[ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥

[whirlwindmoney]

Time?
Especially since it has been ~1 month only and you surely haven't explored all the possible channels to market Whirlwind. And as you pointed before, people don't understand correctly how Whirlwind can be superior compared to other services.

We haven't explored any marketing channel other than Bitcointalk and the reason for that is we do not want to associate our service with illegal activity. We could easily go down that route and it would certainly be much easier to attract deposits and grow the Anonymity Set, but it'd render all our efforts to stay compliant useless. As we said since the beginning we intend to do everything in our power to operate Whirlwind in a way that doesen't give anyone specific reasons to attack us, all without compromising our users privacy even in the slightest bit. All the security precautions we took would be rendered useless too if our service ever gets sanctioned for any reason, and the service would become unusable. Sure, funds won't be lost thanks to our architecture but all our work would still be gone and together with it the only true privacy solution available on Bitcoin.

It might sound like we're continuously ranting about the way our competitors are doing things for no real reason, but you'll know why after we publish our comparison. It's important to mention that as soon as they fix the issues outlined by us and many others we will give them credit for doing so, but if they had any intention of doing so Whirlwind wouldn't exist in the first place. We noticed a clear gap in the market (before CM downfall) and that's why we decided to present our own solution. It remains to be seen if the public appreciates it or not and may the best service win in the end. We'd obviously wish to be that service but even if it doesen't happen it's fine as long as competitors step up their game and offer real privacy.

How many deposits will you  consider the Anonymity set good enough so it doesn't need an Anonymity mining campaign or doesn't need to continue it?

I would also say for an Anonymity mining campaign, the words to promote it have to be choosen wisely...
I prefer to see people know Whirlwind as a mixer, rather than people telling me "yeah, I know Whirlwind. You can invest BTC and make a few bucks for profits"

Anything over 2-3000 deposits should be decent enough for most amounts, but IMO 10,000 deposits is what we should aim for.

People will definitely recognize Whirlwind as a privacy tool and not a staking platform, even if this campaign goes ahead it would only happen for a very limited amount of time before the service becomes popular.

Open question: Let's assume we don't go ahead with the Anonymity mining campaign, what other alternative exists to grow the Anonymity set?

Time?

Agreed.

I'm glad you brought up "Time" and essentially asked us why don't we just wait for the Anonymity Set to grow naturally. There is a good reason for that, allow me to explain:

Imagine the following situation: The Anonymity Set is 291 and there are 10BTC currently in the multi-sig. If you want to deposit any amount over 5BTC from Address A and withdraw it immediately to Address B it would be pretty easy to assume where your output originated from, so essentially you cannot use the service in this case. Our personal BTC reserve size makes no difference in this case since we cannot add it all at once, it needs to be added slowly blended between other users deposits so it counts towards the Anonymity Set.

So just 'waiting' for time to pass until users decide to try our service doesen't make much sense and it can do more harm than good for our reputation because if the above example happened in real life and that person gets deanonymized, it could be perceived by the public as an issue with the way Whirlwind works rather than the obvious reason for why that happened, which is the Anonymity Set being too low and the overall volume being too low for that amount to be withdrawn immediately.

Again, our goal with this campaign is to grow the number of deposits, not necessarily the amount of BTC in the multi-sig since we will be able to add our own reserve as long as deposits happen.

For more peace of mind we could change the way the campaign works so instead of allocating a fixed amount to distribute to users every day, you receive a fixed amount at the moment of deposit and you are free to withdraw whenever afterwards keeping the reward. Maybe this is a better solution?

3.They openly encouraged the use of their service for illegal purposes.

I've been around for a while, and I've never seen this from ChipMixer. Can you provide a link to back up this claim?

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1574581/download    -    Section E as an example

By that definition, selling a funded Collectible could be considered money laundering too.

