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

[mikeywith]

It would be pretty unlogical to vote for anything but #3, I think anyone who cares enough about their anonymity would understand that they need to save that info.

With that said, I am interested in hearing from them, maybe they have some "valid" reasons for not doing so? maybe he saved the 3 files and they were empty? what excuse do they have?

We agree it would be better if the Anonymity Mining campaign would include other conditions besides the 10,000 deposits, such as out of those 10,000 there should be a minimum of 500 over 0.5BTC, 500 over 1BTC and 500 over 5BTC. We decided not to impose these 'limits' because we assumed 10,000 deposits is a big enough number and people would deposit varied enough amounts regardless if we ask for it or not, but we may be wrong. What's your opinion on this?

If the campaign works, I think your point of view is correct, having a random 10k deposit will most likely have a large variety of values and thus, it would make no sense to tell the users how much to deposit to get a better %, it could make things less attractive to potential customers.

Another way to mix/blend your own deposits (if the campaign doesn't succeed) would be renting hash power and using PPS pools to withdraw funds to the mixer, if done carefully, the fees could still be below 3%, i.e if you pay 1.03 BTC to hashrate, you would get 1 BTC in rewards.

The good thing about pool coins is that they are already "mixed" somehow, and most of them have little to no history anyway.

Now depending on how much the mixer grows, you could even go to the extent of running your own pool, some pools offer 0% fees while being a proxy to another pool, so they pay fees from their own pocket, but they get a decent mixing (probably the only reason they do so, if not, what else?), in your case, you might not have to pay from your own pocket, the fees/donations might be greater than fee difference between the fees you pay the actually pool and the fees the users pay you.

Anyway, these are just some 4 AM thoughts, hopefully, the campaign works fine and manages to keep enough users who actually find the use of using the mixer rather than the rewards, it's going to take some time given the recent incidents with CM, not the easiest start one could have that's for sure.



Anyone else thinks the CAPTCHA used in Whirlwind's website is really difficult to see? I prefer hitting a dozen fire hydrant images than having to attempt to read those letters that go on top of each other.

[1714616972]

1714616972

[LoyceV]

The user contacted us and this is the information given to us:
1. He didn't save the Note Private Key
2. He didn't save the Note Public Address
3. He didn't save the Letter of Guarantee
4. He doesen't remember the exact donation % used
5. He can sign a message from the address used to deposit on Whirlwind

Think of it as losing their private key: if they lose it, they lose their Bitcoins. In that case:

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

In your case, it's a donation to you. Just like losing access to Binance's made-up "wrapped" tokens is a donation to Binance.

We have the following options, if anyone sees a better solution please let us know:
1. Refund him from our reserve and risk setting a dangerous precedent while also risking taking the hit ourselves in case we were lied to. (The Note would remain valid because we wouldn't know which one to delete)

This is bad and will get abused.

2. Temporarily disable all Notes with similar balances and wait for the other Note holders to contact us

This is also bad, it makes you look bad to people who didn't make a mistake and still doesn't rule out abuse

3. Treat Whirlwind as a network and respect the rules, in this case we will not be able to help in any way and the user would lose access to his funds assuming it's true that indeed he lost the private key

In my opinion, this is the best only option. People should really make sure not to lose their private keys.

[imamusma]

3. Treat Whirlwind as a network and respect the rules, in this case we will not be able to help in any way and the user would lose access to his funds assuming it's true that indeed he lost the private key

In my opinion, this is the best only option. People should really make sure not to lose their private keys.

I agree with this last point which was mentioned in point 3. Therefore I do not agree that other people should be held responsible for mistakes they did not make and anyone who made a mistake should accept the consequences.

There is no reason to return those bitcoin to anyone claiming to have them without proof, so it should be considered a donation. If the mixer wants to return it, then he doesn't have to publicly announce, that return will potentially causing similar problems in future.

[bullrun2024bro]

3. Treat Whirlwind as a network and respect the rules, in this case we will not be able to help in any way and the user would lose access to his funds assuming it's true that indeed he lost the private key

Pretty easy choice, if you ask me. Option 3 it is. No keys, no coins.

