blocked by regulated entities. sarcasm

Although the comment was sarcastic in nature, let's say it wasn't. We don't know which blockchain analysis company Wasabi has partnered with and there are several of them. What if the bitcoins are considered free of taint by some institutions and centralized exchanges based on the info they are given by one anal company, but at the same time a different anal company considers some of those coins as dirty and send out different signals to their partners? Unless all blockchain analysis companies cooperate in terms of what is tainted and what isn't, I would expect that they show different results and taint scores.   

[o_e_l_e_o]

but essentially you are merely swapping your transaction history with other users like in the case of CoinSwap.

Which is completely fine for my use case. I don't use, and will never use, any company or service which attacks bitcoin by enforcing taint nonsense, so I have absolutely no care about the history of the coins I receive. All I care about is that it is not my history and cannot be used to link my previous transactions to my future ones.

At least, those users promoting Wasabi Wallet will know for sure that they are getting paid with clean, carefully filtered coins that will never be blocked by regulated entities. sarcasm

How funny when Wasabi's blockchain analysis partner changes their rules and suddenly Wasabi's team's own coins are no longer allowed.

After all, you're not sending an obfuscated Monero transaction, but a regular one that has a bunch of dummy inputs baked in. Authorities that know the source and destination exchange should not have any trouble following the link from source to destination (and hence find your new BTC coins).

If you send Monero directly from one centralized service to another centralized service, then sure, but if you send Monero to your own wallet and then to someone else in a peer-to-peer trade, then this kind of tracking becomes impossible.

What if the bitcoins are considered free of taint by some institutions and centralized exchanges based on the info they are given by one anal company, but at the same time a different anal company considers some of those coins as dirty and send out different signals to their partners? Unless all blockchain analysis companies cooperate in terms of what is tainted and what isn't, I would expect that they show different results and taint scores.

This is exactly what happens. See my post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5395035.msg59905002#msg59905002. 25% of coins in Binance's hot wallet were blacklisted.

[Poker Player]

At least, those users promoting Wasabi Wallet will know for sure that they are getting paid with clean, carefully filtered coins that will never be blocked by regulated entities. sarcasm

I don't know if you say that because the casino that pays you with its KYC/AML policies strongly advocates the P2P spirit of bitcoin without going through centralized entities and defends privacy:

https://roobet.com/termsandconditions

In my case is that I was going to be a traitor to the cause anyway: I had had in my signature casinos with KYC requirements and Best Change, and the only signature that seemed not to be a traitor to the cause was Lightlord's casino Bitvest.io, lol.

As I said, I liked the conditions of this campaign better, although I took a paycut per post.

It is like if Coinbase comes to make a campaign to the forum. Do you think they are going to leave a slot unfilled because people don't apply because of their policies?

Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to work for entities that are the authentic Bitcoin advocates and that pay very well.

PS: I hope that some irony is noticed.

And btw, bad news for the cause, it looks like the campaign is extended:

Thanks. I understand that the campaign will run for a few more weeks, then, as 4 weeks have passed:

Yes, the campaign is alive!

[PrivacyG]

If we get into this debate of whether it is moral and right or not to join a signature campaign that does not support your principles, we get into a really long one.  That is because I think all sides can have both good and bad points to score.  Joining Wasabi's signature campaign is perfectly fine if you support them, since that would be the ideal case anyway, but it is also perfectly fine if you do not because after all your mindset might be 'why would I miss this opportunity?', and it is OK to think that way as well.  To some here, it is probably extremely immoral to join a signature campaign that is against your principles, to others it may be perfectly fine.  This is fine as well to me.

Then you think about it, why would you help promote something that is against your principles.  But if you do not, then someone will take that spot anyway and the one on a loss is going to be you.  This gets worse and, on the other hand, also better at the same time if all the good posters of the forum avoid joining the said campaign while only shit posters apply and join it.  Worse because then you have shit posters earning in some cases from posts that suck more money than you earn from well thought posts, but better because if you have only bad posters promoting it then I am pretty sure chances of another user clicking the signature link lower down drastically.  I am very confident someone would rather click the signature link under one of n0nce's posts over the signature link under one of a shit poster's reply.  But then this is only better from your view, because you do not support what the company promotes, but the company is going to suffer.  So is it really better?

In some ways, 'renting' a signature room on this forum somehow resembles the process and motives of renting a billboard.  You, as the owner of a billboard, will probably not skip a contract with KFC just because you are a healthy eater.  It stands against your standards and diet, but business is business and if you skip the contract, the next person they contact will not.

There is obviously also a big exception of tolerance, at least in my eyes, which is scams.  When someone is promoting a straight up scam, there is zero way I could ever tolerate or promote it.  So as I said, there is a big debate and you have a lot of room for opinions and arguments that are probably never wrong really.  As mentioned in the first paragraph, all sides can be simultaneously right.

So while there is no way I can blame you for promoting their signature campaign, there are definitely questions I have for Wasabi that might never actually get a legitimate, honest answer from their team as I can clearly see from their reply to n0nce's open letter.

On a side note, I perfectly feel what you are saying about not being fortunate enough to be able to promote a campaign that stands for your principles and standards.  I have desperately looked for campaigns that did this, and I really do wish I could find a spot in a campaign that has more focus on privacy, but I think the choices have shrunk along the years of Bitcoin Talk's existence down to only a very, very small number of businesses such as Chip Mixer which have a very select and specific list of participants anyway.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[Poker Player]

If we get into this debate of whether it is moral and right or not to join a signature campaign that does not support your principles,

Who said it goes against my principles? If the signature campaign advocated that blacks or homosexuals should be killed just because they are blacks or homosexuals, I would not have joined it.

The signature campaign I represent I understand has a moot point about blacklisting.

But what I see is that there is a global trend in the world towards greater government control of Bitcoin, via KYC/AML, blacklisting and other measures.

Would the world be better off with purely P2P transactions as Satoshi devised? Surely, but the price would not have gone over $1k. I highly doubt it would have gone over $100. Just seeing that Coinbase is on this list:

[Blacklist] of unreliable, 'taint proclaiming' Bitcoin services / exchanges

Without Coinbase and traitorous institutions like it, the price would be much lower.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I see a future with Bitcoin much more controlled by governments, where there is a reduced space for privacy or P2P transactions, but governments were not going to let what reached 1T market cap, 2T if we count shitcoins, to remain uncontrolled.

On a side note, I perfectly feel what you are saying about not being fortunate enough to be able to promote a campaign that stands for your principles and standards.  I have desperately looked for campaigns that did this, and I really do wish I could find a spot in a campaign that has more focus on privacy, but I think the choices have shrunk along the years of Bitcoin Talk's existence down to only a very, very small number of businesses such as Chip Mixer which have a very select and specific list of participants anyway.

I think you didn't quite understand me before, because there was some irony in what I said, but I think I do understand you here when you say "I wish I could find a spot in a campaign that has more focus on privacy," because calling yourself PrivacyG and wearing the signature of a casino with KYC requirements, doesn't seem the most suitable thing to do.

[LoyceV]

I perfectly feel what you are saying about not being fortunate enough to be able to promote a campaign that stands for your principles and standards.

I'm pretty sure there are millions of people who don't have the luxory of choosing a job that aligns with their personal morals.
You'll need a decent amount of FU-money to be picky about who's money to accept or not.

There is obviously also a big exception of tolerance, at least in my eyes, which is scams.  When someone is promoting a straight up scam, there is zero way I could ever tolerate or promote it.

Agreed. If your employer asks you to rob a bank, you're the one who's going to end up in jail.

I see a future with Bitcoin much more controlled by governments, where there is a reduced space for privacy or P2P transactions, but governments were not going to let what reached 1T market cap, 2T if we count shitcoins, to remain uncontrolled.

Governments will probably try, and corporations will have to comply. Binance for instance just got a 3.3 million euro fine in a tiny country for not following local laws.
But the Wasabi case isn't about government regulations, and not even about a government enforced blacklisting. They're voluntarily blacklisting addresses based on some third party's list.

[n0nce]

If we get into this debate of whether it is moral and right or not to join a signature campaign that does not support your principles, we get into a really long one.  That is because I think all sides can have both good and bad points to score.  Joining Wasabi's signature campaign is perfectly fine if you support them, since that would be the ideal case anyway, but it is also perfectly fine if you do not because after all your mindset might be 'why would I miss this opportunity?', and it is OK to think that way as well.  To some here, it is probably extremely immoral to join a signature campaign that is against your principles, to others it may be perfectly fine.  This is fine as well to me.
~snip~

I do think this is an interesting topic that deserves its own topic. My personal opinion is that for myself, I never wanted to promote something that is against my values; at the same time I don't condemn people promoting something they don't 100% believe in.

I am very confident someone would rather click the signature link under one of n0nce's posts over the signature link under one of a shit poster's reply.

I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. An opinion from a signature campaign manager (like icopress ) on this would be interesting; to me signature advertising seems to be a mix of getting as many of your company's banners on the forum in general and having users with a certain reputation promoting you. The former refers to the psychological 'Mere Exposure Effect' ('as seen on TV'...) ; the latter steers towards an 'argumentum ab auctoritate', wherein people assume a certain legitimacy of a business if esteemed community members advertise for it.

To put it more concrete terms: First, a user is 'bombarded' by ChipMixer banners, which sparks interest, then they see that high-ranked users wear that signature which gives it legitimacy and ultimately leads them to try it out.
This is my impression, but I'm glad about more insights (preferably in a new thread).

Would the world be better off with purely P2P transactions as Satoshi devised? Surely, but the price would not have gone over $1k. I highly doubt it would have gone over $100. Just seeing that Coinbase is on this list:

[Blacklist] of unreliable, 'taint proclaiming' Bitcoin services / exchanges

Without Coinbase and traitorous institutions like it, the price would be much lower.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I see a future with Bitcoin much more controlled by governments, where there is a reduced space for privacy or P2P transactions, but governments were not going to let what reached 1T market cap, 2T if we count shitcoins, to remain uncontrolled.

Let's assume your statement regarding Bitcoin price was valid; what does it matter?
If it is higher or lower, in the end what ultimately counts in my opinion, is if Bitcoin is good money. This can be achieved at a price of $100,000 or $1,000 per coin; doesn't matter since we have enough decimal places.

I'd much rather have no centralized exchanges and services, lower Bitcoin price but higher privacy and thus higher utility and usage.

But the Wasabi case isn't about government regulations, and not even about a government enforced blacklisting. They're voluntarily blacklisting addresses based on some third party's list.

This has to really be emphasized in this whole story. It's easy to assume there was a legal reason, since it's what we're used to. That makes it even more important to keep in mind that here it was a deliberate business decision.

[Pmalek]

I'm pretty sure there are millions of people who don't have the luxory of choosing a job that aligns with their personal morals.
You'll need a decent amount of FU-money to be picky about who's money to accept or not.

I think those are very lucky individuals indeed. Especially if you have a family to feed, you have to put that food on the table or they are not going to eat. It's easy when you are young and you still have your parents to fall back on when times get tough. But man can that change fast...

Someone mentioned billboards and that's a good example. Imagine you bought several and you needed to earn X amount every month to make a living, but also pay back your loan rate. Your idea is to advertise healthy food and beverages. Who do you think would be more likely to want to rent out your billboard? Coca Cola and Pepsi - the multibillion dollar businesses, or a small local company who sells natural spring water with great PH values? The same goes for food. McDonalds or that small local shop that sells organic food?

The idea of advertising healthy food could soon die when you realize that it's the bastards that will earn you the needed money, while the better choice can get your car or house repossessed by the bank.  

[dkbit98]

But the Wasabi case isn't about government regulations, and not even about a government enforced blacklisting. They're voluntarily blacklisting addresses based on some third party's list.

Wasabi actually didn't start to blacklist anything yet, and from some information I am getting they are not even going to start doing that in near future.
All this operation appears to be decoy tactics, while in background they needed to buy some time while moving from Gibraltar to Seychelles.
They can't come up and publicly say that, but this is my speculation based on latest information I got.
To conclude, until I see bitcoin transaction actually being blacklisted in Wasabi, I am not considering they are blacklisting anything.

This has to really be emphasized in this whole story. It's easy to assume there was a legal reason, since it's what we're used to. That makes it even more important to keep in mind that here it was a deliberate business decision.

It's legal reasons for sure, maybe that's the reason for them moving to other country with less regulations
Let me say this in public, I will be the first to criticize Wasabi if they officially start to blacklist and track anything, but until then I think it's time for everyone to chill about this.

[DireWolfM14]

That's not a dependency on coins, but a dependency on the exchange that sells the coins to you.

After all, you're not sending an obfuscated Monero transaction, but a regular one that has a bunch of dummy inputs baked in. Authorities that know the source and destination exchange should not have any trouble following the link from source to destination (and hence find your new BTC coins).

I use a p2p exchange that leaves a light footprint, but it's certainly not infallible.  Regardless, if they want go through all that trouble just to find out that I pay my taxes, at least I didn't make it easy on them.  