We are not lawyers but we don't think we are selling 'funded Collectibles'. In this case a no-kyc exchange is also a money laundering service? We'd prefer to stop talking about these matters as we don't have the expertise to do so, but from everything we've read we don't think that what we do can be considered illegal. Kucoin's hot wallet has a 4x worse AML score than our multi-sig

They preyed on greedy people's stupidity, I assume you don't want to compare yourself to them.

Of course not, the point was that if people entrusted their funds with that kind of people/companies with all possible red flags slapped on them, it shouldn't be too much to ask to take a small risk in order to help advance Bitcoin's privacy as a whole. And this risk basically means using the service, with or without this campaign users would still have to trust us if they want to use Whirlwind, same as with any centralized solution.

No. I agree that you have a good reason, but that doesn't change the risk involved. I'm not saying you are, but if you'd be planning an exit scam, this would be a great way to increase the amount. That is what you risk getting associated with.

Agreed, but then the question remains. How to bootstrap this in a safer way than what we already proposed as simply waiting is not really a solution?

Edit because I missed a question:

4.We offer users all the tools that they need in order to stay compliant. You can prove the origin of funds

CM offered the same.

CMIIW but as far as I know they didn't. We sign a LoG for every action you make on the website, including Pay to Note and every single withdraw so it's possible for every user to prove where their funds originated from and where they were spent. This was not possible in CM case

It would be nice to have the option to deposit less than 0.001 btc. For example, if I have 2 addresses that have 0.0005 btc each, it would be nice to have the option to combine these amounts without showing directly on the blockchain that they both belong to the same person. (Preferably, this option should allow one to send these two amounts of 0.0005 BTC to two different whirlwind's BTC addresses.)

So, the option to deposit less than 0.001 BTC in a single transaction would be useful even if withdrawals are only possible with fixed values, and the lowest of these values is 0.001 BTC. It becomes even more useful if "fast" withdrawals of non-fixed amounts are possible again, and yet more useful when exchange to monero is available. If such deposits are disabled now because the blockchain fees constitute too much percentage of the deposit amount, I don't see any problems with charging a corresponding fee to such mixes, even if you want to keep the mixes with a single top-up of >= 0.001 BTC fee-free.

Thank you for the suggestion, we will give it a thought.

[1714486421]

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[1714486421]

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[LeGaulois]

OK, thinking twice about it, your argument is valid and the solution appropriate. I see it differently now and I would even say that the sooner the better. It's just that's it's something we're not used to see in the industry.

(I look forward to your comparison, it would be a good read)

For more peace of mind we could change the way the campaign works so instead of allocating a fixed amount to distribute to users every day, you receive a fixed amount at the moment of deposit and you are free to withdraw whenever afterwards keeping the reward. Maybe this is a better solution?

It makes no difference to me but there are people with a different opinion than me of course, so why not ...

[o_e_l_e_o]

For more peace of mind we could change the way the campaign works so instead of allocating a fixed amount to distribute to users every day, you receive a fixed amount at the moment of deposit and you are free to withdraw whenever afterwards keeping the reward. Maybe this is a better solution?

Would there be anything to prevent someone abusing this by just constantly depositing and withdrawing the same coins over and over?

[whirlwindmoney]

Would there be anything to prevent someone abusing this by just constantly depositing and withdrawing the same coins over and over?

Not unless we'd build a proprietary system to screen incoming transactions and check that the coins are not originating from our multi-sig. We tried to find an alternative to avoid abuse without having to build this system but there is no other way and implementing something like this doesn't seem like a good idea at all. Censorship of any sort is out of question even if it's for a good reason like in this case.

OK, thinking twice about it, your argument is valid and the solution appropriate. I see it differently now and I would even say that the sooner the better. It's just that's it's something we're not used to see in the industry.

We knew our proposal would cause some backlash, and for good reason. As LoyceV mentioned in a previous message if we were planning an exit-scam, this is how it would look like and there is no way for you to know if this is the case or not, nor do we have any way of proving that this is not our intention.