That being said, even if you want to argue with some good will, I would recommend not setting a dangerous precedent just because you want to gain the trust of the community as a new service. That will go wrong in the long run and will be 100% abused in the future.

If the user didn't keep the private key, the public address or the letter of guarantee, and doesn't even remember the exact donation %, there is absolutely no reason for you to refund anything.

[nioctib_100]

In your case, it's a donation to you. Just like losing access to Binance's made-up "wrapped" tokens is a donation to Binance.

Can it really be a donation to Whirlwind, or should those coins sit there forever? In case this person ever "remembers" or identifying info on his deposit or note, he would need to be able to claim it. I'm afraid also taking these coins as a donation anytime would set a bad precedent as well. Users might get scared to leave their coins in the mixer for long periods of time out of fear that they might be seen as "abandoned" and then taken by Whirlwind. I think any user deposit needs to never be touched or moved by Whirlwind without express permission from the user in a customer-service sort of scenario.

[whirlwindmoney]

Thank you everyone for your responses, it's an unfortunate situation but there is nothing we can do without setting dangerous precedents or jeopardizing our integrity and we simply cannot afford to risk any of the 2 outcomes happening. This business is all about trust and the moment it's gone, it's gone for good.

As long as Whirlwind is centralized we will not make any decisions that could be considered questionable in any way, and if we will ever encounter another situation where we're not sure what the best course of action is we will use the same approach and let the community decide what needs to happen and we will respect that consensus regardless of our personal beliefs. We are working towards decentralizing the service so this is how things should work anyways.

With that said, I am interested in hearing from them, maybe they have some "valid" reasons for not doing so? maybe he saved the 3 files and they were empty? what excuse do they have?

We are not sure if the user in question would be willing to confirm this publicly, but he had no excuses. He is aware it's entirely his fault and recognized the mistake, that's the sole reason we even considered helping him out in the first place, it seems like a genuine mistake. We always assume everything we do will become publicly known so we were concerned about how our intervention would be perceived by the community and the responses here proved our worries were not unfounded.

It's important to mention that we will not treat this as a 'donation', if the user in question ever gains access to his private key then he can withdraw without any issues. If you don't donate yourself the Note balance will remain unchanged regardless of how long you keep your BTC inside Whirlwind.

Please make sure you save your Private key and do not deposit unless you have it stored safely. There are 3 warnings about this only at the first step (which is also named 'Generate and Save Note Private Key'), let alone the FAQ, so you should take it seriously.


There seem to be some misunderstandings regarding the Anonymity Mining campaign so I will quote the last message from that thread in full for better visibility, it also contains more general information about Whirlwind so we would recommend reading it:

I'm not quite sure if this will be profitable in the long run. I haven't heard of any mixer that has managed to run for that long.

Not yet? I thought the previous mixers had been around for a long time, for example Chipmixer, they had a very long time. It must have been more than 5 years, right? Furthermore, I think we don't have any problem in withdrawing, they don't talk about our withdrawal limit time.

It was 6 years. Still would not be long enough to break even though (assuming you start today).

You may have misunderstood how the campaign works, it would be insane to ask you to deposit for 6 years or any amount of time really.

Distributions are made every day around 12:10 AM UTC so to be profitable you would need to wait for a maximum of 24 hours if for instance you deposited at 12:20 AM UTC, or only 10 minutes if you deposited at 12:00 AM UTC.

For a 1 BTC deposit your balance would look like this:

Day 1: 1 BTC
Day 2: 1 + (1 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00033333
Day 3: 1.00033333 + (1.00033333 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00066677
Day 4: 1.00066677 + (1.00066677 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00100032
..

You can withdraw your balance at any point, there are no special conditions to participate in the campaign. All Notes are eligible and automatically participate in the campaign, you will receive rewards for as long as your Note is funded.

We hope we will reach the 10,000 Anonymity Set goal as soon as possible. We do not necessarily care about how long you keep your funds inside Whirlwind because by the time the campaign ends we would have added our entire reserve. At that point the multi-sig balance won't be an issue, even if we assume there is no other depositor besides us it should be more than enough to accomodate any amount.

interesting concept, but in the long run how profitable is it on your side because this service has guaranteed rewards for anybody staking going with the  "Anonymity Mining"?