You can pair Sparrow Wallet with Bitcoin Core directly; however, this type of connection, from my own experience, appears to be very unstable, and often it is very difficult to identify what's wrong. Of course, like in the case of Electrum wallet, you can use one of the public servers or one of the "trusted" ones that were chosen by Sparrow wallet devs, but it is always recommended to spin up your own Electrum server with the easiest option being Electrum Personal server, especially if you're a Windows user. The other options, such as Electrs, require tinkering with software or hardware and considerable disk space.

Thanks for the heads up.  I'm not in a hurry, but I did get around to downloading it and checking the signature.  I do have a couple of nodes under the staircase, both running electrumx, so I can point it there if it gives me trouble.  I also have an unpruned QT running on my main PC that I use as a hot wallet most of the time, so I might try it connected directly to that first.

By using Monero you may break the link between past and future transactions, but essentially you are merely swapping your transaction history with other users like in the case of CoinSwap.

That's the point.  If I'm converting my coins on a regular basis, in varying amounts, with multiple people I'll get bitcoin with diverse history.  Some form exchanges, some from other p2p, some from "tainted" UTXOs.  I don't really care what that history is, as long as it's diverse enough that even multiple transactions with a single individual are random enough to appear to be exactly what they are; me obfuscating the origin of my coins for privacy reasons.

At least, those users promoting Wasabi Wallet will know for sure that they are getting paid with clean, carefully filtered coins that will never be blocked by regulated entities. sarcasm

I got your meaning without the tiny hint, but I don't begrudge people for picking up a slot on Wasabi's campaign.

We don't know which blockchain analysis company Wasabi has partnered with and there are several of them. What if the bitcoins are considered free of taint by some institutions and centralized exchanges based on the info they are given by one anal company, but at the same time a different anal company considers some of those coins as dirty and send out different signals to their partners? Unless all blockchain analysis companies cooperate in terms of what is tainted and what isn't, I would expect that they show different results and taint scores.  

I'd like to know which provider or method or algorithm any "legitimate" exchange is using to determine what's tainted or not.  If they're going to operate in this space shouldn't they at least be transparent with that?

All this operation appears to be decoy tactics, while in background they needed to buy some time while moving from Gibraltar to Seychelles.

Lol, this is some 007 shit.  If it wasn't you posting it I would think it was a joke.  If this turns out to be true these bitches will be my new heroes.

[witcher_sense]

Unless all blockchain analysis companies cooperate in terms of what is tainted and what isn't, I would expect that they show different results and taint scores.   

Paradoxically, if they all were to cooperate and agree on what to consider tainted, it wouldn't make sense to have more than one surveillance company in place. If it were possible to interpret objectively what is going on in the blockchain, we wouldn't even need a single surveillance company (I am talking about businesses that have to hire these firms to comply with AML policies, not individuals making P2P transactions since no sane individual would support the harmful activities of these firms) because individuals themselves could track every payment and prevent money laundering and financing of other crimes.

But we have what we have. Inasmuch as it is physically impossible to interpret occurring objectively, we witness the intense competition between chain surveillance firms, where everyone is trying to sell their own subjective interpretation of transactions in the blockchain. Clients of these firms aren't seeking truth or justice, nor do they interested in protecting the rights of their customers. They simply need protection from regulatory pressure and chain surveillance firms kind of provide such protection by selling convenient and convincing interpretations both to businesses and governments.

[LoyceV]

Wasabi actually didn't start to blacklist anything yet, and from some information I am getting they are not even going to start doing that in near future.
All this operation appears to be decoy tactics, while in background they needed to buy some time while moving from Gibraltar to Seychelles.

That wouldn't make any sense: they could have quietly moved from one tax haven to an even bigger tax paradise without supporting and encouraging the foolish concept of tainted Bitcoins.

I will be the first to criticize Wasabi if they officially start to blacklist and track anything, but until then I think it's time for everyone to chill about this.

I've said it before: I believe the idea of taint can actually damage Bitcoin, and I also believe many people have an interest in doing so. Whether or not they go through with it, normalizing the believe that taint even exists is bad.

[Pmalek]

I'd like to know which provider or method or algorithm any "legitimate" exchange is using to determine what's tainted or not.  If they're going to operate in this space shouldn't they at least be transparent with that?

They could be transparent about it and make everything public. But are they going to? I seriously doubt that. I even tried to get them to talk about it and maybe reveal something in What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint? But that didn't go so well. And that information is surely above the pay grade of a regular support agent.

[Poker Player]

Let's assume your statement regarding Bitcoin price was valid; what does it matter?
If it is higher or lower, in the end what ultimately counts in my opinion, is if Bitcoin is good money. This can be achieved at a price of $100,000 or $1,000 per coin; doesn't matter since we have enough decimal places.

It does matter.

An invention that in theory is very good, because it is decentralized, autonomous and limited in its production, for it to be really good it lacks that people believe in it and that is reflected in the price.

If the price of Bitcoin were $0.01 today, after 13 years, it would still be a good invention in theory but bad in practice. And this forum would be long dead, for example.

Wasabi actually didn't start to blacklist anything yet, and from some information I am getting they are not even going to start doing that in near future.
All this operation appears to be decoy tactics, while in background they needed to buy some time while moving from Gibraltar to Seychelles.

That wouldn't make any sense: they could have quietly moved from one tax haven to an even bigger tax paradise without supporting and encouraging the foolish concept of tainted Bitcoins.

I am not clear on that either, as for example crypto casinos, which have tax havens licenses (most of them) are imposing more and more KYC requirements and some blacklisting mixed coins as reflected in n0nce's thread. And there would be no sense in all the explanations given to then change to a freer country, so to speak, and then going back on what was said.

Btw: budget for the Wasabi signature campaign has been reduced and the participants have gone down to 15 from 40, with a maximum of 30 paid posts per week, instead of 50. In other words, the budget has been reduced to 25% of the initial one.

[o_e_l_e_o]

All this operation appears to be decoy tactics, while in background they needed to buy some time while moving from Gibraltar to Seychelles.

Any source for this?

Their legal documents for Version 2 already state that zkSNACKs is based in Seychelles and has done for over a month already. If they are already based there, and the whole point of their move was to avoid blacklisting, then why are they still talking about blacklisting and not reversing their position?

That wouldn't make any sense: they could have quietly moved from one tax haven to an even bigger tax paradise without supporting and encouraging the foolish concept of tainted Bitcoins.

Completely agree with this. They are not blacklisting yet, but are still operating, meaning there is no legal requirement forcing them to blacklist or be shutdown. So there is nothing stopping them from continuing to operate without blacklisting while they move jurisdictions.

And even if this were the case, then the honest thing to do would still be to direct people to other coordinators while they spin up a different coordinator in a different jurisdiction, rather than supporting this taint nonsense.

[NotATether]

Unless all blockchain analysis companies cooperate in terms of what is tainted and what isn't, I would expect that they show different results and taint scores.

And now here lies the problem - nobody can even agree on the taint of the UTXOs so they will end up like the antivirus companies, who cannot even agree on even whether a file is malware, let alone agree on the names of the malware: "This EXE is safe, this RAR file is not (simply because only pirates use this extension), this .DOCX with embedded macro gibberish is safe, but this one is not!"

(N.B. the entire model of anti-viruses on microsoft windows is a complete joke, as they all depend on MS ultimately to integrate their codes into their closed-source kernel. Let's not turn Bitcoin into a fragmented abomination policed by chainanals behaving like rogue AV companies.)

[dkbit98]

Their legal documents for Version 2 already state that zkSNACKs is based in Seychelles and has done for over a month already. If they are already based there, and the whole point of their move was to avoid blacklisting, then why are they still talking about blacklisting and not reversing their position?

They are not openly talking about blacklisting anymore, but there is certainly a big reaction from other people about initial news, and bitcointalk forum is included.
I don't know what's the real truth behind this story but let's give them benefit of the doubt, until (or if) we see moving into wrong direction.

And even if this were the case, then the honest thing to do would still be to direct people to other coordinators while they spin up a different coordinator in a different jurisdiction, rather than supporting this taint nonsense.

Listening to one of their developers speaking I am sure there are people now actively working on creating alternative coordinators with different jurisdiction.
You can't expect them to come up openly and show all their cards in public, that would be like shooting yourself in a foot.
Tainted coins concept is a stupid )and dangerous) idea, but it was not invented by Wasabi wallet, centralized exchanges first started doing this and lot of rich people supported it.
I am not defending Wasabi, but I am taking more neutral position here.

[o_e_l_e_o]

They are not openly talking about blacklisting anymore, but there is certainly a big reaction from other people about initial news, and bitcointalk forum is included.

They barely openly talked about it even when they announced it. It's not really surprising why - obviously they don't want a lot of publicity around the fact that a so called "privacy wallet" is now anti-privacy and pro-censorship.

I don't know what's the real truth behind this story but let's give them benefit of the doubt, until (or if) we see moving into wrong direction.

They've been moving in the wrong direction solidly since this announcement. They have doubled down on a lot of things and continued to attack others to such an extent that I cannot believe it is all just some clever ruse.

Listening to one of their developers speaking I am sure there are people now actively working on creating alternative coordinators with different jurisdiction.

Well, they've had loads of time to do it, and apparently no pressure to implement blacklisting. So why not launch an alternative coordinator first, change it the default, and then announce blacklisting on zkSNACKs? Makes no sense.

[NotATether]

Well, they've had loads of time to do it, and apparently no pressure to implement blacklisting. So why not launch an alternative coordinator first, change it the default, and then announce blacklisting on zkSNACKs? Makes no sense.

No pressure is the key - they might not implement blacklisting on the default coordinater for years, or may even drop that initiative entirely if they suspect that its not worth the effort.

[n0nce]

Let's assume your statement regarding Bitcoin price was valid; what does it matter?
If it is higher or lower, in the end what ultimately counts in my opinion, is if Bitcoin is good money. This can be achieved at a price of $100,000 or $1,000 per coin; doesn't matter since we have enough decimal places.

It does matter.
An invention that in theory is very good, because it is decentralized, autonomous and limited in its production, for it to be really good it lacks that people believe in it and that is reflected in the price.
If the price of Bitcoin were $0.01 today, after 13 years, it would still be a good invention in theory but bad in practice. And this forum would be long dead, for example.

Why would it be 'bad in practice', though? I guess a lower price would be correlated with lower market capitalization, which may be the result of less people buying Bitcoin (to then potentially use it). But I'm not sure how a lower price would directly make Bitcoin less usable or a higher price make it more usable. Ultimately, when it comes to the utility / usability of Bitcoin, I'd say centralized exchanges may do more harm than good for various reasons. To summarize, their whole business concept relies on people not withdrawing and holding and / or using their coins as intended, but leaving them on the platform. It manifests itself in exaggerated withdrawal fees and advertisements that are purely based on the 'story' that cryptocurrencies are primarily an investment asset.
As well as scaring users that their coins can be frozen stolen by the exchange if they dare to withdraw them, use them (e.g. for gambling) and send them back to the exchange to realize fiat profits.

Their legal documents for Version 2 already state that zkSNACKs is based in Seychelles and has done for over a month already. If they are already based there, and the whole point of their move was to avoid blacklisting, then why are they still talking about blacklisting and not reversing their position?

They are not openly talking about blacklisting anymore, but there is certainly a big reaction from other people about initial news, and bitcointalk forum is included.
I don't know what's the real truth behind this story but let's give them benefit of the doubt, until (or if) we see moving into wrong direction.

I appreciate your more neutral position; and in general I always welcome having a healthy discussion instead of just an angry mob of people that all share one opinion.
For me personally, the 'wrong direction' was chosen the moment they decided to even consider blacklisting as a viable option, even before they announced it publicly - no matter if they ever did it or not. The next step 'into the wrong direction' for me was them defending the decision over and over, in written and spoken form and giving me a totally untrustworthy impression of their understanding of privacy (especially in the spoken Twitter group chat thing), see below.

11. We're talking about political refugees, government critics and investigative journalists for example; these are amongst the ones needing privacy the most (and therefore switching to Bitcoin in the first place). But in https://twitter.com/HillebrandMax/status/1537503087987937283, at 1:32:10, Aviv Milner says that 'the average person who's using the product especially if you're not in a situation where you're your life depends on it and there's a large government organization that's well funded that's looking to to find you and hunt you down if you're not in that extreme situation then wasabi provides an incredible amount of privacy'. So it means WasabiWallet is not the 'ultimate privacy solution' for Bitcoin after all; just maybe for 'getting a little privacy' or how should we call that? Someone who really, really needs actual privacy cannot rely on Wasabi then? What should they use in your opinion? On one hand, you say Wasabi is the only / best option for privacy, but then admit it doesn't provide enough privacy if someone's life depends on it; so what's the point of it all then? We don't believe privacy is something quantifiable; it's more a yes-or-no kind of deal. Either your UTXOs and transactions are private or they're not.

The last step 'into the wrong direction' for me, was how they advertised the 'first Wasabi 2.0 CoinJoin not using the blacklist' as a 'promotional feature'. Besides the fact that privacy is a serious thing for me and shouldn't be used as a marketing gimmick that is turned on or off based on their mood or the daily occasion, I don't get how it's so risky for them to not have a blacklist when it comes to business partners and whatnot, but at the same time they can opt not to use it for such an event. Doesn't really check out for me.

