Any "new" news on wasabi wallet coinjoins?

[OROBTC]

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There was a rather active set of threads on Wasabi's decision a few months ago to use a blockchain analysis company to censor coinjoin transactions.  I have not heard lately, but I do have some questions, certainly of interest to me:

1)  Has anyone been censored?  If so, and without violating OPSEC, could you provide any useful details (like size of tx, perhaps they don't censor all tx's).

2)  Some of these Wasabi coinjoins have over 200 inputs and 200 outputs.  And they have (at least) several per day.  Perhaps that would be costly to analyze all inputs??

3)  If some/most inputs go through OK, might it be better to send smaller amounts?

4)  If some/most inputs go through OK, might it be better to send amounts that other people are sending (BTC0.05, for example, is an amount I often note).

5)  Any other privacy matters that may have surfaced lately?

Thanks for any thoughts!

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[Pmalek]

The alleged "clean coins" that come out after a Wasabi Coinjoin aren's as clean as they think. More precisely, they might still not be welcome by other service providers. Maybe you have seen this post about a guy who had his account closed on Gemini because he was using Wasabi for coinjoins. That's enough to show how ridiculous this entire affair is and provides absolutely no guarantees that you won't have problems with your bitcoin on other centralized platforms.   

Even if centralized service A and B agree on what is taint or what is allowed and what isn't, you can still have a situation in which C and D don't agree with A and B and their view on taint. They have their own ruleset. And then you get E and F that agrees partially with A and B and partially with C and D, so what are you going to do then? 

[o_e_l_e_o]

Any other privacy matters that may have surfaced lately?

Wasabi has been reusing addresses, a lot, which has resulted in a lot of post-mix coins being linked back to pre-mix coins and being de-anonymized. And then the devs have been on Twitter, both defending that it is "acceptable" and also lying about it entirely.

Here's an example thread: https://nitter.it/HillebrandMax/status/1586249382097088512#m
Gets shown address reuse, claims it isn't from 2.0 and that it has never happened in 2.0. Then gets shown address reuse from 2.0, and says they've already patched it. How could they have patched it while also claiming it has never happened? They are lying somewhere.

Here's another example: https://nitter.it/ErgoBTC/status/1585671294783311872#m
And dozens more: https://nitter.it/wasabistats

But the devs don't care, because apparently some address reuse is "acceptable": https://nitter.it/HillebrandMax/status/1586321068129939456#m

[NotATether]

Any other privacy matters that may have surfaced lately?

Wasabi has been reusing addresses, a lot, which has resulted in a lot of post-mix coins being linked back to pre-mix coins and being de-anonymized. And then the devs have been on Twitter, both defending that it is "acceptable" and also lying about it entirely.

It's open-source, right? So why doesn't someone just adjust the wallet code to not re-use addresses? It's not like making a separate coordinator where you need a ton of liquidity just for it to even work.

I don't get this, the community (us) can simply fork Wasabi Wallet and remove the coordinator and this address reuse, and then perhaps hook it up to JoinMarket instead. That would be a killer privacy wallet. What's stopping everyone from going that direction? The company making Wasabi is not going to change course.

[o_e_l_e_o]

-snip-

dkbit98 brought this up in the other Wasabi thread a few months ago in regards to forking Wasabi to avoid its censorship, blacklisting, and surveillance: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5405325.msg60551095#msg60551095

My response to your question now will be the same as it was to his - there is no point. We already have a better coinjoin implementation called JoinMarket as you point out, which can be used right now. It does not spy on its users, it does not support blockchain analysis, it is not pro-censorship, it is not reusing addresses. If a user (or group of users) have the requisite knowledge and skills to contribute to a coinjoin project, why would they take a fundamentally flawed project and spend their time mitigating these flaws, when instead they could choose to just contribute to and help develop a project without such flaws?

[o_e_l_e_o]

One of reason Wasabi Wallet 1.0 become popular is due to user-friendliness while preserving few advance feature (address/UTXO selection).

There are plenty of other user friendly non full node wallets with such features. Granted, most don't provide coinjoins, but when you are also being spied on, censored, and having your addresses reused, then some might say a wallet without any of those features is better than Wasabi.

It could be replacement of JoinMarket-Qt which need full node since Wasabi Wallet 1.0 is one of very few SPV desktop wallet with strong privacy feature (Tor by default and BIP 157 implementation).

If you don't want to run a full node then I would suggest Sparrow wallet as the next best option to access coinjoins.

[DaveF]

-snip-

dkbit98 brought this up in the other Wasabi thread a few months ago in regards to forking Wasabi to avoid its censorship, blacklisting, and surveillance: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5405325.msg60551095#msg60551095

My response to your question now will be the same as it was to his - there is no point. We already have a better coinjoin implementation called JoinMarket as you point out, which can be used right now. It does not spy on its users, it does not support blockchain analysis, it is not pro-censorship, it is not reusing addresses. If a user (or group of users) have the requisite knowledge and skills to contribute to a coinjoin project, why would they take a fundamentally flawed project and spend their time mitigating these flaws, when instead they could choose to just contribute to and help develop a project without such flaws?