In the short term we will almost surely lose money, but in the grand scheme of things it's irrelevant. A few BTC is a very small price to pay for what we are getting in return through this campaign. After reaching the Anonymity Set goal we expect the business to become very profitable because at that point it wouldn't make much sense for anyone to use another service so it's only a matter of time until Whirlwind's popularity explodes.

Does this mean that over 10k deposits, there will be no more campaign payments? What will be the incentive for people to keep depositing, when the number starts getting close to 10k?

Yes the campaign ends once we reach 10,000 deposits. If you are only looking for rewards then there won't be any incentive to deposit anymore, we are not a staking platform. On the other hand if you're looking for real privacy then you'd get it by simply using the service, and you could get it for free if you don't choose to donate.

I'd be willing to deposit, but there's this thing in the back of my head saying: "What if they have access to these generated private keys? It wouldn't be the first time when the mixing operator lied about something. If whirlwind gets busted somehow, the way they got Tornado, Helix, Chipmixer, will they be able to get my bitcoin?"

We have no reason to keep the Note private keys, if we wanted to steal your funds we could simply drain the multi-sig since that's where the BTC is kept. Currently the service is centralized, so you need to trust us if you want to use it.

From a technical point of view Tornado is the undisputed king and IMO it cannot be compared to anything else. Even though it got sanctioned no user lost any funds and it continues to function to this day, in fact it's unstoppable as long as Ethereum continues to exist.

If it's not obvious already Whirlwind is built on the same model, so it's already 'battle-tested' and we know for a fact it offers the best privacy assuming enough volume goes through it and the Anonymity Set is big enough. Considering this our only remaining important task besides reaching the Anonymity Set goal is to decentralize the service and we are already working on that as we speak.

We will also improve upon Tornado's compliance module and that should be more than enough to avoid giving anyone reasons to target us, more info about this will be released once we finalize the details.

Regarding Whirlwind getting 'busted' firstly there is no reason for this to happen for the foreseeable future, but our response to this concern is worth reading nonetheless:

Rather than asking a few questions about user privacy, I will ask another kind of question.

What preventative measures have you taken to protect yourself from arrest and federal government seizure of website assets (i.e: how do you plan to avoid Cipmixer's fate)?

It sure is a valid question and I understand the concern, I'll share my view on this issue. As I said since before I even launched the service, I am hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.

I could give more technical details about our security, but all I will say for now is that we took the most extreme security precautions possible. Our "hot wallet" is a 3/3 multi-sig with one of the signers being a physical server, so funds are safe. The infrastructure looks like a mini blockchain (with only 3 validators or signers which are all run by us for now), so even if the frontend or backend servers would get hacked, no funds could be stolen since faking guarantee letters using the backend server doesen't do anything as the signers would also have to verify. It's complicated, but like I said before if I'll find willing trusted members to run signers with us I am willing to do it.

Having said all of the above as far as I'm concerned I am not doing anything illegal. I don't encourage illegal activity and will never promote the service on the darknet or for any illegal purposes, I'm a simple provider of privacy services. There are no statistics regarding % of CEX funds coming from illicit sources so we can't compare to what we know about mixers, but my guess is that the number is very similar if not higher for centralized exchanges. There are bad actors in every industry, you can't just shut down all businesses of one type because of a few bad apples. If the service will start to get seriously abused by bad actors and big pressure will be put on us then I'd much rather shut down the service early and honorably than put users funds and privacy at risk, but for now I still believe there has to be a way to run everything legally. This is not because I don't believe Bitcoin is fungible or anything of this sort, but regardless if the service gets seized or sanctioned, the end result is the same as in it can't really be used anymore, so everyone loses. Having great security is a must, but relying on this by itself doesen't generate any value for the long term. I'd much rather try to find a way in which everyone is happy, or at the very least not too unhappy, while users enjoy full privacy. This is what they pay for and nothing less is acceptable

I also want to emphasize that I have not commited any crimes while creating Whirlwind, for example identity theft.