Wanna become part of the first ever Wasabi 2.0 main net CoinJoin?

There’s no UTXO filtering, the minimum amount to join is 0.00005 BTC, small amounts don’t pay a coordination fee.

Imagine 'there is no UTXO filtering' is used like some sort of 'goodie' or 'specialty' *just today!*-type deal.. Of a privacy wallet. Sir, I can send any UTXO to anyone, on any day of the week (not just when Wasabi is holding a 'special event'), by just using a different wallet. You're living in a different universe.

Well, they've had loads of time to do it, and apparently no pressure to implement blacklisting. So why not launch an alternative coordinator first, change it the default, and then announce blacklisting on zkSNACKs? Makes no sense.

No pressure is the key - they might not implement blacklisting on the default coordinater for years, or may even drop that initiative entirely if they suspect that its not worth the effort.

Then why would they announce it and double-down on it so many times? I'm just a bit puzzled right now if they really end up not implementing using it.

[Poker Player]

Why would it be 'bad in practice', though?

In the same way that $1M is of no use to you on a desert island.

If a deflationary currency as of today after all the mining of 13 years, the entire market cap was $19k would mean that the theory that it is deflationary does not match the practice, as the price would have remained more or less stable in 13 years instead of growing, which is what it should have done, as opposed to fiat currencies, which are inflationary and against which Bitcoin was created.

I also would not want us not to get bogged down in discussing this unrealistic example.

The point I was trying to make is that people tend to like the price of Bitcoin to go up. If you bought Bitcoin at $100 and have been able to hold it until today, you are certainly going to be much happier if it is worth $20k than if it goes back down to $100.

Centralized exchanges, as bad as they are, have provided liquidity and ease of exchange that have helped a lot in driving the price up.

I'd say centralized exchanges may do more harm than good for various reasons.

I could agree with you if we specified but I don't want to derive this debate into an off-topic because the main thing is Wasabi's Blacklisting, but I'm happy to continue debating if you like. I will wait to see how the events of what dkbit98 comments about changing their stance on blacklisting end up.

[PrivacyG]

I do not buy the rumor that Wasabi is using blacklisting as a decoy while buying time to move to Seychelles.  I have two reasons.  In this case, I think a reply to n0nce's open letter would have been avoided and declined by them.  And secondly, why would they have to use 'decoy tactics'?  It is not like they just robbed a bank and have to quickly flee the country.  I do not think there is anything illegal in moving things to Seychelles, or am I missing a key piece of the puzzle here?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[o_e_l_e_o]

Umm, what the actual fuck is this: https://nitter.it/wasabiwallet/status/1550510985022169089

Check us out on our Tik-Tok!
tiktok.com/@wasabi.wallet

TikTok is one of the worst privacy invasions in existence (a few selected links at the bottom, but you can find thousands more with a simple web search). So much so, that the FCC is recommend that the app is banned in the US. Here's a quote from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr:

TikTok is said to collect “everything”, from search and browsing histories; keystroke patterns; biometric identifiers—including faceprints, something that might be used in “unrelated facial recognition technology”, and voiceprints—location data; draft messages; metadata; and data stored on the clipboard, including text, images, and videos.

So Wasabi want its users to follow them on TikTok, therefore linking the fact that they use Wasabi to their real identity, their biometrics and facial scan, their location, and all their clipboard data, for starters. Did you so much as copy one of your addresses? Maybe you looked up your transaction on a block explorer? Maybe you saved a couple of screenshots of your wallet, or some back up file? Great, now we've linked your entire wallet to your real identity too. Privacy = zero.

This is mad. Even if you want to argue that this isn't actively malicious, it is so incredibly naive that it beggars belief coming from a team which are supposedly focused on privacy.


https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tiktok-circumvent-apple-google-privacy-140000271.html
https://www.engadget.com/fcc-commissioner-google-facebook-ban-tik-tok-064559992.html
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-permission-to-collect-biometric-data-on-u-s-users-including-faceprints-and-voiceprints/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-tracked-user-data-using-tactic-banned-by-google-11597176738
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2022/07/tiktok-app-phone-access/

[PrivacyG]

Umm, what the actual fuck is this: https://nitter.it/wasabiwallet/status/1550510985022169089

Check us out on our Tik-Tok!
tiktok.com/@wasabi.wallet

Next up on Wasabi's Twitter account: Check out our new Wasabi Smart Box!  $59.99 for pre-orders!  Link your Smart Box to Alexa and start Coin Joining by simply asking out loud!

Man, this is getting worse almost every day it seems.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[DireWolfM14]

Umm, what the actual fuck is this: https://nitter.it/wasabiwallet/status/1550510985022169089

That's what I was thinking!  Two ticktock videos, 17 seconds of my life invested, and absolutely no twerking?!?  What is this world coming to? [/sarcasm]

Ticktock isn't a social media app, it's a CCP surveillance app.  Any and all infringements on your privacy while using the app are specifically by design.  That's probably why the version Ticktock that's available in China is used completely differently, for example: https://video.foxnews.com/v/6309696840112#sp=show-clips

But I do get your point, a privacy wallet that's so out-of-touch, they think they'll find clients by advertising to those who have no clue how to secure their own privacy.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Wasabi developers continue acting childishly. TikTok, ok. Next. 

Would the world be better off with purely P2P transactions as Satoshi devised? Surely, but the price would not have gone over $1k.

Um, evidence?

Sure, marketing did help, but it is certainly not the main reason we're currently paying 22 grand for a bitcoin. Yes, purely P2P transactions would have lessened market manipulation and blunted the idea that bitcoin is an investment. Without Coinbase, Binance and the rest, we would have less benighted people who would be willing to hand out personal data and money for the feeling of acquiring something they don't even understand. Wouldn't that be better?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Now i'm almost sure they hire PR people who don't know much about Wasabi or privacy.

Which would be bad enough on its own, but they guy in the second video is Norbert Lévai, the project manager at zkSNACKs, meaning you can't pass this off as a PR fuck up. The highest level people in Wasabi are promoting Chinese spyware to all their users. And the Wasabi Twitter account has never struck me as being run by some random PR hire, but by the developers themselves.

But I do get your point, a privacy wallet that's so out-of-touch, they think they'll find clients by advertising to those who have no clue how to secure their own privacy.

I honestly can't wrap my ahead around what is going on here. They are either so completely out of touch with all things privacy that they genuinely have no idea TikTok is spyware, or they are aware of this fact but the just don't care at all. Which is worse?

[DireWolfM14]

I honestly can't wrap my ahead around what is going on here. They are either so completely out of touch with all things privacy that they genuinely have no idea TikTok is spyware, or they are aware of this fact but the just don't care at all. Which is worse?

How does anyone involved in cryptocurrency to the level of developing a "privacy wallet" not know the implications of using this particular app?  I thought everybody knew that TikTok was CCP spyware.  The former president of the US attempted to block them from operating their service in the US, and settled on the ByteDance (the parent company,) creating a service specifically for the US and storing all the data on US servers (it's worth noting that the current administration has reversed those restrictions.)

I am of the opinion that blocking UTXOs based on arbitrary taint-proclamations was a really stupid move, but I never thought of the Wasabi development team as stupid.  I mean, they're software developers, how can they be this stupid?  Right?  It makes me think they are in the "don't care" phase and are just trying to shill their wallet in any way they can, without any real concern for their clients' privacy.

Wasabigate keeps getting muddier and murkier.

[Agbe]

The zkSNACKs coordinator is clearly the largest and has substantially more liquidity than others; hence, this is why most people use it. Wasabi Wallet was built in a way that the developers and zkSNACKs don't collect any data about their users. We do not care who you are and what you do with your bitcoins! We don't want to know. Unfortunately, some people do collect data, attach it to bitcoin addresses and make decisions based on that information. The company is getting in trouble and harassed because apparently some of the users of our coordinator are so-called “criminals”, according to the people keeping up these databases.

We are not saying that the database is correct, as we do not agree with most of the classifications but we want to be able to see the same information that apparently others already have. We don’t want to do any chain surveillance ourselves, so we would rather just buy that information from others. We are not interested in applying sanctions or other immoral crap. We are exercising our right as a company to choose not to serve those people who could get us in trouble and the ones whom we wouldn’t want to support for ethical reasons.

I have a disturbing question on this thread. Although I am not a programmer and I can not develop an app or a software but I can design website with Adobe Dreamweaver CSS and HTML code. That means I have small idea on different a website even though I am not a professional.

zkSNACKs company targeted audience are the bitcoiners, which is other cryptocurrency users can not user the software to avoid confusion of coins. Wasabi Wallet company does not or have nothing to do with users data and the information, yes it is possible since the software is designed to be open source but the software was developed and lunched by human not robot, that means they most have access to the users data to set and make things easier for the users. If the company do not know the Users data then how will they know the total number of users of the wallet? If a particular User account is having issue, how will they resolved it?

Finally. From my point of view your (OP) post history, I came to the conclusion that you are a computer software engineer plus a programmer that is why I am asking you. Keep it up. I really like your threads. You did full review on hardware and software analysis.

[n0nce]

Now i'm almost sure they hire PR people who don't know much about Wasabi or privacy.

Which would be bad enough on its own, but they guy in the second video is Norbert Lévai, the project manager at zkSNACKs, meaning you can't pass this off as a PR fuck up. The highest level people in Wasabi are promoting Chinese spyware to all their users. And the Wasabi Twitter account has never struck me as being run by some random PR hire, but by the developers themselves.

I was about to say. The degree of incompetence in the highest levels, for me started to really manifest itself when they spoke in those Twitter 'spaces' (I believe that's what those were called?) - those voice-only livestreams where everyone can listen and join to ask questions.
When they threw around phrases such as 'incredible privacy, if you're not in an extreme situation'. Or 'Maybe there is a little more privacy in Lightning'. Just the word 'maybe' is so wrong in this context. If you are a lead developer of what's supposedly the 'last hope for Bitcoin privacy' you should have a very clear idea of what existing solution is most private, why, how and to what degree. As well as knowing exactly how much more private your solution is, and if it's not, ask yourself why you're even developing it.

Them creating an official TikTok account just highlights this again. I'm not sure how they were even able to code a CoinJoin implementation (some amount of skill and knowledge is required), while at the same time apparently being so extremely naive on the whole subject of privacy.
It gives me real 'well we have nothing to hide so we don't need to worry about TikTok data privacy problems' vibes. Just to reiterate: 'I have nothing to hide' is the prime example of a total lack of understanding of privacy.

But I do get your point, a privacy wallet that's so out-of-touch, they think they'll find clients by advertising to those who have no clue how to secure their own privacy.

I honestly can't wrap my ahead around what is going on here. They are either so completely out of touch with all things privacy that they genuinely have no idea TikTok is spyware, or they are aware of this fact but the just don't care at all. Which is worse?

It must be one of the two; but I can't understand how the intelligence required to implement CoinJoin functions simultaneously with being completely oblivious and naive with regards to the TikTok privacy catastrophe.

The zkSNACKs coordinator is clearly the largest and has substantially more liquidity than others; hence, this is why most people use it. Wasabi Wallet was built in a way that the developers and zkSNACKs don't collect any data about their users. We do not care who you are and what you do with your bitcoins! We don't want to know. Unfortunately, some people do collect data, attach it to bitcoin addresses and make decisions based on that information. The company is getting in trouble and harassed because apparently some of the users of our coordinator are so-called “criminals”, according to the people keeping up these databases.

We are not saying that the database is correct, as we do not agree with most of the classifications but we want to be able to see the same information that apparently others already have. We don’t want to do any chain surveillance ourselves, so we would rather just buy that information from others. We are not interested in applying sanctions or other immoral crap. We are exercising our right as a company to choose not to serve those people who could get us in trouble and the ones whom we wouldn’t want to support for ethical reasons.

I have a disturbing question on this thread.
...
Wasabi Wallet company does not or have nothing to do with users data and the information, yes it is possible since the software is designed to be open source but the software was developed and lunched by human not robot, that means they most have access to the users data to set and make things easier for the users. If the company do not know the Users data then how will they know the total number of users of the wallet? If a particular User account is having issue, how will they resolved it?

Hey Agbe; it's possible that the website does collect user information, while the application doesn't. The only thing that can be verified is the code that is available open-source and we only have that for the Wasabi application. About issues with user accounts, I don't think that's a problem either since a proper software wallet shouldn't have 'accounts' at all in the first place. Download numbers can also be tracked without tracking users; that's just a matter of counting accesses to a certain file on your webserver (or in their case just done through GitHub).

The issue at hand is that they are discriminating between coins (UTXOs). Even propagating and legitimizing the idea of this (called 'taint') is extremely anti-Bitcoin, which they even claimed themselves in the past. That's why I reference it in the 24 questions. The whole idea of Bitcoin is to have free(dom) money that everyone can send to anyone, anytime, anywhere, without intermediaries and without the possibility of getting a payment intercepted, rejected, blocked, confiscated, et cetera.

