Which one's better Wasabi or Sparrow

[arabspaceship123]

Yeah. As I said to you in another post, the wait time for remixing is by far the biggest downside to Whirlpool. Getting unlimited free remixes for an output is obviously very attractive, but much less so when you can be waiting weeks for a single remix.

Thanks you've been helpful giving advice. Unlimited free mixes isn't the only attractive element Sparrow's presenting. If you've patience waiting for whirlpool mixes you're fine. If you can't wait for completion mixes you shouldn't use it.

If you don't need your coins mixed quickly and can leave your node and wallet running 24/7, then you can just leave them there and forget about them. They will get remixed eventually. But if you need them remixed quickly, then you need to look at either JoinMarket (but this will cost you to pay for 5+ remixes) or a mixer such as Whirlwind.

I've tested Sparrow on windows computer it was grim experience waiting for mixes. If Sparrow doesn't mix inside guaranteed times parameters I won't use it 24/7 if I found suitable RPi4. If Whirlwind & JoinMarket's something I'm able to test I'll post reviews.

And yeah, I wouldn't even bother downloading and testing Wasabi. It doesn't matter what their software is like when they are actively colluding with blockchain analysis behind the scenes.

I won't use Wasabi wallet. Their reputation's over their customers aren't stupid they'll use alternatives.

What is the point of comparison you want? I think you are talking about which is better in terms of privacy.

Wasabi's blockchain analysis collaborations stopped privacy comparisons so privacy aside which ones's thought to be better?

I haven't used coinjoin wallets at all, I prefer to launder my bitcoin through p2p exchanges and Monero, for various reasons.  Not that I don't trust coinjoin, but it's worth noting that coinjoin coordinators are centralized services, and there are expenses that can be avoided by using my preferred methods.  I'm rarely in a hurry to break links to my bitcoin, which is good because my methods can take some time.  I don't mind hodling XMR, which is also good because patience is required.

I don't know how XMR works so I've downloaded Monero light wallet for tests today. In first impressions it's similarity to Electrum can't be missed. If it's giving reasonable privacy without paying mixing fees it's worth testing.

[arabspaceship123]

Wasabi Wallet doesn't use blockchain analysis they've stopped spying so how's that changed your opinions about using it ?

When I've tested Sparrow Wallet it wasn't a good experience. It wasn't fun waiting for mixes because it was taking a long time. Wasabi Wallet didn't take a long time to reach 100% private status so it's a big factor if you want to use coinjoin without waiting.

[ABCbits]

Wasabi Wallet doesn't use blockchain analysis they've stopped spying so how's that changed your opinions about using it ?

When I've tested Sparrow Wallet it wasn't a good experience. It wasn't fun waiting for mixes because it was taking a long time. Wasabi Wallet didn't take a long time to reach 100% private status so it's a big factor if you want to use coinjoin without waiting.

Recent version of Sparrow Wallet removed it's CoinJoin feature. So Wasabi Wallet is the obvious winner on your use case, although waiting time before performing CoinJoin depends on which CoinJoin coordinator you decide to use.

[examplens]

Wasabi Wallet doesn't use blockchain analysis they've stopped spying

Can you point to the source of this information?
I haven't followed anything about Wasabi Wallet for a while, and the short search I did didn't give me any concrete results.

[ABCbits]

Wasabi Wallet doesn't use blockchain analysis they've stopped spying

Can you point to the source of this information?
I haven't followed anything about Wasabi Wallet for a while, and the short search I did didn't give me any concrete results.

They've stopped running CoinJoin coordinator/server, which makes such activity impossible. See this archived blog post (their blog page is currently down), https://web.archive.org/web/20241007122748/https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-is-discontinuing-its-coinjoin-coordination-service-1st-of-june/.

[examplens]

They've stopped running CoinJoin coordinator/server, which makes such activity impossible. See this archived blog post (their blog page is currently down), https://web.archive.org/web/20241007122748/https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-is-discontinuing-its-coinjoin-coordination-service-1st-of-june/.

OK, thanks for the explanation.
I know they officially stopped Coinjoin, but I didn't see it as an option for spying.
btw. what prevents currently active coordinators from continuing to do the same thing, blockchain analysis and spying

[arabspaceship123]

Recent version of Sparrow Wallet removed it's CoinJoin feature. So Wasabi Wallet is the obvious winner on your use case, although waiting time before performing CoinJoin depends on which CoinJoin coordinator you decide to use.

I've read it today they've stopped coinjoins so Wasabi's the winner for my question. There aren't many coinjoin coordinators for Wasabi so ppl will learn about time to coinjoin by using it. Do you use it ?