Even though I don't believe I have anything to worry about, I'd still prefer to add more signers to the multi-sig so I don't have full control anymore. This would make it safer for everyone, I really do not like the fact that users have to trust me. For now this is the only option though, and I will not take any steps in this direction unless I am 100% sure it's done in a safe way. The community would also have to agree with the plan before I set it in motion

[Wapfika]

I'm planning to use whirlwind notes as storage for my extra savings(money that I can afford to lose). I'm curious if the private keys that we are holding can be used on other Bitcoin wallets in the event that your service is not available anymore. If you guys really don't save private keys then that means our funds are still safe in the wallet that we are using.

Do you have backup wallets like Electrum where the keys can be imported and access our funds in case your website is already not accessible?

[LoyceV]

I'm curious if the private keys that we are holding can be used on other Bitcoin wallets in the event that your service is not available anymore.

That's not how it works.

[sam00]

I'm curious if the private keys that we are holding can be used on other Bitcoin wallets in the event that your service is not available anymore.

Short answer would be the one LoyceV gave you:

That's not how it works.

Longer answer would be that those "private keys" can be seen as an account for the whirlwind website. You can access your note with it and make a withdrawal using their service. The coins are not stored on that seperate address. They are all stored together on the multisig wallet. In case the service becomes unavailable forever, you won't be able to access your coins.

[mikeywith]

I'm planning to use whirlwind notes as storage for my extra savings(money that I can afford to lose). I'm curious if the private keys that we are holding can be used on other Bitcoin wallets in the event that your service is not available anymore. If you guys really don't save private keys then that means our funds are still safe in the wallet that we are using.

Just because they don't save the "note private keys" doesn't mean if the service goes down you will still have access to your funds.

you don't need to generate the note using their website, you can simply just take your own address, change the first "1" to ww and that gives you a note public key, to access funds owned by that note, you will use your private key of that address (you don't even need to add that ww- part).

but think of the public note as a 'receipt' which proves that this note owns x amount of BTC, because when you make a deposit, it doesn't go to your address, it goes to "master pool of coins" which only whirlwind "at least for now" have control over, so even while having ownership over the note, the funds that belong to it aren't controlled by your private key.

If you are not doing this for the mining campaign rewards, there is no point in keeping your funds on any mixer, unless, of course, for mixing purposes with a plan to withdraw them after x time has passed.

[Wapfika]

I'm planning to use whirlwind notes as storage for my extra savings(money that I can afford to lose). I'm curious if the private keys that we are holding can be used on other Bitcoin wallets in the event that your service is not available anymore. If you guys really don't save private keys then that means our funds are still safe in the wallet that we are using.

Just because they don't save the "note private keys" doesn't mean if the service goes down you will still have access to your funds.

you don't need to generate the note using their website, you can simply just take your own address, change the first "1" to ww and that gives you a note public key, to access funds owned by that note, you will use your private key of that address (you don't even need to add that ww- part).

but think of the public note as a 'receipt' which proves that this note owns x amount of BTC, because when you make a deposit, it doesn't go to your address, it goes to "master pool of coins" which only whirlwind "at least for now" have control over, so even while having ownership over the note, the funds that belong to it aren't controlled by your private key.

Thanks for a very thorough explanation. This make sense now to me. So basically we are trusting our funds to them while they are giving us token(Bitcoin on note) that value is based on trust to the team that they will backed our balance on notes with real Bitcoin when we withdraw.

I really thought that private keys and wallets of whirlwind works like a regular wallet because of the similarities of the format.  Thanks again @mikeywith

If you are not doing this for the mining campaign rewards, there is no point in keeping your funds on any mixer, unless, of course, for mixing purposes with a plan to withdraw them after x time has passed.

My purpose is to participate on mining and mix at the same time since the funds that I will be using is from signature campaign that promotes gambling. I’ve been mixing a lot before so I want to save some fees by doing some bulk mix and earn at the same time.

[dkbit98]

The user contacted us and this is the information given to us:
1. He didn't save the Note Private Key
2. He didn't save the Note Public Address
3. He didn't save the Letter of Guarantee
4. He doesen't remember the exact donation % used
5. He can sign a message from the address used to deposit on Whirlwind

Sorry but I don't believe the story this guy is saying at all.
I can somehow understand that he didn't save note priv key, note public address, and letter of guarantee, but I don't believe he can't remember how much coins he donated, he can just check pervious transactions in his wallet.
Maybe I would say something different if I was in his place, but than again I don't think I would ever do something like this.
You should add clear information/warning on your website that coins can't be returned in any way if those files are not saved (minimum must be stated).