On the other hand as explained in the previous messages Whirlwind needs a strong Anonymity Set in order to function correctly for any amount, and not getting to that point introduces risks for our users as well as for our reputation. In this case from our point of view we are left with the following choices:

-Go ahead with the campaign and risk backlash, but on the bright side if it works we will become by far the best privacy tool that ever existed for Bitcoin. Technically speaking it already is, but in order for this to translate into the real life we need the numbers to back it up.

-Don't go ahead with the campaign to avoid backlash and raising red flags, but be prepared to deal with the fallout in case the Anonymity Set doesn't increase and certain users are deanonymized. We believe if this happens there is a pretty high chance that it would lead Whirlwind to failure, we use a novel mechanism that users don't completely understand and if we start on the wrong foot it's going to be even harder to come back and gain their trust back.

This would also give our competitors reasons to attack our model and for a normal user that doesen't understand how everything works it would seem like they are right, for example:
*a competitor* deposits 20BTC into our 10BTC multi-sig, withdraws it all at once and then proceeds to blast us saying 'look, your solution is useless. it's almost sure where the 20BTC came from'
our response: yeah but you know.. our system needs a strong anonymity set to work well and you will be able to do this in the future but for now we didn't see that much usage yet
competitors response: yeah but why would anyone use you compared to us? send 20BTC to our solution and see what happens

Even though the 20BTC 'mixed' through our competitors could most likely be traced back to their originating address too, it's not as obvious as in our case for a normal user to do because we have the public multi-sig as opposed to just sending other people's coins.

My point here is that it doesen't matter that our system offers exponentially better privacy once we get to a certain Anonymity set figure if we never get to that level.

So do we really have anything to lose if we go ahead with the anonymity campaign? Maybe, maybe not. There may be even more backlash than until now and some may be turned away from our solution for good because they won't trust us at all anymore, but not going ahead may cause way greater issues because of which it's going to be pretty much impossible to recover.

We already took a big risk implementing something new and for some reason we expected to see much more organic usage (this is the reason why we didn't start with the anonymity campaign from the beginning), but seeing that doesn't happen, or at least not as fast as it needs to, we are forced to explore other options and take other risks in order to achieve it. One way or another the Anonymity Set needs to grow to at least a few thousand deposits, otherwise this was all in vain.

[zartafuydo]

If you are accessing the website from the clearnet link, the frontend will generate an Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) key pair, and will never send the private key anywhere. The backend server already has a permanent ECC key pair generated, and its public key is stored in the frontend. With the ECIES scheme, you can encrypt data using the public key and you can only decrypt it using the private key. When the client needs to send any kind of D.A.D to the backend, it appends the frontend generated public key to the said D.A.D, and then encrypts it using the backend's public key. Now, Cloudflare can read the ECC encrypted data, but they cannot read the plaintext data. When the encrypted D.A.D reaches the backend, it will be decrypted using the permanent private key. The backend then processes the request, and the response must also be encrypted since it contains potential D.A.D, so it encrypts the response using the client's public key that it received within the request. When the response gets to the client (frontend), it is decrypted using the private key generated locally. This is how full end-to-end encryption and privacy between the user and the backend server was achieved, even with Cloudflare decrypting TLS data.

It seems to me that you underestimate the ability of MITM attacks on your traffic. When cloudfare MITMs your traffic, they can do anything with it. I mean, really, really anything. Generally speaking, nothing prevents them from MITMing your "second layer of encryption as well as the first one" and sending a fake public key for your ECC to the user. They can also remove the ECC encryption entirely. Theoretically, after that they can even send a fake bitcoin address to the user and seize the BTC the user was going to mix (although in reality, I doubt they are ready to act so openly yet).

With your current design, the easiest technological solution for cloudfare is to access your on-premises server via tor after they receive a HTTPS request to their "ddos-protection" MITM server. Nobody will notice anything. The clearnet user will just see a bitcoin address and send BTC there, and you will see in your server logs that someone accessed your server "via TOR". Nobody will notice anything before the user suddenly gets arrested a few years later.