In interviews / 'Twitter spaces', official statements and now through creating a TikTok page, they are giving the impression of having very little clue about privacy and extreme naiveté, which is obviously terrible coming from a 'privacy wallet'.

[NotATether]

TikTok is one of the worst privacy invasions in existence (a few selected links at the bottom, but you can find thousands more with a simple web search). So much so, that the FCC is recommend that the app is banned in the US.

This particular app is a fucking abomination, and makes Facebook's privacy invasion look like angels by comparison (at least FB openly admits it!).

Reflecting on it, it's quite sad how it has captured most of the young generation and making them dumb. There are a few tough bunches who resisted subjugation (such as quite proudly myself), but it's grasp is near total, that I even read somewhere that the US. Army is using it for promotion.

[o_e_l_e_o]

How does anyone involved in cryptocurrency to the level of developing a "privacy wallet" not know the implications of using this particular app?  I thought everybody knew that TikTok was CCP spyware.

At least someone on their team must have known and informed them. Which means the only conclusion you can reach is "They don't care". They don't care that they are encouraging their users to download spyware on their devices and potentially link every bitcoin wallet and address on their device with their real identity. What have you got to hide, right!?

It makes me think they are in the "don't care" phase and are just trying to shill their wallet in any way they can, without any real concern for their clients' privacy.

I reached this conclusion when they tried to defend asking a blockchain analysis company to spy on their users as somehow good for privacy. This just cements that conclusion.

Even propagating and legitimizing the idea of this (called 'taint') is extremely anti-Bitcoin, which they even claimed themselves in the past.

Which they themselves still claim:

This leaves us with fungibility as the primary property to focus. The most important thing one can choose to work on is Bitcoin’s fungibility.

This makes Wasabi Wallet 2.0, the missing piece of Bitcoin: it solves its fungibility, as far as English speaker, hot desktop wallet users are concerned.

I cannot fathom how someone can write articles claiming they have "solved fungibility" while simultaneously enforcing arbitrary blacklists. Those two positions are mutually exclusive. That is not up for debate; that is a simple fact. You cannot state you have solved the issue of some bitcoin being discriminated against while you are actively discriminating against some bitcoin.

[n0nce]

Even propagating and legitimizing the idea of this (called 'taint') is extremely anti-Bitcoin, which they even claimed themselves in the past.

Which they themselves still claim:

This leaves us with fungibility as the primary property to focus. The most important thing one can choose to work on is Bitcoin’s fungibility.

This makes Wasabi Wallet 2.0, the missing piece of Bitcoin: it solves its fungibility, as far as English speaker, hot desktop wallet users are concerned.

I cannot fathom how someone can write articles claiming they have "solved fungibility" while simultaneously enforcing arbitrary blacklists. Those two positions are mutually exclusive. That is not up for debate; that is a simple fact. You cannot state you have solved the issue of some bitcoin being discriminated against while you are actively discriminating against some bitcoin.

Interesting, I've missed this article. To be fair, I don't follow Wasabi's every step.
One reason for the discrepancies between statements, ideas and actions might also simply be because of varying degrees of technical understanding, privacy understanding, degrees of importance that different people on the team put into their values and varying degrees of greed and willingness to throw out such values for profit.

It's possible that some Wasabi developers do believe in fungibility and oppose blacklists, but are overruled by a slight majority within the team. I have no idea, I'm just trying to give them a little 'benefit of the doubt' and making sense of this mess they've put themselves in. At the same time, I'm the first to point out issues and as such created the 24 questions and this whole thread, of course.

[o_e_l_e_o]

One reason for the discrepancies between statements, ideas and actions might also simply be because of varying degrees of technical understanding, privacy understanding, degrees of importance that different people on the team put into their values and varying degrees of greed and willingness to throw out such values for profit.

I have no doubt that different people on the team feel differently about their new anti-privacy and pro-censorship stance, but that's why I made the point in my last point about the two positions being mutually exclusive. It does not matter if some individuals have different values, understandings, ethical dilemmas, moral considerations, and so on. Stating you have solved fungibility while enforcing non-fungibility is an outright lie, regardless of personal opinions.

Also worth pointing out that the article linked was written by nopara73, who has obviously been very vocal in defending their decision to enforce blacklists and censorship.

[LoyceV]

If you are a lead developer of what's supposedly the 'last hope for Bitcoin privacy' you should have a very clear idea of what existing solution is most private, why, how and to what degree.
~
I'm not sure how they were even able to code a CoinJoin implementation (some amount of skill and knowledge is required), while at the same time apparently being so extremely naive on the whole subject of privacy.

Maybe I'm mistaken, and maybe I've fallen for some carefully planned PR, but until recently I got the impression Wasabi Wallet was created as a privacy solution with very low fees. I also assumed that's why so many people were vouching for it on Bitcointalk.
My next impression is they never expected nor planned to earn a lot of money from it, but suddenly the 0.003% fee turned into substantial amounts of money, and their priorities changed because of that.

[n0nce]

One reason for the discrepancies between statements, ideas and actions might also simply be because of varying degrees of technical understanding, privacy understanding, degrees of importance that different people on the team put into their values and varying degrees of greed and willingness to throw out such values for profit.

I have no doubt that different people on the team feel differently about their new anti-privacy and pro-censorship stance, but that's why I made the point in my last point about the two positions being mutually exclusive. It does not matter if some individuals have different values, understandings, ethical dilemmas, moral considerations, and so on. Stating you have solved fungibility while enforcing non-fungibility is an outright lie, regardless of personal opinions.

Yes, this somehow makes no sense. I just created another thread just in case someone wants to discuss it and / or nopara73 wants to take some time to explain how this contradiction in his opinion makes sense.

If you are a lead developer of what's supposedly the 'last hope for Bitcoin privacy' you should have a very clear idea of what existing solution is most private, why, how and to what degree.
~
I'm not sure how they were even able to code a CoinJoin implementation (some amount of skill and knowledge is required), while at the same time apparently being so extremely naive on the whole subject of privacy.

Maybe I'm mistaken, and maybe I've fallen for some carefully planned PR, but until recently I got the impression Wasabi Wallet was created as a privacy solution with very low fees. I also assumed that's why so many people were vouching for it on Bitcointalk.
My next impression is they never expected nor planned to earn a lot of money from it, but suddenly the 0.003% fee turned into substantial amounts of money, and their priorities changed because of that.

Are you implying they 'changed priorities' ('a little less privacy' / 'enough privacy for most people' - Wasabi team statements) because they had made a lot of money? That greed got to them? I have no idea; I wouldn't do such speculations, but I honestly don't even understand their move from a 'greedy business perspective'.
If a wallet that never claimed anything about privacy makes a decision that negatively impacts privacy, not many will complain. But if you literally made your business about 'having the best privacy' and whatnot and then turn around 180 degrees, without a lot of PR, you can quickly destroy your business.

[LoyceV]

Are you implying they 'changed priorities'

I'm saying it's a possibility. I remember the days Zuckerberg said the users came first. Then, he got rich

If a wallet that never claimed anything about privacy makes a decision that negatively impacts privacy, not many will complain. But if you literally made your business about 'having the best privacy' and whatnot and then turn around 180 degrees, without a lot of PR, you can quickly destroy your business.

Could it be many of their users don't even know and simply believe the privacy claims?

[o_e_l_e_o]

I'm saying it's a possibility. I remember the days Zuckerberg said the users came first. Then, he got rich

Absolutely. Remember when Brave started and was being hailed as the next big privacy browser. Then ad companies paid them to whitelist their ads, so they did. Then Facebook paid them to let all their trackers through, so they did. Then Binance paid them to inject their code in to the browser, so they did. As soon as most people get offered money, then morals and principles quickly go out the window.

Could it be many of their users don't even know and simply believe the privacy claims?

Absolutely. They make deliberately misleading statements on their documentation which suggests that they are still anti-censorship, while making absolutely no mention whatsoever of their blacklists. They outright lie, such as the statement that they have "solved fungibility". Their website makes absolutely no mention anywhere of censorship, blacklists, blockchain analysis, etc. It is a deliberate campaign of misinformation to keep their users in the dark about what they are actually doing.

[DireWolfM14]

It's possible that some Wasabi developers do believe in fungibility and oppose blacklists, but are overruled by a slight majority within the team. I have no idea, I'm just trying to give them a little 'benefit of the doubt' and making sense of this mess they've put themselves in. At the same time, I'm the first to point out issues and as such created the 24 questions and this whole thread, of course.

I'm not sure it's as innocent as you describe it, but I do hope I'm wrong.  I'm starting to grow a significant amount of distrust for this development team, and their continued use of the word "fungibility" is starting to sound calculated and sinister.  Could it be that they are trying to drive a narrative by saying obviously ignorant things like "fungibility is an essential property of good money"?  What is bad money?  If it's money it's fungible regardless of how many strippers' thongs it has visited or lines of coke it has ducted.  It's neither good nor bad, it's just money.

Bitcoin is fungible with or without Wasabi.  They are not assisting in any of the fungibility properties of bitcoin but blacklisting can only hurt.  They must know this.  I cannot reconcile the idea that they are so skilled as developers, yet so ignorant to not understand the meaning fungibility.

I'm saying it's a possibility. I remember the days Zuckerberg said the users came first. Then, he got rich

Absolutely. Remember when Brave started and was being hailed as the next big privacy browser. Then ad companies paid them to whitelist their ads, so they did. Then Facebook paid them to let all their trackers through, so they did. Then Binance paid them to inject their code in to the browser, so they did. As soon as most people get offered money, then morals and principles quickly go out the window.

Brave is a good example, but to this day I don't know if they truly valued integrity at first, or if was nothing more than a brilliant marketing ploy.

Could it be many of their users don't even know and simply believe the privacy claims?

Absolutely. They make deliberately misleading statements on their documentation which suggests that they are still anti-censorship, while making absolutely no mention whatsoever of their blacklists. They outright lie, such as the statement that they have "solved fungibility". Their website makes absolutely no mention anywhere of censorship, blacklists, blockchain analysis, etc. It is a deliberate campaign of misinformation to keep their users in the dark about what they are actually doing.

Agreed, they certainly aren't making a big deal about blacklisting, nor making much of an effort to address the criticism.  I think they're hoping that if they just ignore it (us) the whole thing will just go away.  Even in the blogpost where they spilled the beans, they gaslight the ramifications by describing it as a "debate" and "for the greater good."  I'm sure they're banking on the fact that many people won't know about the blacklist, and that many of those who do won't understand the greater implications.  Just look at the other posts on their blog, they still portray themselves as the authority on private use of bitcoin.

[n0nce]

Could it be many of their users don't even know and simply believe the privacy claims?

Absolutely. They make deliberately misleading statements on their documentation which suggests that they are still anti-censorship, while making absolutely no mention whatsoever of their blacklists. They outright lie, such as the statement that they have "solved fungibility". Their website makes absolutely no mention anywhere of censorship, blacklists, blockchain analysis, etc. It is a deliberate campaign of misinformation to keep their users in the dark about what they are actually doing.

Regarding discrepancy between actions and 'their documentation', this was part of the 24 questions. Their reply probably means that what was written in docs.wasabiwallet.io, is not valid anymore.

9. This statement on your website also strongly implies you are not censoring users, which you now clearly are doing.

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.

In general, it seems like you intentionally never changed the website until the latest redesign (which didn't affect the docs page quoted here, though). Why was there so little communication around this huge update and everything kept so 'on the low'? (big credit to o_e_l_e_o for digging these out)

Answer: What you are looking at is 1.0 documentation. 2.0 docs are still under construction. Blacklisting is still not implemented.

I guess if they're being honest, documentation of Wasabi 2.0 will not include statements such as the deliberately misleading statements you mentioned, anymore.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Even in the blogpost where they spilled the beans, they gaslight the ramifications by describing it as a "debate" and "for the greater good."

Such gaslighting is a recurring theme:

It does not come at the cost of privacy of our users and we do care about them. That's exactly why we introduced blacklisting: so we can continue to operate and users can still have privacy using Bitcoin. If we wouldn't care about our users, then we would not have sacrificed our reputation, just shut down the service and nobody would have got any privacy.

Right. "We are spying on you and censoring you because we care." What kind of gaslighting bullshit is this?

I guess if they're being honest, documentation of Wasabi 2.0 will not include statements such as the deliberately misleading statements you mentioned, anymore.

How convenient that the docs for 2.0 have been under construction this whole time! The one thing which will apparently make it clear that they are blacklisting, anti-privacy, and pro-censorship, but it just happens to not be finished yet. Plenty of time to write nonsense blog posts like the one I linked to earlier or launch their own spyware TikTok channel, but no time to write their official documentation. Oh well. But let's have a quick look at what is included so far. Specifically, this page: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WasabiDoc/blob/docs-2.0/docs/why-wasabi/TransactionSurveillanceCompanies.md

Privacy invasions can lead to damaging or destroying bitcoin fungibility. 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.

There appears to be no recourse for someone affected by false positive identification of exchange-disapproved transaction history. This could result in them wrongly having their coins confiscated.