OK, thanks for the explanation.
I know they officially stopped Coinjoin, but I didn't see it as an option for spying.
btw. what prevents currently active coordinators from continuing to do the same thing, blockchain analysis and spying

The coordinator software's open source so if ppl wanted to spy they'll do it with server hardware to snapshot the IP address & filter bitcoin addresses. Wasabi's open source so if it's capable of spying it would've been talked about & moved out. They stopped being a coordinator after they felt under pressure.

[apogio]

Wasabi's open source so if it's capable of spying it would've been talked about & moved out. They stopped being a coordinator after they felt under pressure.

But the answer to that lives inside the thread (by o_e_l_e_o):

Wasabi use the fees you pay them to actively fund blockchain analysis and pay the company Coinfirm to analyze your UTXOs, spy on your transactions, and decide whether or not you are even allowed to use their coinjoin implementation at all. Here's some fun code from Wasabi (https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/blob/795496595fae2f52730e1556bb6cafd2c649bb97/WalletWasabi.Tests/UnitTests/WabiSabi/Backend/CoinVerifierTests.cs#L133-L142):

Code:

ScheduleVerifications(coinVerifier, generatedCoins);
		foreach (var item in await coinVerifier.VerifyCoinsAsync(generatedCoins, CancellationToken.None))
		{
			if (item.ShouldBan)
			{
				naughtyCoins.Add(item.Coin);
			}
		}

		Assert.Empty(naughtyCoins); // Empty, so we won't kick out anyone from the CJ round.

Are your coins "naughty"? Once Wasabi have spied on them and made that decision

[arabspaceship123]

Wasabi Wallet stopped being a coordinator on June 01 2024. When o_e_l_e_o posted on Jun 21 2023 it was correct because zkSNACKs were devs & coordinators. The naughty coins parameter with Wasabi Wallet doesn't exist after they've stopped being coordinators. Wabisator's got 4 coordinators in the list ppl will have to add one if they want to use Wasabi Wallet.

Wasabi's open source so if it's capable of spying it would've been talked about & moved out. They stopped being a coordinator after they felt under pressure.

But the answer to that lives inside the thread (by o_e_l_e_o):

Wasabi use the fees you pay them to actively fund blockchain analysis and pay the company Coinfirm to analyze your UTXOs, spy on your transactions, and decide whether or not you are even allowed to use their coinjoin implementation at all. Here's some fun code from Wasabi (https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/blob/795496595fae2f52730e1556bb6cafd2c649bb97/WalletWasabi.Tests/UnitTests/WabiSabi/Backend/CoinVerifierTests.cs#L133-L142):

Code:

ScheduleVerifications(coinVerifier, generatedCoins);
		foreach (var item in await coinVerifier.VerifyCoinsAsync(generatedCoins, CancellationToken.None))
		{
			if (item.ShouldBan)
			{
				naughtyCoins.Add(item.Coin);
			}
		}

		Assert.Empty(naughtyCoins); // Empty, so we won't kick out anyone from the CJ round.

Are your coins "naughty"? Once Wasabi have spied on them and made that decision

[apogio]

Wasabi Wallet stopped being a coordinator on June 01 2024. When o_e_l_e_o posted on Jun 21 2023 it was correct because zkSNACKs were devs & coordinators. The naughty coins parameter with Wasabi Wallet doesn't exist after they've stopped being coordinators. Wabisator's got 4 coordinators in the list ppl will have to add one if they want to use Wasabi Wallet.

For some reason though, it looks like the whole traffic is going through one coordinator. Wouldn't it be better if the rest of the coordinators were used as well?

[arabspaceship123]

It's probably because Wasabi users used Kruw's coordinator after zkSNACKs stopped their coordinator & became a wallet service. It would've been better if btc volumes were distributed between them for balance. There's 3 coordinators in Wabisator's site there could be others we don't know about.

For some reason though, it looks like the whole traffic is going through one coordinator. Wouldn't it be better if the rest of the coordinators were used as well?

[ABCbits]

btw. what prevents currently active coordinators from continuing to do the same thing, blockchain analysis and spying

Short answer, there's no way to know if any data actually logged/stored on server used to run CoinJoin coordinator. But WabiSabi (name of the CoinJoin protocol) ensure the coordinator know as little data as possible about it's participant. See, https://github.com/WalletWasabi/WabiSabi/blob/master/explainer.md.

Wasabi Wallet stopped being a coordinator on June 01 2024. When o_e_l_e_o posted on Jun 21 2023 it was correct because zkSNACKs were devs & coordinators. The naughty coins parameter with Wasabi Wallet doesn't exist after they've stopped being coordinators. Wabisator's got 4 coordinators in the list ppl will have to add one if they want to use Wasabi Wallet.