[whirlwindmoney]

It seems to me that you underestimate the ability of MITM attacks on your traffic. When cloudfare MITMs your traffic, they can do anything with it. I mean, really, really anything. Generally speaking, nothing prevents them from MITMing your "second layer of encryption as well as the first one" and sending a fake public key for your ECC to the user. They can also remove the ECC encryption entirely. Theoretically, after that they can even send a fake bitcoin address to the user and seize the BTC the user was going to mix (although in reality, I doubt they are ready to act so openly yet).

With your current design, the easiest technological solution for cloudfare is to access your on-premises server via tor after they receive a HTTPS request to their "ddos-protection" MITM server. Nobody will notice anything. The clearnet user will just see a bitcoin address and send BTC there, and you will see in your server logs that someone accessed your server "via TOR". Nobody will notice anything before the user suddenly gets arrested a few years later.

Thank you for bringing this up. We intentionally omitted to include very important details in the initial explanation but considering your concerns this needs to be addressed now.

Firstly we want to confirm everything you said is completely true.

We are fully aware this is not a perfect solution, and we are not underestimating the power Cloudflare has with such a MITM attack. Using the onion link is the most private way to use the service, but we tried to make the service as safe as possible to use on the clearnet version as well and we believe our implementation is as close to perfection as you can get in this situation.

With the current design, if Cloudflare doesn't implement any active MITM attacks, all old data which went through Cloudflare will not have been compromised if they weren't running the attack.

With the clearnet frontend, it is basically impossible to 100% guarantee the frontend code is not tampered with, only if we would provide a script with which a user can verify the checksum of the build. Obviously, this cannot happen automatically since Cloudflare can just remove or edit the code snippet.

Another possible solution is to release a CLI or GUI open source app, with the backend's public key directly patched into the code. This way, we would be sure the data cannot be tampered with, since it is downloaded from a safe source. We also thought about having a safe server without Cloudflare where the frontend would just fetch the public key from, but this can be DDoSed, and Cloudflare could again patch the frontend code replacing the server address.

In the short term, we believe this was the best way to get the clearnet service running with as much privacy as possible,  and after the service gains more popularity we will definitely switch back to our proprietary solution. We were ddos attacked with a lot of firepower so in order to contain that we would need to spend a lot on severs for load balancing and that just doesen't make much economic sense, that money is better spent elsewhere at the moment especially considering that we just started and we have a system in place to detect if Cloudflare interferes in any way.

We implemented an automatic verification script that runs "honeypots" which access the clearnet version from different IPs and various request fingerprints and automatically check everything is ok. If one server sees the frontend is tampered with it will alert us and automatically shut down the clearnet version. This way, the only possible way for such an attack to happen would be for Cloudflare to target a specific IP. Since users know for a fact their IP is logged by Cloudflare by default this shouldn't be an issue.

This should answer most questions you could have in this regard but if there is anything else don't hesitate to ask.

[nioctib_100]

It seems to me that you underestimate the ability of MITM attacks on your traffic. When cloudfare MITMs your traffic, they can do anything with it. I mean, really, really anything. Generally speaking, nothing prevents them from MITMing your "second layer of encryption as well as the first one" and sending a fake public key for your ECC to the user. They can also remove the ECC encryption entirely. Theoretically, after that they can even send a fake bitcoin address to the user and seize the BTC the user was going to mix (although in reality, I doubt they are ready to act so openly yet).

I know Cloudflare can change the site's content, but I'm genuinely curious - does anyone know of an instance of them doing such a thing? I'm sure they watch user transactions on various sites, but I do wonder if they've actually ever modified a site against the owner's consent. They're a public company, so I would think that it'd be possible to find some info on whether or not they've done such a thing. I'm leaning towards thinking that they probably never have modified a site because it'd cause such an outcry if they did, and they'd lose thousands or even millions of customers. Any insight from anyone?

[minerjones]

ANN design was updated, see first post in this thread. It now includes a step-by-step walkthrough showing all actions you can make on our our website.