Makes you wonder how difficult it would be to write a wallet that can link it's back end to a bunch of different back ends that do coinjoin.
Want to use JoinMarket click this box, want to use Wasabi coordinator click this box, and so on.

Would probably be about 10 billion lines of spaghetti code to get everything working, but I think it might be a cool concept. Even have the ability to mix in one service and then dump the coins straight into another coinjoin server.

-Dave

[n0nce]

One of reason Wasabi Wallet 1.0 become popular is due to user-friendliness while preserving few advance feature (address/UTXO selection).

There are plenty of other user friendly non full node wallets with such features. Granted, most don't provide coinjoins, but when you are also being spied on, censored, and having your addresses reused, then some might say a wallet without any of those features is better than Wasabi.

Not sure how popular it is here on the forum, but I am really enjoying the combination of user-friendliness, advanced features, built-in Tor for connecting to your own Electrum server and even CoinJoin (Samourai coordinator) offered by Sparrow Wallet.

Sometimes oversimplifying a wallet, by hiding everything behind menus and menus, actually makes it more complex. For instance, fee rate selection is easier (less clicks) on Sparrow than on Electrum.

It's valid best next option for those who don't run their own Bitcoin Core/Electrum server, but average user is likely to make mistake and weaken their own privacy.

How is Wasabi without own Electrum server any better than Sparrow without own Electrum server, though?

[o_e_l_e_o]

It's valid best next option for those who don't run their own Bitcoin Core/Electrum server, but average user is likely to make mistake and weaken their own privacy.

Such is the nature of coinjoins, and indeed, bitcoin. If you are serious about privacy, then you must run your own node. As n0nce points out, without it, you are by definition relying on unknown third parties. You can either run your own node and coinjoin in a decentralized manner using JoinMarket, or you can not use your own node and depend on third parties, be that Electrum servers, Samourai servers, Wasabi servers, whomever. And if you depend on third parties, then you are subjected to their rules, spying, and censorship, as we have seen in the case of Wasabi.

By using Sparrow you are still depending on third parties, but at least those third parties aren't in cahoots with blockchain analysis companies. But if that is still too complex for the average user to use without compromising their privacy in some manner, then you can just stick to ChipMixer.

[n0nce]

It's valid best next option for those who don't run their own Bitcoin Core/Electrum server, but average user is likely to make mistake and weaken their own privacy.

How is Wasabi without own Electrum server any better than Sparrow without own Electrum server, though?

You missed the part where i mentioned Wasabi privacy feature. But take note i'm only talking about how wallet obtain transaction data, not coinjoin data.

Does Wasabi have a 'privacy feature' that addresses the SPV aspect of the wallet?
I'm not aware of such a system; actually even created a thread about this in the past with an idea and it turned out not to be an easy task to solve.

So far I don't believe any SPV wallet - 'privacy wallet' or not - has solved the issue of pulling wallet balances, transactions and publishing transactions to the blockchain, without having the Electrum server(s) that it connects to, as a central point of (privacy) failure. A Tor connection, a VPN or a CoinJoin feature doesn't change that the server at the end of the connection, knows your addresses and that they're all yours (linked to each other).

[ABCbits]

It's valid best next option for those who don't run their own Bitcoin Core/Electrum server, but average user is likely to make mistake and weaken their own privacy.

How is Wasabi without own Electrum server any better than Sparrow without own Electrum server, though?

You missed the part where i mentioned Wasabi privacy feature. But take note i'm only talking about how wallet obtain transaction data, not coinjoin data.

Does Wasabi have a 'privacy feature' that addresses the SPV aspect of the wallet?
I'm not aware of such a system; actually even created a thread about this in the past with an idea and it turned out not to be an easy task to solve.

So far I don't believe any SPV wallet - 'privacy wallet' or not - has solved the issue of pulling wallet balances, transactions and publishing transactions to the blockchain, without having the Electrum server(s) that it connects to, as a central point of (privacy) failure. A Tor connection, a VPN or a CoinJoin feature doesn't change that the server at the end of the connection, knows your addresses and that they're all yours (linked to each other).

As i mentioned on your thread, Wasabi Wallet 1.0 use BIP 157/158 (also called neutrino[1]) which basically request block filter from full node and download whole block if SPV client determine that block has relevant transaction. Additionally Wasabi Wallet 1.0 connect to random full node to ask those data[2]. It's not perfect/solve all privacy concern, but IMO it's few steps ahead compared with default Electrum wallet.

[1] https://blog.lightning.engineering/posts/2018/10/17/neutrino.html
[2] https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/why-wasabi/NetworkLevelPrivacy.html#full-node-by-default-block-filters-over-tor