2. Temporarily disable all Notes with similar balances and wait for the other Note holders to contact us to reenable them. If after some time 1 Note remains unchanged and we didn't receive any inquiries about it we would assume it belongs to this users and refund him. We would still risk taking the hit ourselves because the remaining Note holder may just not pay attention to the situation and not inquire about it only until after we've refunded. This is another dangerous precedent which we would like to avoid at all costs.

Nope.
Don't shoot yourself in the foot by disabling all notes with similar balance.

3. Treat Whirlwind as a network and respect the rules, in this case we will not be able to help in any way and the user would lose access to his funds assuming it's true that indeed he lost the private key

That also means that you should accept any loses in case someone finds a flaw and abuses your system, this is a double edged sword.
Making everything more decentralized sooner would eliminate the need to even talk about this issues.

[Wapfika]

@whirlwindmoney how can I recover my fund's deposit on the note if I didn't copy the private key? I have the Letter of Guarantee downloaded. I thought that I can Mix instantly without accessing the notes if I choose the mix now feature. This is my time using a mixer with this process. Can you help me with this one?

What to do next if I didn't copy the key?

[foolazz22]

Hello

What happens when deposited accidentally less than 0.001 BTC? Have letter of guarantee, but not private keys. Contacted support but still no answer. Its not a big value deposit, but still. Thanks for any insights.

[whirlwindmoney]

I can somehow understand that he didn't save note priv key, note public address, and letter of guarantee, but I don't believe he can't remember how much coins he donated, he can just check pervious transactions in his wallet.

You wouldn't be able to tell the selected donation % just by looking at the previous transactions in the wallet. The deposited amount appears the same, but depending on how much you chose to donate the real Note balance will be slightly lower. If you didn't save the LoG and can't check the balance with the Note private key, then you have no way to know for sure what it is.

3. Treat Whirlwind as a network and respect the rules, in this case we will not be able to help in any way and the user would lose access to his funds assuming it's true that indeed he lost the private key

That also means that you should accept any loses in case someone finds a flaw and abuses your system, this is a double edged sword.
Making everything more decentralized sooner would eliminate the need to even talk about this issues.

If someone finds a flaw and abuses the system we would take responsibility for it, it wouldn't be fair otherwise. On the bright side we are convinced this is impossible with the current setup so we are more than happy to respect the rules.

Soon we will present what we believe are the 2 best options regarding decentralizing the service. Each of them has its own advantages/disadvantages, we will discuss it in more detail with the community once we have all the details.

~

Your deposit isn't considered valid by the system because it's under the minimum amount so your funds will be sent back automatically to the address you used to deposit.

~

Please contact our support by e-mail with all the details about your situation and we will see what can be done about it.

[Wapfika]

~

Please contact our support by e-mail with all the details about your situation and we will see what can be done about it.

Thanks, I already sent an email regarding my issue. I attached my Guarantee Letter on my email. I also include my unique link to my deposit notes that will prove my ownership.

I have a concern regarding on my recent action, Is it safe attaching my unique link on support email? Also why does the Guarantee Letter keeps changing whenever I download it. I downloaded it twice and it gives me 2 different Guarantee Letter .txt files. Are both letter valid?

[mikeywith]

Your deposit isn't considered valid by the system because it's under the minimum amount so your funds will be sent back automatically to the address you used to deposit.

It's great that foolazz22 raised this question, I know it's not the mixer's fault but what happens when fees are pretty high, in other words, in order to refund him his $15 at least $10 of it will go in fees, on the other hand, setting low fees might make the transaction stuck for a very long period of time.

What I propose instead, if possible, is to give the user enough time to add a second transfer to bring the total of his deposit to 0.001BTC.

[foolazz22]

Your deposit isn't considered valid by the system because it's under the minimum amount so your funds will be sent back automatically to the address you used to deposit.