Transaction surveillance company market themselves as a tool for finding "bad guys", but it's unclear which jurisdiction that applies to. For example, could one day the government of China pressure those companies into marking certain coins as "bad" because they belong to users who disagree with Chinese government policy?

Transaction surveillance companies rely on heuristics or assumptions when analyzing the blockchain. These heuristics are sometimes not true, for example, the common-input-ownership heuristic is broken by CoinJoin.

Wow. They make some very good arguments about why taint is complete nonsense and blockchain analysis companies are not to be trusted. Still no mention anywhere of the fact that they do the exact opposite of all of this and use your coinjoin fees to pay for blockchain analysis firms to spy on you. The bottom of the page even includes a list of blockchain analysis companies. Perhaps we could open a GitHub issue and ask them to put an asterisk next to the ones they work with.

[DireWolfM14]

Unfortunately, Bisq's twitter admin has stepped into this drama.  Yesterday he retweeted a post that disparaged Samourai Wallet, and many interpreted that as support for Wasabi.  Today he justified his post, which I believe has since been taken down.

The premise of the original tweet is that Samourai/Whirlpool is the FED.  I mean, of course they are.  They're all FED, and if you're smart you'll assume the same.  In fact, the only centralized mixing service that is certainly not FED is Chipmixer.  And I'm not saying that because I'm wearing their signature.  I'm wearing their signature because I believe that.  If you don't believe me, just google "chipmixer" and witness all the scams that pop up in it's place.  That would never happen if they were FED.

Now, I don't want to come off like a right-wing, tinfoil capped nutjob, but the truth is I'm treading a thin line.  Just because I have nothing to hide from the fed doesn't mean I want them to know everything about me.  I have nothing to hide from the FED today, but, I'm old enough to remember and never forget 1994 when the fed turned millions of Americans into criminals as they slept.  They did it with firearms, they can do it with bitcoin.  Your freedom is a threat.

[NotATether]

Unfortunately, Bisq's twitter admin has stepped into this drama.  Yesterday he retweeted a post that disparaged Samourai Wallet, and many interpreted that as support for Wasabi.  Today he justified his post, which I believe has since been taken down.

It appears as though the rest of the world (outside of this forum) is less and less concerned about wasabi's blacklisting and more concerned with whatether conjencture they made up against Samourai.

[Mate2237]

At first I was confused on zkSNACKs blacklisting but as you explained it in detail I came to understand it. But why it is that Wasabi Wallet is only for desktop computer? They would have Developed Android version so that those who are not using desktop can use phone for although the idea is best known for them.

[NotATether]

At first I was confused on zkSNACKs blacklisting but as you explained it in detail I came to understand it. But why it is that Wasabi Wallet is only for desktop computer? They would have Developed Android version so that those who are not using desktop can use phone for although the idea is best known for them.

The platform wouldn't matter as far as blacklisting is concerned - it's implemented server-side in the coordinator, so all builds would have to access it by default anyway.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Yesterday he retweeted a post that disparaged Samourai Wallet, and many interpreted that as support for Wasabi.

I don't take it as an endorsement of Wasabi, rather just a shot at Samourai. There has never been any love lost between Samourai and Bisq. For example, here's Samourai taking shots at Bisq a year ago: https://nitter.it/samouraiwallet/status/1388095210912092160

The premise of the original tweet is that Samourai/Whirlpool is the FED.  I mean, of course they are.

Samourai are maybe spying on you, but you can still achieve privacy by running your own server. Wasabi are provably spying on you, and there is nothing you can do about it. I wouldn't use either.

Meanwhile, here is nopara73 claiming responsibility for the fact that coin control is in use today, while also saying that you are all too stupid to use it and therefore shouldn't have it: https://teddit.net/r/WasabiWallet/comments/w8r7pw/why_i_wont_be_using_v2_of_wasabi_after_having_it/ihtvm0p/. He also slips in a quick reminder that they are only bastion of hope for bitcoin fungibility, despite actively treating bitcoin as non-fungible. Excuse me while I roll my eyes so hard I have to go lie down.

[DireWolfM14]

Samourai are maybe spying on you, but you can still achieve privacy by running your own server. Wasabi are provably spying on you, and there is nothing you can do about it. I wouldn't use either.

Yeah, the SPV server issue is easily resolved by running your own instance of bitcoin core or a node with an Electrum server.  Samourai can spy on you if you use their servers, but how can we insure they're not spying on you address by address when using Whirlpool?  I may not be as technically sophisticated as many here, but I don't see how we can ensure that's not the case.

Meanwhile, here is nopara73 claiming responsibility for the fact that coin control is in use today, while also saying that you are all too stupid to use it and therefore shouldn't have it: https://teddit.net/r/WasabiWallet/comments/w8r7pw/why_i_wont_be_using_v2_of_wasabi_after_having_it/ihtvm0p/. He also slips in a quick reminder that they are only bastion of hope for bitcoin fungibility, despite actively treating bitcoin as non-fungible. Excuse me while I roll my eyes so hard I have to go lie down.

Thanks for the link.  I can't believe the arrogance of that post, just wow.  "Bitcoin Core and Electrum had coin control before, but I informed the world how cool coin control is."  Here's a comment from that post that has me laughing out loud and fuming at the same time:

The thing is, making Bitcoin fungible is not an easy task and all odds are against us.

@nopara73, get a grip, dude.  You're not making bitcoin fungible any more than you're making the US dollar fungible.  You don't have that kind of clout, so stop making a fool of yourself by saying asinine shit like that.  Bitcoin is fungible with or without you, and you're not helping it's fungibility at all.  Quite the contrary, your shenanigans can only hurt.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I may not be as technically sophisticated as many here, but I don't see how we can ensure that's not the case.

It uses something known as a Chaumian coordinator (as does Wasabi). Each participant in the coinjoin connects to the coordinator via Tor, and supplies the coordinator with their inputs as well as their blinded outputs. The coordinator signs these blinded outputs and returns them to the participants. The participants then unblind their outputs and reconnect to the coordinator via a new identity, and then send back the now unblinded outputs. The coordinator can verify these unblinded outputs are correct since they still carry the correct signature the coordinator gave them earlier. The coordinator now has all the inputs and all the outputs, but cannot match them up.

It would obviously be possible to introduce a vulnerability in this process, but given that both wallets are open source, any vulnerability should get picked up and revealed.

Bitcoin is fungible with or without you, and you're not helping it's fungibility at all.  Quite the contrary, your shenanigans can only hurt.

Call me crazy, but here's an idea to promote bitcoin fungibility: Don't use coinjoin fees to directly fund blockchain analysis firms.

[dkbit98]

Unfortunately, Bisq's twitter admin has stepped into this drama.  Yesterday he retweeted a post that disparaged Samourai Wallet, and many interpreted that as support for Wasabi.  Today he justified his post, which I believe has since been taken down.

I don't want to ruin day to anyone but I think that some people working on Bisq exchange are in the same time working on new Wasabi wallet.
That could have good and bad sides depending how things go in future with regulations and blacklisting transactions.
I can't be 100% about this connections and I don't have any evidence for this claims, it's all speculation.

If you don't believe me, just google "chipmixer" and witness all the scams that pop up in it's place.  That would never happen if they were FED.

Scammers don't really care who is the fed and who isn't, they are cloning any popular service because they can profit from this and steal money.
I don't know how can you be so sure that Samourai/Whirlpool or anything else is a part of fed or some other government agency, especially if something is open source.
They usually like to make things closed source like it was done in the case with honeypot Anom smartphones with Arcane OS that was sold to criminals for ''secure communication''.

Wasabi are provably spying on you, and there is nothing you can do about it. I wouldn't use either.

I don't think this statement is true, at least not for now, until proven differently.
Wasabi is not spying on you and with Tor enabled they don't even know your real IP address.
Centralized exchanges are spying people for sure. they are blacklisting, freezing coins, closing accounts, and most people are still using them.

[n0nce]

[...]
Wow. They make some very good arguments about why taint is complete nonsense and blockchain analysis companies are not to be trusted. Still no mention anywhere of the fact that they do the exact opposite of all of this and use your coinjoin fees to pay for blockchain analysis firms to spy on you. The bottom of the page even includes a list of blockchain analysis companies. Perhaps we could open a GitHub issue and ask them to put an asterisk next to the ones they work with.

I'm doing my best attempt at devil's advocate here and trying to construct a scenario that in their eyes might look 'benign' / 'for the users': (objections in parentheses)

• If your input is rejected from Wasabi CoinJoin, at least it doesn't get confiscated. So you can still figure out what to do with it. (Not sure how though, without coin control)
• If your input was able to be mixed, you have pretty high probability of not getting it confiscated from a centralized exchange. (Easier to just avoid CEX)
• Chain analysis company can't spy due to not having a link between Bitcoin address and identity / IP / KYC.

Another idea:

• Blacklist will never be activated / implemented, no information will ever be shared with chain analysis companies. (No way for users to verify this is happening or not)
• Official statement was just a regulatory obligation / something to 'point to' if someone questions them about AML.
• Then they can say 'oh we absolutely don't work with criminals by checking all UTXOs against a blacklist' while actually not doing any of it. (No way for users to verify this is happening or not)

I would support such a GitHub issue; sincerity and openness is important..

Unfortunately, Bisq's twitter admin has stepped into this drama.  Yesterday he retweeted a post that disparaged Samourai Wallet, and many interpreted that as support for Wasabi.  Today he justified his post, which I believe has since been taken down.

It appears as though the rest of the world (outside of this forum) is less and less concerned about wasabi's blacklisting and more concerned with whatether conjencture they made up against Samourai.

I believe that's usual social media drama; all bullshit and waste of time - that's why I stay away from it.

If you don't believe me, just google "chipmixer" and witness all the scams that pop up in it's place.  That would never happen if they were FED.

Scammers don't really care who is the fed and who isn't, they are cloning any popular service because they can profit from this and steal money.
I don't know how can you be so sure that Samourai/Whirlpool or anything else is a part of fed or some other government agency, especially if something is open source.

This is a very risky assumption... Take Ghidra as an example; it's open-source, too... https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/
As for whether Samourai, Wasabi or ChipMixer are part of the FED; I don't think there's any way for anyone to know for sure.

[witcher_sense]

I'm doing my best attempt at devil's advocate here and trying to construct a scenario that in their eyes might look 'benign' / 'for the users': (objections in parentheses)

• If your input is rejected from Wasabi CoinJoin, at least it doesn't get confiscated. So you can still figure out what to do with it. (Not sure how though, without coin control)

nopara73 claims that they didn't remove the coin control feature but rather improve it significantly by making it fully automatic and insusceptible to human error and bad privacy practices. But if you think you know better what to do with your own coins and how to spend them in the correct way, you can still choose UTXOs manually using the "secret" combination CTRL+D+C.

• If your input was able to be mixed, you have pretty high probability of not getting it confiscated from a centralized exchange. (Easier to just avoid CEX)

This statement is based on the assumption that Wasabi Wallet developers care about ordinary users and don't want them to get in trouble because them using a "privacy-oriented" wallet. But the claims made by zkSNACKS CEO here and here contradict this assumption: their main objective is to maximize revenue by flirting with regulatory bodies and institutional investors, which is why they introduced blacklisting -  to protect themselves and also rich investors at the expense of ordinary people seeking for privacy tools.

• Chain analysis company can't spy due to not having a link between Bitcoin address and identity / IP / KYC.

If they couldn't spy, why would they work with people controlling a mixing coordinator? I think that a CoinJoin coordinator requesting the information about particular UTXOs is in itself valuable information that may help chain surveillance firms deanonymize at least some transactions.

Stating you have solved fungibility while enforcing non-fungibility is an outright lie, regardless of personal opinions.

Let us call it "permissioned" fungibility or "selective" fungibility - the coins that got through Wasabi Wallet filter should now be considered fungible because their previous history is unknown or uncertain. All other coins, including those coming from competitors such as Whirlpool, are obviously not.

[dkbit98]

This is a very risky assumption... Take Ghidra as an example; it's open-source, too... https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/
As for whether Samourai, Wasabi or ChipMixer are part of the FED; I don't think there's any way for anyone to know for sure.

I never said this is impossible, we know open source Tor is made by them, and some people even claimed that Bitcoin was a government agency project.
I can't be sure about anything this days and I am not trusting anything with 100%, open source or not.

nopara73 claims that they didn't remove the coin control feature but rather improve it significantly by making it fully automatic and insusceptible to human error and bad privacy practices. But if you think you know better what to do with your own coins and how to spend them in the correct way, you can still choose UTXOs manually using the "secret" combination CTRL+D+C.

Did you try using this secret combination to enable coin control in Wasabi wallet?
This is probably working in wiNd0ws and opening new window, but I am not sure if same combination is used in Linux and Mac os.
I know most of the people don't even use coin control, but more advanced users can't imagine a good wallet that don't have this option.