The 40,000 DAI are still in escrow with minerjones and we are able to send much more than that if the risk of us stealing the funds proves to be the problem

Is this confirmed by minerjones somewhere? I only found this post, but there are no details.

Also (I remember this case): what are the details of the escrow deal? Considering the purpose, it would be good if the deal includes a 7 day delay once you request to pay it back, including the escrow publicly announcing the change 7 days ahead.

The initial escrow deal was that we were supposed to receive the funds back when the review campaign ended a while ago. We did not request the funds back so they are still with minerjones. We'd be happy to adhere to the 7 day delay rule you proposed, and I will ask minerjones if it's possible for him to confirm here that this rule will be enforced and the amount held by him at the moment.

Confirming there are still 40k+ DAI in escrow
And I was not aware of the 7-day release rule, but will enforce this when asked for the funds return

[hugeblack]

The initial escrow deal was that we were supposed to receive the funds back when the review campaign ended a while ago. We did not request the funds back so they are still with minerjones. We'd be happy to adhere to the 7 day delay rule you proposed, and I will ask minerjones if it's possible for him to confirm here that this rule will be enforced and the amount held by him at the moment.

I trust in @minerjones, but adding several users will be better, meaning that escrow address will be a multi-sign address, 3 out of 5 will be perfect or any other model.
Also, the distribution of escrow to include Bitcoin/DAI will be good with the amount of 50k USD or 60k USD.

[zartafuydo]

This way, the only possible way for such an attack to happen would be for Cloudflare to target a specific IP.

No. This way, an obvious next move for cloudfare is to spoof your website for all requests from IPs that are far away from your server's one and from what cloudfare thinks is probably not remotely accessible (no vpn server, no tor node, no datacenter - they control a huge part of the internet traffic, it's easy for them to collect this kind of statistics). Or they can add one more condition for contents alteration: they alter the contents only if their estimate of the user's computer knowledge is low. Then even verification of your webiste by someone living far away (but without remote access to their computer) will not help. Once you start to collaborate with cloudfare, this will be an eternal battle of shield and spear at best.

does anyone know of an instance of them doing such a thing?

If they alter a particular http(s) request so that it looks "correct at a first glance", this will be really hard to detect, and I don't know such cases. But when you open a typical webpage, your browser makes a lot of individual http(s) requests. And what cloudfare is really doing all the time is that they randomly ban a small percentage of these requests (you can see this in firefox's "web developer -> network"), essentially cracking out small pieces of the pages, breaking and altering websites' behavior for the users, sometimes to the extent complete loss of usability.

(Technically speaking, when they show their "standard ban page" instead of the whole website, they also modify the http(s) response conents, but I think you were asking about something not so obvious.)

it'd cause such an outcry if they did

For me, this sounds like a really outdated idea, unfortunately. Most of the present-day internet is controlled by a very small number of very user-unfriendly companies like cloudfare, google, facebook, etc. It would not be a problem for them to censor out such an outcry. Even if they don't stop the spread of information entirely, it's not a problem for them to limit it to just a small number of sparse complaints at random forums.

[LoyceV]

an obvious next move for cloudfare is to spoof your website

Technically, that's possible. But how likely is this?

I know Cloudflare can change the site's content, but I'm genuinely curious - does anyone know of an instance of them doing such a thing?

I've never read about such a case. That doesn't mean it's not possible, but it makes me think it's not very likely either.

[zartafuydo]

But how likely is this?

This I don't know and I think is impossible to know for now. This is a "social" question/"question of trust" rather than a technical one. I think it is impossible to know the answer before either the copyright supporters fight against us much more openly than now, or something really revolutionary or disastrous causes them to lose power. Most terrible activities of the authoritarian regimes of the past typically became known only after the regimes have fallen.

[whirlwindmoney]

This way, the only possible way for such an attack to happen would be for Cloudflare to target a specific IP.

No. This way, an obvious next move for cloudfare is to spoof your website for all requests from IPs that are far away from your server's one and from what cloudfare thinks is probably not remotely accessible (no vpn server, no tor node, no datacenter - they control a huge part of the internet traffic, it's easy for them to collect this kind of statistics).