It's great that foolazz22 raised this question, I know it's not the mixer's fault but what happens when fees are pretty high, in other words, in order to refund him his $15 at least $10 of it will go in fees, on the other hand, setting low fees might make the transaction stuck for a very long period of time.

What I propose instead, if possible, is to give the user enough time to add a second transfer to bring the total of his deposit to 0.001BTC.

Yes, that would be a good option if possible to integrate. Have not received my funds yet.

[Wapfika]

@whirlwind.money not that I’m worried about my balance but there’s no reply on my email acknowledging that someone already received it for almost 24hrs when the email sent. What’s the typical duration for a support to handle cases on email?

Also I’m already the second one here that forgot to download private key when mixing since this is not the norm on mixing. Is it possible to have a simple mixing process just like before that doesn’t need to deposit the balance on note so that we can mix directly without going to the dashboard to mix. I have a plan to use the note for anonymity mining but not using the current funds.

[whirlwindmoney]

It's great that foolazz22 raised this question, I know it's not the mixer's fault but what happens when fees are pretty high, in other words, in order to refund him his $15 at least $10 of it will go in fees, on the other hand, setting low fees might make the transaction stuck for a very long period of time.

What I propose instead, if possible, is to give the user enough time to add a second transfer to bring the total of his deposit to 0.001BTC.

If we had to choose between convenience and security we would choose the latter every single time. We considered allowing more than 1 transfer to the same deposit address but ultimately decided against it because we do not want to introduce any possible attack vectors. Right now there are <20 BTC in the multi-sig, but once the balance grows to hundreds we will certainly become a very attractive target for hackers so we simply do not want to take any chances.

The minimum amount is clearly stated so it's the user's responsibility to carefully read all the information and warnings. If the system was decentralized already there would be no refunds in cases like this, or if the user lost the private key. Since that's where Whirlwind is going we believe it's best if we handle support cases same as if the service was already decentralized so users get accustomed to it.

Unless users make mistakes there is simply no way for any 'errors' to happen, so we have no reason to fix something that is not broken, especially if it means that the entire service would become less secure.

I have a concern regarding on my recent action, Is it safe attaching my unique link on support email? Also why does the Guarantee Letter keeps changing whenever I download it. I downloaded it twice and it gives me 2 different Guarantee Letter .txt files. Are both letter valid?

If I assume correctly you used the Clearnet website, and if you did then it's normal. It's the same Guarantee Letter, but the .txt file is named differently because of our extra encryption layer.

@whirlwind.money not that I’m worried about my balance but there’s no reply on my email acknowledging that someone already received it for almost 24hrs when the email sent. What’s the typical duration for a support to handle cases on email?

If the case doesen't involve any manual intervention from our side then the response time is usually under 6 hours, if it does then it's usually 24 hours or more.

Also I’m already the second one here that forgot to download private key when mixing since this is not the norm on mixing. Is it possible to have a simple mixing process just like before that doesn’t need to deposit the balance on note so that we can mix directly without going to the dashboard to mix. I have a plan to use the note for anonymity mining but not using the current funds.

Saving the private key may not be the norm, at least on Bitcoin, because no other service works in the same way. We certainly do not see this as a valid argument for why it would be a good idea to adhere to the current 'norm'. If we were to go down that route then Whirlwind wouldn't be what it is today, and we would simply be just another 'traditional mixer'. Considering we believe those systems are fundamentally flawed and that's the sole reason why Whirlwind even exists, it would be quite hypocritical from our side to back down right now just because 2 users didn't properly read the many warnings displayed on the website. Only at the first step there are 3 warnings displayed, let alone the FAQ:

1. The first step is named 'Generate and Save Note Private Key'
2. Immediately after you click 'Generate' you see this text under the Private Key: Save this note someplace safe. | Losing this note means losing access to your deposited funds.
3. If you hover over the 'info' button you will read this: IMPORTANT! | Make sure you store your Note properly, it is a private key and therefore support can't help if you lose it.

It would be possible to introduce the 'Fast' mode again, but that wouldn't make much sense because as soon as we transition to the zk-SNARK based Note system we would have to scrape it again, and that would only add more confusion.