For some reason though, it looks like the whole traffic is going through one coordinator. Wouldn't it be better if the rest of the coordinators were used as well?

It's probably because Kruw is active on Wasabi Wallet community for many years, while people/group behind 3 other coordinator is newer or less known.

[Forsyth Jones]

Unfortunately, due to government pressure on mixers and coinjoins, Sparrow no longer has Samourai's Whirlpool and Wasabi Wallet no longer has the standard coordinator (WabiSabi protocol). However, if you still want to use Coinjoin, there is a Wasabi fork with Coinjoin called GingerWallet.io [ANN Thread] which is also open source, I have never used the Coinjoin service (both Wasabi when it had the feature and Ginger now do).

For me, who isn't a coinjoin user and only uses the basic features of a bitcoin wallet, Sparrow won me over in terms of the amount of features and options available.

Samourai was another wallet with its own CoinJoin protocol called Whirlpool, I really liked that wallet, it was the best available for Android. However, there is a Samourai fork called Ahisgaru Wallet, but I don't know if it has Whirlpool, although it mentions Peer to Peer Coinjoins in the features section on their website.

I don't know how their development is going, but there is an ANN thread here on the forum and their website is still online.

[apogio]

It's probably because Kruw is active on Wasabi Wallet community for many years, while people/group behind 3 other coordinator is newer or less known.

Yes I realise that, but doesn't it invoke trust issues? Isn't it bad from a "decentralisation" perspective? Besides, many people (me included) would prefer to not do coinjoins instead of doing coinjoins where a specific entity could see and potentially track everything. To be fair, I don't know what these co-ordinators do internally, but I guess they could keep logs etc.

[arabspaceship123]

He's contributed to the devs so ppl know him that's why his coordinator's turning over volume. Other coordinators haven't kept pace with him. If he didn't upset bitcointalk users by saying things he should've kept to himself his coordinator would've had more coinjoins.

It's probably because Kruw is active on Wasabi Wallet community for many years, while people/group behind 3 other coordinator is newer or less known.

[Kruw]

Yes I realise that, but doesn't it invoke trust issues? Isn't it bad from a "decentralisation" perspective? Besides, many people (me included) would prefer to not do coinjoins instead of doing coinjoins where a specific entity could see and potentially track everything. To be fair, I don't know what these co-ordinators do internally, but I guess they could keep logs etc.

The WabiSabi coinjoin protocol is trustless. You do not share any trackable information with coordinators, so it doesn't matter what they do internally. Clients use a new Tor address for every interaction so that activity can't be linked together.

This assumption weakens if the coordinator server isn't stable: Repetitive connections to the input registration "lobby" without ever actually completing a round will eventually leak metadata over time.

[apogio]

The WabiSabi coinjoin protocol is trustless. You do not share any trackable information with coordinators, so it doesn't matter what they do internally. Clients use a new Tor address for every interaction so that activity can't be linked together.

This assumption weakens if the coordinator server isn't stable: Repetitive connections to the input registration "lobby" without ever actually completing a round will eventually leak metadata over time.

Fair enough. Do you, as a coordinator, believe it would be better if more coordinators existed and if the traffic was shared among them? How would it help, if it would?

[Kruw]

Fair enough. Do you, as a coordinator, believe it would be better if more coordinators existed and if the traffic was shared among them? How would it help, if it would?

Coinjoins scale well with a single server, but it's definitely good for Bitcoin's decentralization if more coordinators are operating. There's ways coordinators can specialize with higher or lower fees, faster or slower rounds, larger or smaller transactions, etc. BTCPay Server's coinjoin plugin had an option for users to share their traffic across multiple coordinators, but this feature isn't in Wasabi.

[arabspaceship123]

If Wasabi Wallet had options like sharing traffic across multiple coordinators it'll encourage small coordinators to join decentralisation. Interested ppl probably don't launch their own coordinators because of liquidity. Did BTCPay Server remove the multiple coordinators function ?

Coinjoins scale well with a single server, but it's definitely good for Bitcoin's decentralization if more coordinators are operating. There's ways coordinators can specialize with higher or lower fees, faster or slower rounds, larger or smaller transactions, etc. BTCPay Server's coinjoin plugin had an option for users to share their traffic across multiple coordinators, but this feature isn't in Wasabi.

[Kruw]

If Wasabi Wallet had options like sharing traffic across multiple coordinators it'll encourage small coordinators to join decentralisation. Interested ppl probably don't launch their own coordinators because of liquidity. Did BTCPay Server remove the multiple coordinators function ?

The feature still exists, I say "had" because maintenance on the BTCPay coinjoin plugin has fallen behind, some users report performance issues.