You start the message with 0 doubts saying "No" but then you proceed to show that by mistake or intentionally you misunderstood parts of our previous message and even presented your personal assumptions as facts, even though that seems highly unlikely for such a security conscious person as you seem to be so after this message if you are still not convinced we can agree to disagree on this subject. We will never reveal all information about how everything works or anything that could be used against us, but what we've said until now is already more than enough to use as valid arguments for your concerns.

1.We never said we are only using VPN/Tor/Datacenter IPs
2.We never said the servers we're using for the checks are in a 'far away' location, nor did we say that they are in one place.
3.We are not underestimating the control that Cloudflare has, but what Cloudflare thinks or estimates is simply not enough in this case no matter how many statistics they can collect. in order for any MITM attack to be succesful they need to be right in 100% of cases.
4.There are multiples of times more requests made by us than from real users so statistically speaking their chance to be successful for even a day is incredibly small, let alone for a long period of time.

Or they can add one more condition for contents alteration: they alter the contents only if their estimate of the user's computer knowledge is low. Then even verification of your webiste by someone living far away (but without remote access to their computer) will not help. Once you start to collaborate with cloudfare, this will be an eternal battle of shield and spear at best.

1.An 'estimate' is still not enough. They need to be right in 100% of cases to perform a large scale attack
2.Remote access makes no difference
3.We mentioned we are using various fingerprints for the checks
4.We already said Cloudflare is a temporary solution implemented for a very short period of time until we gain more popularity, 'an eternal battle' doesen't seem accurately worded

We already mentioned that the only way to be 100% sure that nothing is being tampered with is to release a CLI or GUI open source app, with the backend's public key directly patched into the code. This way, we would be sure the data cannot be tampered with, since it is downloaded from a safe source.

There is only one problem with this approach, Clearnet is mostly used by people who don't download Tor browser, so they probably won't download our app or use the CLI either.

By your logic, which we agree with to a certain point, all clearnet services are insecure no matter if they use Cloudflare or not. If you host the server somewhere then it could be wiretapped/spied on by the provider etc. and in that case there really is no way to know, that is also a more likely scenario to happen IMO than Cloudflare successfully breaking our security unnoticed. You also can't host it yourself since it's exposed, so really there is no way to be 100% sure that a clearnet website is secure, that's why we always highly recommend using Tor.

TLDR: A large scale attack is not possible in the way you described. Targeted attacks? Possible in certain edge cases as previously acknowledged, but still highly improbable to happen if the user in question does basic things like change his IP and use a fresh Private window. Other types of attacks? Anything is possible with a clearnet service regardless of what security measures you take and that is not a problem we're trying to solve as it has nothing to do with our service.

[dkbit98]

Do you have any example of a service that had an actual reason for offering a reward on Bitcoin deposits?

Just about any shitcoin platform that was offering to exchange Bitcoin for their new ''revolutionary'' token that earn with staking, or yield earning platforms with high percentage interest rate that later shut down in 2022.... they all asked Bitcoin to keep it ''safu''.
Nobody is saying you are trying to do the same thing like them, but it makes me wonder how are you going to sustain paying 10% rewards to everyone with notes and still make any profit for yourself.
I am not saying it won't attract some attention, but it can end up very bad for everyone with one small mistake, so again we should trust you and hope nothing bad will happen.
My question is, are you sure you will be able to sustain paying 10% rewards and how?

[whirlwindmoney]

Do you have any example of a service that had an actual reason for offering a reward on Bitcoin deposits?

Just about any shitcoin platform that was offering to exchange Bitcoin for their new ''revolutionary'' token that earn with staking, or yield earning platforms with high percentage interest rate that later shut down in 2022.... they all asked Bitcoin to keep it ''safu''.

Well that doesen't fit the bill for what we'd call an 'actual reason'. Shitcoin platforms are trying to lure investors in for the sole reason of earning yield or making huge returns, there is no reason why they'd need Bitcoin from users in the first place to 'keep the platform safu'. It should be safu with or without customers funds since those are exactly that.. customer funds.