[n0nce]

I'm doing my best attempt at devil's advocate here and trying to construct a scenario that in their eyes might look 'benign' / 'for the users': (objections in parentheses)

• If your input is rejected from Wasabi CoinJoin, at least it doesn't get confiscated. So you can still figure out what to do with it. (Not sure how though, without coin control)

nopara73 claims that they didn't remove the coin control feature but rather improve it significantly by making it fully automatic and insusceptible to human error and bad privacy practices. But if you think you know better what to do with your own coins and how to spend them in the correct way, you can still choose UTXOs manually using the "secret" combination CTRL+D+C.

If the automatic coin control really works as well as doing it manually, I'm sure it's a great feature for the large amount of people that doesn't know anything about coin control and doesn't use it.
But it shouldn't be made this difficult to enable manual coin control. I would like to see a GUI toggle right up front in the setup screen to be honest. And easy to find afterwards.

I'm not exactly sure if you get a 'preview' before you sign and broadcast a transaction in Wasabi, but it's something Sparrow does and that I really appreciate. With such a view, I may be comfortable to use auto coin control, since I could quickly check myself that it didn't mess anything up and indeed did not jumble UTXOs together or any other weird stuff that I don't like.


[source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSHyKTigNQY]

• Chain analysis company can't spy due to not having a link between Bitcoin address and identity / IP / KYC.

If they couldn't spy, why would they work with people controlling a mixing coordinator? I think that a CoinJoin coordinator requesting the information about particular UTXOs is in itself valuable information that may help chain surveillance firms deanonymize at least some transactions.

First of all, their definition of spying may be different from ours; for them as long as there is no IP attached to a UTXO (due to using Tor) they probably believe no spying is possible.
And regarding what the chainalysis company gets from the deal, well, they get paid right. So even if they gained nothing in terms of information, they would get cash money from Wasabi / zkSNACKs.

Stating you have solved fungibility while enforcing non-fungibility is an outright lie, regardless of personal opinions.

Let us call it "permissioned" fungibility or "selective" fungibility - the coins that got through Wasabi Wallet filter should now be considered fungible because their previous history is unknown or uncertain. All other coins, including those coming from competitors such as Whirlpool, are obviously not.

Nope, this doesn't work. The moment you start making distinctions, you introduced non-fungibility. Either something is fungible or it is not. It can't be 'a little' fungible.

[NotATether]

This is a very risky assumption... Take Ghidra as an example; it's open-source, too... https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/

So apparently the NSA is a collective of "Java boffins" with the exception of Ghidra, which is good on paper, but for reversing Win32 programs, IDA is still ahead on that because it can locate the system call names from Windbg files.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Unfortunately, Bisq's twitter admin has stepped into this drama.

Quick update on this: https://nitter.it/bisq_network/status/1552708493877989377. Kudos to Bisq for jumping on this so quickly. And some of the reactions from the Samourai guys over a single tweet are pretty childish and pathetic.

Wasabi is not spying on you and with Tor enabled they don't even know your real IP address.
Centralized exchanges are spying people for sure. they are blacklisting, freezing coins, closing accounts, and most people are still using them.

You don't need an IP address to spy on someone. And Wasabi have already clearly stated that they are/will be paying blockchain analysis companies to analyze your UTXOs and tell them the history of each and every one of them. If that's not spying then I don't know what is.

Let us call it "permissioned" fungibility or "selective" fungibility - the coins that got through Wasabi Wallet filter should now be considered fungible because their previous history is unknown or uncertain. All other coins, including those coming from competitors such as Whirlpool, are obviously not.

It certainly seems like this is the narrative they are trying to push; that they are the sole arbitrators of what is and is not fungible. As I said previously, as far as I am concerned this viewpoint is actively malicious.

[DireWolfM14]

Kudos to Bisq for jumping on this so quickly.

Yeah, those tweets made a big stink on bisk.chat's Growth room.  Most people were not happy to see the twitter contributor step into that drama.  

And some of the reactions from the Samourai guys over a single tweet are pretty childish and pathetic.

That is childish and pathetic.  For the same reasons that we wouldn't judge bisq on the tweets of one rogue intern, it's best not to demonize Samourai Wallet for that tweet.  I would advise the Samourai development team to take a cue from Bisq on this one, and consider changing their twitter tactics.

Wasabi is not spying on you and with Tor enabled they don't even know your real IP address.
Centralized exchanges are spying people for sure. they are blacklisting, freezing coins, closing accounts, and most people are still using them.

You don't need an IP address to spy on someone. And Wasabi have already clearly stated that they are/will be paying blockchain analysis companies to analyze your UTXOs and tell them the history of each and every one of them. If that's not spying then I don't know what is.

Regardless of what you call it, what Wasabi is doing isn't good for bitcoin.  Even if it isn't spying in a way to to associate coins with a specific individual, it is gathering intelligence in an attempt to devalue bitcoin.  How the Wasabi developers aren't seeing this is mind boggling, and leaves me no choice but to agree with this:

As I said previously, as far as I am concerned this viewpoint is actively malicious.

Anyway, it seems I've been coming to the defense of definitions quite frequently as of late:

spy (verb)
spied; spying

Definition of spy (Entry 1 of 2)

transitive verb
1: to watch secretly usually for hostile purposes
2: to catch sight of : SEE
3: to search or look for intensively —usually used with out
   spy out places fit for vending … goods
   — S. E. Morison

intransitive verb
1: to observe or search for something : LOOK
2: to watch secretly as a spy

spy (noun)
plural: spies

Definition of spy (Entry 2 of 2)
1: one that spies:
a: one who keeps secret watch on a person or thing to obtain information
b: a person employed by one nation to secretly convey classified information of strategic importance to another nation
   also : a person who conveys the trade secrets of one company to another
2: an act of spying

[o_e_l_e_o]

For the same reasons that we wouldn't judge bisq on the tweets of one rogue intern, it's best not to demonize Samourai Wallet for that tweet.

True, but Bisq reacted to the tweet in question, removed it, apologized, and revoked the privileges of the person responsible, all within 24 hours. Samourai have a long history of repeatedly tweeting stuff like this, so it is clear that their core team approve of this kind of behavior.

They could easily take the high road. All they need to do whenever they are attacked by Wasabi is remind everyone that Wasabi are anti-privacy and pro-censorship, and no one in their right mind should be using them. Name calling doesn't help them.

How the Wasabi developers aren't seeing this is mind boggling, and leaves me no choice but to agree with this:

As I said previously, as far as I am concerned this viewpoint is actively malicious.

Absolutely. You could maybe argue that blacklisting only in order to ensure their survival would just be hopelessly misguided, but the fact that there is no law forcing them to do it, attacking every other privacy project in existence, trying to frame themselves as the saviors of both fungibility and bitcoin, trying to gaslight everyone in to thinking that censorship is somehow good for them, even hiding the very fact they are blacklisting from their website, and so on, means that this "hopelessly misguided" position cannot be logically defended. What they are doing is actively malicious and an attack on bitcoin.

On another note, it does seem that the community constantly and repeatedly calling out their censorship is having a significant affect on Wasabi's volume: https://www.bitcoinkpis.com/privacy
From 900 BTC a week 2 months ago, has now steadily fallen down to a couple of hundred BTC a week.

[dkbit98]

Quick update on this: https://nitter.it/bisq_network/status/1552708493877989377. Kudos to Bisq for jumping on this so quickly. And some of the reactions from the Samourai guys over a single tweet are pretty childish and pathetic.

This makes you wonder who is actually behind all those crypto twitter profiles, and I remember there was issue with one of bitcoin twitter accounts before.
I know that politicians are paying for people to post in public whatever they send them, so it could be something like this in crypto space.

You don't need an IP address to spy on someone. And Wasabi have already clearly stated that they are/will be paying blockchain analysis companies to analyze your UTXOs and tell them the history of each and every one of them. If that's not spying then I don't know what is.

Fact is they are not blocking anything now, and they never said what is this mysterious analytics company.
Until you show me some proof that someone was blocked and blacklisted for using Wasabi I will consider this to be speculation, and I will be the first to support you.
I will not throw any stones in advance, and I criticized some of Wasabi changes in my review.

[n0nce]

On another note, it does seem that the community constantly and repeatedly calling out their censorship is having a significant affect on Wasabi's volume: https://www.bitcoinkpis.com/privacy
From 900 BTC a week 2 months ago, has now steadily fallen down to a couple of hundred BTC a week.

That's very interesting! Neither JoinMarket, nor Samourai had such a drop. I'm wondering however if maybe the tool is only picking up Wasabi 1.x CoinJoins?

You don't need an IP address to spy on someone. And Wasabi have already clearly stated that they are/will be paying blockchain analysis companies to analyze your UTXOs and tell them the history of each and every one of them. If that's not spying then I don't know what is.

Fact is they are not blocking anything now, and they never said what is this mysterious analytics company.
Until you show me some proof that someone was blocked and blacklisted for using Wasabi I will consider this to be speculation, and I will be the first to support you.
I will not throw any stones in advance, and I criticized some of Wasabi changes in my review.

Only because we don't know of any cases in which it has already happened doesn't make it any better, for me.

By announcing their blacklist, they are giving themselves the ability to do it whenever they want, and defended that stance over and over, such as in the 24 questions for which I created this thread. They stand by their decision; it's a bit like waiting for a kid who announced a school shooting to actually do it instead of taking it seriously, warning everyone and implementing security measures at that school or moving your children to a different school - analogously, move to a different wallet / privacy solution.

The announcement and answers like these should be 'proof' enough that they have a very different understanding of Bitcoin's future, no? The below statement confirms sufficiently that they believe as long as blacklisting and censoring doesn't come from a government, it shouldn't be called censorship and that it just falls under the category of 'freedom'.

16. We believe that starting censoring some users opens the door to censoring anybody and everybody. Would you agree with this?

Again: Bitcoin is either censorship resistant, or it isn't. You cannot pick and choose who it is censorship resistant for. If you, like Wasabi, start censoring some users, then you open the door to censoring anybody and everybody

Answer: Luckily we are not making changes to Bitcoin protocol but to our very own server. Every Bitcoin node has the right to choose which transactions it includes in its mempool or relays. Every node has blacklists for nodes that behave badly for one reason or another. ZkSNACKs coordinator has always banned the coins of misbehaving users, as that’s part of the DoS protection. None of these are censorship, as only a government can do such a thing. Everything else is personal preference under the freedom of association.

7. Your website still says:

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.

This stands in direct contrast to your blacklisting update. Has your opinion on blacklists changed or how is this view compatible with providing a Bitcoin anonymity service that only allows certain UTXOs to use it?

Answer: Hopefully all users, wallets and services won't have to “consult a centralized blacklist before accepting bitcoin”. But it’s their choice if they want to discriminate against a certain coin, user or service. That’s part of the freedom of association if it's their decision. If this would be mandated by authority, it would be bad. But that’s not the case in our blacklisting, like I explained in the first answer.

We are implementing our own blacklist, as we dont care to become martyrs by serving thieves. We want to keep building the best privacy tools for bitcoiners to take advantage of. Instead of social justice warrioring on behalf of politicians, shitcoiners and other thieves, people should be grateful for the tools that zkSNACKs has built and take advantage of the situation by capturing the market. Instead of all the whining we’re hearing.

Of course, everyone is free to do business with whomever they want, but if I have good money, I can indeed spend it everywhere and get it anywhere. If in Bitcoin, it will become normal practice to spy (I will get to this later) on your customers before they can do business with you, Bitcoin loses its main value proposition (usability as money, anywhere, anytime, anyone). So my answer would be something like: sure, you're free to do that; you're also free to destroy other projects that are important for the world, or e.g. deliberately accelerate climate change by leaving your car running all day and night. Or just buying a lot of gasoline every day and burning it for fun. You are free to do so - but I don't think you should do it if you care about what you're harming (Bitcoin / environment).
In most countries, you are also free to just kill your pets with a pocket knife or even more cruel ways without punishment; this freedom is not really a good reason to actually do it in my opinion.

Regarding the spying: Sure, they might not collect IP addresses, fingerprints or other PII and not link it to UTXOs; they might not even link UTXOs together and do everything with zero-knowledge cryptography. However, let's think about fiat world:
Imagine you enter my restaurant and before I decide if you're allowed to get food, I am going to call the central bank and pass them the serial numbers of your bank notes. If they say they were used in a crime, I will send you back home as long as you don't bring me new bank notes.

Note how (1) You would most certainly call this a form of spying (into what I do with my money; what I may have done with it in the past and from whom I may have received it), and (2) you can just come back with other bank notes and sit down. How does this make sense? I thought they don't want to do business with criminals. But if the criminals come back with 'non-tainted' UTXOs, they will do business with them? Or is your account suspended when you submit one 'criminal tainted' UTXO? But there are no accounts.. So are they going to block your IP? No, they don't track IPs...
(3) You will not be prosecuted, even though apparently being an official criminal, and (4) the money is not returned to the legitimate owner from whom you have supposedly officially stolen it.

So either they track, to make sure not to do business with criminals or even pedophiles (more later), or they genuinely don't track and don't know anything about their users, which means after someone sends one of their 'tainted pedo UTXOs' and they got denied, they can just swap them with someone else or try other UTXOs and Wasabi will accept them; effectively still having made business with the pedophile.

