Wasabi blacklisting update - open letter / 24 questions discussion thread

[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.