We on the other hand need volume at the beginning in order to offer better privacy. If any of the previous explanations were not clear enough or you feel like something doesen't make sense please let us know and we will explain again.

Nobody is saying you are trying to do the same thing like them, but it makes me wonder how are you going to sustain paying 10% rewards to everyone with notes and still make any profit for yourself.
I am not saying it won't attract some attention, but it can end up very bad for everyone with one small mistake, so again we should trust you and hope nothing bad will happen.
My question is, are you sure you will be able to sustain paying 10% rewards and how?

This campaign will run for a fixed time until we get to a certain number of deposits (Anonymity Set) or total BTC volume that went through the platform. Assuming we will go ahead we expect this to last between 1 to 3 months, so our costs will be somewhere between 2 and 6 BTC. Whatever the final amount will be we believe this is a very small price to pay for what we will get in return. After we reach our Anonymity Set goal Whirlwind will undeniably offer the best privacy you can get on Bitcoin, and by default that will translate into more customers.

Why would we try to make a profit now when we know for a fact that our service is missing something and customers with 10BTC+ cannot use the platform efficiently (meaning withdraw everything at once immediately without being a privacy risk). Doesen't it make more sense to invest a bit more now and take the lead for good while we basically have no competition? Even if our competitors realize they need to make changes and switch to the same model afterwards they would be too far behind to ever compare to the privacy we're offering.

We afford to pay these rewards and the signature campaign for many months before we need to worry about turning a profit so this is not a concern at the moment. It also seems that everyone who's using the service donates a pretty good amount so this gives us reasons to believe that once we achieve our Anonymity Set goal this will turn into a very profitable business.

Our only concern right now is reaching that level. If we are able to do that then Whirlwind will definitely be a big success, if we don't it will most probably be a fail. This is a risk we knew and accepted when we started developing the platform on this model.

[whirlwindmoney]

Anonymity Mining campaign is live!

What is Anonymity Mining, how does it work and why is it needed?

In order to achieve privacy, Whirlwind uses a multi-sig that acts as a pool and consolidates all deposited Bitcoin. Once funds are withdrawn by a completely new address from this pool, the on-chain link between the source and destination is severed, thus anonymising the withdrawn Bitcoin.

The goal of this pattern is to aggregate different deposits into a single pool, such that distinguishing between them becomes unfeasible. The only factor to keep in mind is that this pattern is useless if there are not many deposits of varying sizes, such that the set of probable suspects is too small. We aim to overcome this issue by launching the Anonymity Mining campaign. The more people use Whirlwind, the more secure it becomes for everyone. We will consider the bootstrapping phase over when the Anonymity Set crosses 10,000 deposits.

Anonymity mining is an incentive to increase the level of privacy Whirlwind offers by rewarding participants with Bitcoin dependent on the deposited amount and how long they keep their assets in the pool. The campaign will run for a limited time until the Anonymity Set hits 10,000 deposits and it will be structured in the following way:

In return for increasing the Anonymity Set Whirlwind rewards all funded Notes with 1% monthly interest on their balance. The rewards will be paid out automatically on a daily basis and they are withdrawable anytime. All you need to do in order to participate in the campaign is make a deposit and wait for as long as you want to accrue rewards before withdrawing.

Example: If the multi-sig’s average balance during a month is 100BTC Whirlwind will pay out 1BTC in rewards during that month on a daily basis. 1BTC/30 days = 0.03333BTC paid out daily. If you have a Note with a balance of 1BTC you will receive 1% of 0.03333BTC which is 0.000333BTC every day.

It’s important to emphasize that the rewards will be paid out from our personal reserve and only for a limited amount of time until the Anonymity set passes the 10,000 deposits threshold, at which point incentives won’t be needed anymore. We will monitor the progress and make adjustments if needed.

Looking forward to your questions!