1. Who is your target audience / target user demographic? Due to the recent changes, we must assume it's people who are interested in mixing coins, while at the same time not having a problem with the mixer discriminating between UTXOs. Mixing with a blacklist seems like an oxymoron to us and we struggle to see the use case.

Answer: Our target audience is Bitcoiners.
[...]
We are exercising our right as a company to choose not to serve those people who could get us in trouble and the ones whom we wouldn’t want to support for ethical reasons. This includes known thieves like politicians.

Ostracization is, in our opinion, a libertarian way to react to the problems that have occured because of these high profile users. We are still not collecting data about our users nor are we revealing anything new to chain analysis companies. The blacklisting has no effect on users' privacy. If you knew a pedophile/murderer was eating at your restaurant, would you serve him? Especially if serving him gets you in trouble? Basically, are you willing to sacrifice yourself and your restaurant for him?

Their very first answer states that as restaurant owners, they wouldn't want to serve a pedophile. Besides the fact that this argument is borderline an 'argumentum ad passiones' (appeal to emotion) and I'd obviously hate doing business with anyone who has such thoughts and ideas, here's a newsflash: pedophiles are dining at restaurants and shopping in malls every single day, since they have well-working money (cash) that is untraceable not traced to e.g. their purchases of whatever fucked up media they might be buying online.
Would you deem it a sensible idea to call everyone's bank and ask if they have had suspicious activity, such as something hinting at them buying fucked up media online, before allowing them to eat at your restaurant? Or if the money has merely passed hands of a known pedophile? I don't think people will be excited being suspected of doing such atrocities just because they wanted to have dinner.

The reason blacklisting is wrong is a similar reason mass surveillance is wrong. It's not a new debate. You can't just label everyone guilty until proven wrong.

[LoyceV]

Their very first answer states that as restaurant owners, they wouldn't want to serve a pedophile. Besides the fact that this argument is borderline an 'argumentum ad passiones' (appeal to emotion) and I'd obviously hate doing business with anyone who has such thoughts and ideas, here's a newsflash: pedophiles are dining at restaurants and shopping in malls every single day, since they have well-working money (cash) that is untraceable not traced

Here's a more fundamental thought: pedophiles and murders have to eat! If we ban them from restaurants, we can't allow them in supermarkets either, right? And we won't allow them to grow their own food, so let's starve them to death? Some sort of mob mentality slow death sentence? Somehow it sounds less noble this way than just rejecting them from your restaurant.

The reason blacklisting is wrong is a similar reason mass surveillance is wrong. It's not a new debate. You can't just label everyone guilty until proven wrong.

The whole concept of "taint" is a huge sliding scale. Being gay is illegal in some countries, let's reject them too! And anyone who had sex before marriage must burn in hell, right? And the guy who was speeding yesterday, you wouldn't want to be associated with that wreckless behaviour, right? And freshly mined Bitcoins? Those are the worst of all, let's not associate ourselves with the environmental impact fresh Bitcoins have.
If you look deep enough, you'll find a reason to taint every piece of Bitcoin out there. Mission accomplished, Bitcoin is dead.

Would you deem it a sensible idea to call everyone's bank and ask if they have had suspicious activity, such as something hinting at them buying fucked up media online, before allowing them to eat at your restaurant? Or if the money has merely passed hands of a known pedophile?

You don't even have to call the bank, I doubt there's even a bank on the planet that hasn't processed money from criminals. If you have a bank account, you must be a criminal. Let's not only cancel Bitcoin, let's cancel all money.

I can't really help the sarcasm today.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Until you show me some proof that someone was blocked and blacklisted for using Wasabi I will consider this to be speculation, and I will be the first to support you.

Well, I'm not going to volunteer to pay Wasabi to spy on me, so I'm afraid we'll have to wait for reports from elsewhere. But as n0nce has pointed out, the announcement is bad enough. It shows quite clearly that their priorities, their morals, their ethos, does not lie with privacy, but with profits. They will sell out anything, including what was once one of their core priniciples.

When wallets announced their support for AOPP, we didn't all sit around and wait for them to implement it before complaining and getting them to reverse their decisions. When certainly payment processors announced they would start requiring KYC from all users, we didn't sit around and wait for them to implement it before warning everyone to switch to different processors. When BCashers announced they were going to fork bitcoin and launch a shitcoin, we didn't wait around for it to happen before warning everyone about said shitcoin. I don't see why Wasabi would be any different. They have clearly and repeatedly both stated their intentions and defended those decisions.

Some sort of mob mentality slow death sentence?

That's where you are wrong! We don't need a mob mentality when we have Wasabi and their blockchain analysis buddies passing down the rules from on high as to which bitcoin can and cannot be used. We can just consult with them and their surely infallible although completely secret blacklist.

[n0nce]

The reason blacklisting is wrong is a similar reason mass surveillance is wrong. It's not a new debate. You can't just label everyone guilty until proven wrong.

The whole concept of "taint" is a huge sliding scale. Being gay is illegal in some countries, let's reject them too! And anyone who had sex before marriage must burn in hell, right? And the guy who was speeding yesterday, you wouldn't want to be associated with that wreckless behaviour, right? And freshly mined Bitcoins? Those are the worst of all, let's not associate ourselves with the environmental impact fresh Bitcoins have.
If you look deep enough, you'll find a reason to taint every piece of Bitcoin out there. Mission accomplished, Bitcoin is dead.

You put it much better than me; I was also trying to say: Sure, they are free to introduce blacklisting; it's part of what Bitcoin's freedom allows you to do. But be aware that you're going to destroy Bitcoin in the process, especially if you normalize it and set a precedent that other wallets might follow.

When wallets announced their support for AOPP, we didn't all sit around and wait for them to implement it before complaining and getting them to reverse their decisions. When certainly payment processors announced they would start requiring KYC from all users, we didn't sit around and wait for them to implement it before warning everyone to switch to different processors. When BCashers announced they were going to fork bitcoin and launch a shitcoin, we didn't wait around for it to happen before warning everyone about said shitcoin. I don't see why Wasabi would be any different. They have clearly and repeatedly both stated their intentions and defended those decisions.

I do think that technical solutions are a more sure-fire way method to make sure fungibility and privacy is maintained in the future (more discussion about this currently here), but it's good to list the precedents where the 'market' / simply the public voice had significant impact on Bitcoin's development.

A few notable examples so far happened in 2017: BCash, SegWit2x, and the SegWit UASF.
And then of course AOPP (2021) - potentially, the market will this year be able to get businesses to drop blacklists and anti-fungibility implementations!
I understand that the real cypherpunk way is to just make blacklists impossible, but if simply nobody is interested in using a wallet or service that implements such thing (same with KYC), the businesses that continue do it, will just go bankrupt. It's a different way to solve the same problem.

[LoyceV]

That's where you are wrong! We don't need a mob mentality when we have Wasabi and their blockchain analysis buddies passing down the rules from on high as to which bitcoin can and cannot be used. We can just consult with them and their surely infallible although completely secret blacklist.

I am this close to registering bitcoinblacklist.wiki to offer my full blacklist of 1,024,934,280 tainted Bitcoin addresses for free to the general public! If some database guru wants to join this project, it can have a very nice search feature where anyone can enter their own Bitcoin address to confirm it is indeed tainted.
I'm still thinking about the name: TaintedBitcoin.site? Taint.center? Taint.ink (Merits for the first to get this reference)? Taint.beauty? Taint.lol? Taint.monster? Or just taint.loyce.club (that saves me from another annual domain fee).

[o_e_l_e_o]

But be aware that you're going to destroy Bitcoin in the process, especially if you normalize it and set a precedent that other wallets might follow.

Pretty sure entities like centralized exchanges and Wasabi do not care in the slightest if they are attacking bitcoin, as long as they make their profits.

I do think that technical solutions are a more sure-fire way method to make sure fungibility and privacy is maintained in the future

I don't disagree, and I've said as much in the past:

It is unrealistic to say "Well, privacy will be better once we convince everyone to stop using centralized exchanges". As much as I wish everyone would stop using centralized exchanges, the only way for that to happen is if centralized exchanges cease to exist. If we want better privacy, and if we want bitcoin to remain fungible, then we need to implement change at a protocol level.

I would absolutely support more privacy at a protocol level, I would absolutely support a technical solution with guarantees bitcoin fungibility, and indeed such protocol changes are the only way we will ever guarantee fungibility. Education of the community will never get us there, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop talking about this and trying to get as many people as possible to stop tacitly supporting taint by using services and business which enforce such nonsense.

-snip-

It would certainly be fun, but don't use the word taint. The real question is how you could put it to any sort of good use.

[LoyceV]

-snip-

It would certainly be fun, but don't use the word taint. The real question is how you could put it to any sort of good use.

Tniat.com?

I could make 2 versions: taint.loyce.club and ThereIsNoTaint.loyce.club. Both will have the exact same data. All this to make a point of course, not to support the taint BS. Or maybe TaintIsBS.something

[n0nce]

I do think that technical solutions are a more sure-fire way method to make sure fungibility and privacy is maintained in the future

I don't disagree, and I've said as much in the past:

It is unrealistic to say "Well, privacy will be better once we convince everyone to stop using centralized exchanges". As much as I wish everyone would stop using centralized exchanges, the only way for that to happen is if centralized exchanges cease to exist. If we want better privacy, and if we want bitcoin to remain fungible, then we need to implement change at a protocol level.

I would absolutely support more privacy at a protocol level, I would absolutely support a technical solution with guarantees bitcoin fungibility, and indeed such protocol changes are the only way we will ever guarantee fungibility. Education of the community will never get us there, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop talking about this and trying to get as many people as possible to stop tacitly supporting taint by using services and business which enforce such nonsense.

That's where I'd honestly appreciate a board where it's possible to discuss Altcoins which already have made such advances in privacy technology and see if whatever they came up with (1) is actually secure and private, (2) can be implemented in Bitcoin and (3) build test implementations and play around with them.
But I guess it can be done in Development & Technical discussion, since such topics would be focused on that tech's usage in Bitcoin of course.

-snip-

It would certainly be fun, but don't use the word taint. The real question is how you could put it to any sort of good use.

Tniat.com?

I could make 2 versions: taint.loyce.club and ThereIsNoTaint.loyce.club. Both will have the exact same data. All this to make a point of course, not to support the taint BS. Or maybe TaintIsBS.something

What about ismyinputclean.com?
DireWolf14 recommended 'chainhistory.com' and 'chainillumination.org'.

[DireWolfM14]

-snip-

It would certainly be fun, but don't use the word taint. The real question is how you could put it to any sort of good use.

Tniat.com?

I could make 2 versions: taint.loyce.club and ThereIsNoTaint.loyce.club. Both will have the exact same data. All this to make a point of course, not to support the taint BS. Or maybe TaintIsBS.something

There's only one positive connotation of the word "taint" and it would be impolite to discuss it here. 

[btcdragonlord]

Taint is a human psychological problem and only way of fixing it is to taint every possible bitcoin that exists, to make exchanges refuse -everything-.

The fact tha zkSNACKs had to start blacklisting is just an intensification of the effect then nation state have with its encroachment on everyones privacy.

Bitcoin Core have slow progress, everything that doesn't have money have slow progress, companies make faster progress. Protecting yourself against the attacks of the nation state is acceptable.

We also need to get some facts straight, when zkSNACKs looks at addresses on the input side, it have the right to determine who it will let into it, since it is a centralized mixer either way, but it can no longer track outputs as some of the naysayers here are saying. It also have absolutely no ability to profile its userbase, or to collect any informationa about any user who have installed up the wallet, which is still censorship resistant and have better privacy than electrum wallet with default settings. I have been personally against the implementation of the blacklisting and voiced my concerns about it to no avail, but further consideration proves it was an acceptable decision otherwise the company would have shut down and there would be one less player in the privacy space who works on actual privacy tools that contribute to the fungibility of bitcoin.

And anyone here who is so vehemently hostile to the idea of censorship to protect a company, are stuck in a fantasy land, so better wake up from that fairy tale before you end up getting 6102'd. People who have not commited any crimes in the past have went to prison. Ross Ulbricht went to prison because he was willing to show everyone that bitcoin can function as a payment mechanism for merchants and to exchange goods and services. That was not a crime he did, yet he serves double life sentence without parol plus 40 years.

The stakes have gone higher, and we on the road to freedom and privacy is not a straight one.

[PrivacyG]

And anyone here who is so vehemently hostile to the idea of censorship to protect a company, are stuck in a fantasy land, so better wake up from that fairy tale before you end up getting 6102'd. People who have not commited any crimes in the past have went to prison. Ross Ulbricht went to prison because he was willing to show everyone that bitcoin can function as a payment mechanism for merchants and to exchange goods and services. That was not a crime he did, yet he serves double life sentence without parol plus 40 years.

You know what, Google turned evil and it advertises itself as the best search engine.  I do not mind this.  They are definitely censoring and spying on all of us, but they never tell you they do not.  They do not tell you they do either, of course.

But Wasabi is censoring and telling you this is the best and only solution to fungibility and privacy.  Here is where things change drastically.  If they called themselves for what they are I would not mind it, but by actively lying and deceiving things are getting really bad in my eyes.  I understand they want a profit, they want a living.  I understand they have to protect themselves, but then were they really fighting the things they were supposedly fighting in the first place?  And if they have innocent thoughts, why deceive and lie telling us they are the only solution to whatever Bitcoin does not fix when in fact they are the exact opposite of that?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[witcher_sense]

We also need to get some facts straight, when zkSNACKs looks at addresses on the input side, it have the right to determine who it will let into it, since it is a centralized mixer either way, but it can no longer track outputs as some of the naysayers here are saying.

The problem is not that they, as a company, decided to start blacklisting transactions on the input side (they certainly have done that before, just for different reasons), but that the privacy-oriented company collaborates absolutely voluntarily with adversaries (blockchain surveillance companies) whose business model is to make revenue by infringing on privacy of bitcoin users and selling their data to corrupted governments, dictators and those who bid more. zkSNACKS is no better than those evil companies and persons because they are sponsoring censorship, and attacks on fungibility and privacy, they take money from people willing to gain some privacy and use it to destroy the privacy of others. They give privacy and fungibility with one hand (providing CoinJoin services) and take them back with the other (selling data and blacklisting undesirable inputs), making money as a centralized intermediary.

[o_e_l_e_o]

but it can no longer track outputs as some of the naysayers here are saying.

You sure? Chainanalysis can de-mix Wasabi coinjoins, and Wasabi is pretty much infamous for it's flawed address reuse and combining of coinjoined and uncoinjoined outputs.

which is still censorship resistant and have better privacy than electrum wallet with default settings.

A wallet which is actively censoring some outputs cannot be called "censorship resistant". And Electrum is not a privacy wallet and makes no claims in regards to privacy.

I have been personally against the implementation of the blacklisting and voiced my concerns about it to no avail, but further consideration proves it was an acceptable decision otherwise the company would have shut down and there would be one less player in the privacy space who works on actual privacy tools that contribute to the fungibility of bitcoin.

Wasabi are contributing nothing to fungibility. They are actively hurting it.

Given that you are a brand new account which is simply repeating all the now thoroughly debunked Wasabi talking points, I question who is actually behind this account.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin Core have slow progress, everything that doesn't have money have slow progress

Bitcoin Core has no money? Bitcoin Core is money. I get what you mean, but it isn't always about money, it's about incentive. Whoever works for improving Bitcoin Core isn't paid (although they do get donations), but there's incentive to make your own, self-controlled money work better.

People who have not commited any crimes in the past have went to prison. Ross Ulbricht went to prison because he was willing to show everyone that bitcoin can function as a payment mechanism for merchants and to exchange goods and services.

Ross is known for creating the most popular drug marketplace in the dark net. I'm sure he went to prison because of that.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Whoever works for improving Bitcoin Core isn't paid

Yes they are. There are various entities which give regular salaries to Core maintainers and devs to allow them to work on bitcoin full time. Wladimir van der Laan is employed by MIT under their Digital Currency Initiative. Pieter Wuille has been employed by Chaincode Labs and Blockstream. Blockstream also employ Andrew Chow. These companies all employ other developers too, as well as companies like Lightning Labs and Square.

Bitcoin Core development is only slow when compared to altcoins, most of which have no working product or anything of value to lose should they introduce some major bug or accidentally fork their chain.

[n0nce]

People who have not commited any crimes in the past have went to prison. Ross Ulbricht went to prison because he was willing to show everyone that bitcoin can function as a payment mechanism for merchants and to exchange goods and services.

Ross is known for creating the most popular drug marketplace in the dark net. I'm sure he went to prison because of that.

For what it's worth, Silk Road was a black market / free market, in the sense that you could sell and buy whatever you wanted. So it's right that he showed how free money (Bitcoin) allows to to freely buy and sell whatever you want, if it's fungible.
That's why it's not bad it's being brought up in this context. We need fungibility to be able to use Bitcoin as free(dom) money.

Bitcoin Core development is only slow when compared to altcoins, most of which have no working product or anything of value to lose should they introduce some major bug or accidentally fork their chain.

I'd really love to hear more about altcoins which do have a working product and real value in the cryptographic realm, new research and papers, that may be interesting for us in Bitcoin, maybe helping us solve this on-chain fungibility & privacy issue. I'm sure those must exist.

I am aware of Zerocash, Zerocoin, Zcash and Monero - anything else to have a look at?

[NotATether]

Bitcoin Core have slow progress, everything that doesn't have money have slow progress, companies make faster progress. Protecting yourself against the attacks of the nation state is acceptable.

Because when you are working on an important project you must triple-check everything to avoid introducing a single error or crash, that's why you must drive at 10mph, whereas these companies are driving a Lamborghini at 100mph and making reckless decisions like making a sharp turn at a corner and then they flip over and burst into flames, like Celcius, or any of these exchanges that are in financial trouble right now, or even those blockchains that were foolish enough to change their proof algorithm and now face an uncertain future (Hi Ethereum).


Whatever chain-anal is sending data to Wasabi wallet already has a record of the sold data and has probably coughed it up to the NSA by now and is being used to correlate wasabi users with whatever other data they have on Bitcoiners.

The end-game is to take action against individual bitcoiners and harass them legally, not to merely trace outputs back to you.

So it is important that the userbase of Bitcoin must grow in order for their databases to be flooded with so much data that they can't keep a permanent record of them, but only leave them in their stores for a few days. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore#Data_sources)

[o_e_l_e_o]

That's why it's not bad it's being brought up in this context. We need fungibility to be able to use Bitcoin as free(dom) money.

To paraphrase Antonopoulos, if you can't use your money to buy drugs, which is the second largest market in the world after food/drink and has been for thousands of years, then your money is not really money at all. There is no money in the world which you can't use to buy drugs with, and if your money can't be used in the second largest global market, then it isn't actually money.

That doesn't stop governments and their agencies using this to help promote their taint nonsense. Just don't pay any attention to the fact that the annual fiat spending on illegal drugs eclipses the entire market cap of bitcoin.

I am aware of Zerocash, Zerocoin, Zcash and Monero - anything else to have a look at?

Zerocoin and later Zerocash are the protocols which led to the creation of Zcash, not altcoins in their own right. Zcash is not private by default, requires trust in the initial set up, is ran by a centralized entity which awarded themselves 10% of all Zcash ever created, and is transitioning to proof of stake. I have seen nothing which convinces me it is better, or indeed even close to, Monero.

[dkbit98]

I am aware of Zerocash, Zerocoin, Zcash and Monero - anything else to have a look at?

I guess mimble-wimble could be considered because it's already working in Litecoin that has similar code like Bitcoin, bit it is arguably inferior to Monero.
Problem is that adding mimble-wimble or any other privacy related code change would probably create new Bitcoin fork and drama in community, but maybe that is not such a bad thing.
It could also be possible to create some second layer network that would have full privacy working on top of Bitcoin, but I didn't see anything like that getting any tracking.
You can see most privacy based altcoins on Coingecko page, but most of them are centralized junk with no real development:
https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/privacy-coins

[n0nce]

[...]
So it is important that the userbase of Bitcoin must grow in order for their databases to be flooded with so much data that they can't keep a permanent record of them, but only leave them in their stores for a few days. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore#Data_sources)

Have you run the numbers? It would be hilarious, in a way beating them at their own game by feeding them so much data that they can't process it anymore.

[...]

I am aware of Zerocash, Zerocoin, Zcash and Monero - anything else to have a look at?

Zerocoin and later Zerocash are the protocols which led to the creation of Zcash, not altcoins in their own right. Zcash is not private by default, requires trust in the initial set up, is ran by a centralized entity which awarded themselves 10% of all Zcash ever created, and is transitioning to proof of stake.

I know! Just listing protocols / concepts I've read through in my quest to find something suited for Bitcoin. I guess this could be an interesting topic for a new thread, if it doesn't exist yet.

I have seen nothing which convinces me it is better, or indeed even close to, Monero.

That's interesting. If memory saves correct, Monero is basically CoinJoining all the time, plus hiding amounts. I guess if CoinJoin can be skipped altogether, it would be even better - that's what I like about the aforementioned protocols. But it would be great to discuss in a dedicated thread.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Monero is basically CoinJoining all the time, plus hiding amounts.

Yes, but instead of CoinJoining, which creates economic problems (as it requires coordinators and other users to be online at that time), it utilizes ring signatures, and to avoid revealing the amounts, ring confidentiality. It also makes use of stealth addresses, which have a point because of the other two.

But it would be great to discuss in a dedicated thread.

We need a thread that will be technical enough to fit the Dev & Tech board, but not altcoin enough to be moved to the Altcoin Discussion (AKA, the forum's graveyard).

[n0nce]

Monero is basically CoinJoining all the time, plus hiding amounts.

Yes, but instead of CoinJoining, which creates economic problems (as it requires coordinators and other users to be online at that time), it utilizes ring signatures, and to avoid revealing the amounts, ring confidentiality. It also makes use of stealth addresses, which have a point because of the other two.

I do still believe it's glorified CoinJoin, with the shortcomings that come along with such a band-aid type solution. But glad to discuss!

But it would be great to discuss in a dedicated thread.

We need a thread that will be technical enough to fit the Dev & Tech board, but not altcoin enough to be moved to the Altcoin Discussion (AKA, the forum's graveyard).

Sure, I can get it done. Will tag y'all / reply here when ready (might be a day or two).

[o_e_l_e_o]

Have you run the numbers? It would be hilarious, in a way beating them at their own game by feeding them so much data that they can't process it anymore.

Such an approach would require encouraging tens of thousands of people to download and use Wasabi and compromise their own privacy in doing so. Not a great approach.

I do still believe it's glorified CoinJoin, with the shortcomings that come along with such a band-aid type solution. But glad to discuss!

It's a fundamentally different approach, and overcomes many of the downsides of coinjoining. Ring signatures are constructed locally and do not require any input from the ten decoys you use, meaning no centralized coordinator, no liquidity problems, and no coordinating with other users. The outcome of a Monero transaction is not a case of "this input is definitely linked to one of these outputs, but I don't know which one" as it is with coinjoins, but rather "I don't know which input is being used, and I don't know where it is going".

[DireWolfM14]

The outcome of a Monero transaction is not a case of "this input is definitely linked to one of these outputs, but I don't know which one" as it is with coinjoins, but rather "I don't know which input is being used, and I don't know where it is going".

In addition to not disclosing the origin or destination, the amount of the transaction is also obscured.  Monero is, in my opinion, the most secure and effective way to maintain privacy.  But, like anything else of course, the weakest link is the user.  The most secure privacy coin can't save you from yourself.

[NotATether]

Have you run the numbers? It would be hilarious, in a way beating them at their own game by feeding them so much data that they can't process it anymore.

Such an approach would require encouraging tens of thousands of people to download and use Wasabi and compromise their own privacy in doing so. Not a great approach.

How is that related to downloading/using Wasabi wallet though? I merely said Bitcoin users at large are being tracked - and with 18 million or so addresses used in total so far, their servers are already being kept busy but it is by no means enough addresses to overwhelm their (AWS/Azure/GCP) compute capacity.

[o_e_l_e_o]

How is that related to downloading/using Wasabi wallet though?

In that case I've misunderstood - apologies. I thought you were talking about specifically overwhelming Wasabi's capacity for blockchain analysis. Assuming they have to pay for every address they query with their blockchain analysis buddies, then this would be theoretically possible but as I mentioned would require encouraging people to voluntarily be spied on by downloading Wasabi and submitting many UTXOs to their coinjoin.

The problem with overwhelming blockchain analysis as a whole is as the bitcoin user base grows, so too does the value of bitcoin, which then in turn increases the amount of money governments and three letter agencies are willing to spend on blockchain analysis.

[DooMAD]

Have you run the numbers? It would be hilarious, in a way beating them at their own game by feeding them so much data that they can't process it anymore.

Such an approach would require encouraging tens of thousands of people to download and use Wasabi and compromise their own privacy in doing so. Not a great approach.

And on top of that, with storage being relatively cheap to purchase for big businesses, I doubt there would be enough willing participants to overload their systems anyway.  I'm also pretty sure that if the source of that information is from 2008, things have probably moved on since then and they can hold data for longer periods now.

[n0nce]

Monero is basically CoinJoining all the time, plus hiding amounts.

Yes, but instead of CoinJoining, which creates economic problems (as it requires coordinators and other users to be online at that time), it utilizes ring signatures, and to avoid revealing the amounts, ring confidentiality. It also makes use of stealth addresses, which have a point because of the other two.

But it would be great to discuss in a dedicated thread.

We need a thread that will be technical enough to fit the Dev & Tech board, but not altcoin enough to be moved to the Altcoin Discussion (AKA, the forum's graveyard).

I finally created said thread today. A big work in progress, but I hope for it to become a nice resource over time.

[Megathread] Bitcoin Layer 1 Privacy - concepts, ideas, research, discussion