Below you will find the changelog with the latest updates and an illustration that should help you better understand how Whirlwind works and why it's so important to have a large enough Anonymity Set.

05.04.2023 03:30:00 AM UTC
-Anonymity Mining campaign went live
-Updated FAQ
-Minor UI issues fixed

[dkbit98]

This campaign will run for a fixed time until we get to a certain number of deposits (Anonymity Set) or total BTC volume that went through the platform. Assuming we will go ahead we expect this to last between 1 to 3 months, so our costs will be somewhere between 2 and 6 BTC. Whatever the final amount will be we believe this is a very small price to pay for what we will get in return. After we reach our Anonymity Set goal Whirlwind will undeniably offer the best privacy you can get on Bitcoin, and by default that will translate into more customers.

That makes much more sense with limited amount time set for this campaign, and I hope this time won't get extended in future for some reason.
Daily rewards are not bad and they are not suspiciously high as I initially understood, but I would like you to clearly state all the risks before starting this campaign, and try to minimize them (maybe using multisig with trusted forum member).

It’s important to emphasize that the rewards will be paid out from our personal reserve and only for a limited amount of time until the Anonymity set passes the 10,000 deposits threshold, at which point incentives won’t be needed anymore. We will monitor the progress and make adjustments if needed.

Are you planning to manually send all this rewards as Notes to mining participants, or you are using some automatic system with payments directly to Bitcoin addresses?

[whirlwindmoney]

That makes much more sense with limited amount time set for this campaign, and I hope this time won't get extended in future for some reason.
Daily rewards are not bad and they are not suspiciously high as I initially understood, but I would like you to clearly state all the risks before starting this campaign, and try to minimize them (maybe using multisig with trusted forum member).

As long as we reach our Anonymity Set goal we have no reason to extend the campaign. We also want this to last for as little time as possible but it all depends on how fast the public reacts, we will also create a twitter profile and present Whirlwind there.

The only risk is theft by us, the operators. If you don't think we will steal your Bitcoin you should at least give it a try, there are no fees and Pay to Note is very smooth to use. It's a very useful feature according to the feedback we received until now. Even with the Anonymity Mining campaign live it might still take a while until people decide to give us a try, but when they do they won't be dissapointed.

Are you planning to manually send all this rewards as Notes to mining participants, or you are using some automatic system with payments directly to Bitcoin addresses?

We have an automatic system that distributed the daily reward through Pay to Note to all funded Notes from one of ours. If you think it'd help we could also offer a Letter of Guarantee downloadable for 24 hours after each distribution from the Dashboard page.

If you want to participate you do not need to do anything extra besides using the platform as usual. Your Note balance will automatically increase every day so it's 1% a month, but compounded daily.

[sam00]

@whirlwindmoney I hope that you will reach the anonymity goal soon!

How would we combine the rewards from the signature campaign with the anonymity mining campaign? When we give Hhampuz our public deposit address for the signature campaign and he sends the weekly payment to our note/address, the anonymity rewards should automatically start occurring right?

Will the rewards then also increase the next day or are the rewards only calculated by deposits that come from an external address and therefore increase once a week (if we take the signature campaign as an example)?

[whirlwindmoney]

@whirlwindmoney I hope that you will reach the anonymity goal soon!

How would we combine the rewards from the signature campaign with the anonymity mining campaign? When we give Hhampuz our public deposit address for the signature campaign and he sends the weekly payment to our note/address, the anonymity rewards should automatically start occurring right?

Will the rewards then also increase the next day or are the rewards only calculated by deposits that come from an external address and therefore increase once a week (if we take the signature campaign as an example)?

Thank you, the sooner the better for everyone!

Anonymity Mining rewards will start accumulating automatically whenever you have funds on your Note.

Your balance will increase every day until you withdraw your funds, it doesen't matter if they came through a deposit or pay to note transfer or they simply sit there. As long as you have funds on the Note you will receive rewards every day.

We will create a separate thread for the campaign in the Services section and we will post daily updates with the multi-sig balance and the amount distributed as rewards.