Petition to remove Wasabi from recommendations of bitcoin.org

[Kruw]

You are using the terms "partnership" and "cooperation" to describe a relationship between a customer and a business, which is misleading.  There are companies whose business model involves aggregating reports of coins being stolen, and zkSNACKs buys those reports in order to avoid accepting those stolen coins.  If zkSNACKs were to buy a McDonald's hamburger, that does not mean "zkSNACKs is partnering with McDonald's".

Wasabi or zkSNACKs aren't private customers, though. They are businesses using the services of other business entities (blockchain analysis) whose version of the truth and estimation affects their own operations. In other words, you accept the decision of the blockchain analysis company's views regarding the cleanliness of my UTXOs. My participation in your coinjoins depends on the truth the blockchain analysis firm serves to you. I call that a partnership and cooperation. You are free to use any other terms you like.

As I already pointed out with my McDonald's example, purchasing a business's product does not constitute a "partnership". Here is the list of zkSNACKs' partners:

- $2,500 monthly donation to the Tor project (https://zksnacks.com/)
- 1 BTC donation to the Human Rights Foundation Bitcoin Development Fund (https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/06/25/summer-2020-is-funding-season-for-open-source-bitcoin-development/)
- .86 BTC donation (along with Bull Bitcoin) to Bitcoin Knots developer Luke Dashjr (https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/bitcoin-knots-donation/)
- 1.11 BTC grant for privacy research on the Lightning Network (https://lightningprivacy.com)
- 3.4 million sats (so far) to the best bruteforcer in the community (https://www.huntingsats.com/)
- Sponsorships of Bitcoin educational podcasts such as What Bitcoin Did, Bitcoin Takeover, and What Is Money?
- Sponsorships of Bitcoin events such as BTCPrague, Bitcoin Amsterdam, Baltic Honeybadger (and others I'm sure I'm missing)

You keep talking about open-source, where can we see these rules publicly? According to whose criteria will certain UTXOs be added to whatever list is being used to determine naughtiness of coins?

Since the coordinator code is all open source, you get to decide your own criteria yourself.

Here's another idea if we're about to utilize layers: exchange BTC for XMR and XMR for BTC a little while later. Leaves no traces, much better than Wasabi + lightning altogether. You could then coinjoin the bitcoin, just to minimize the blockchain connection with the previous owner.

This doesn't provide you additional privacy since you leave a trace at step 1 when you send your non private BTC to your XMR counterparty.

[pooya87]

You keep talking about open-source, where can we see these rules publicly? According to whose criteria will certain UTXOs be added to whatever list is being used to determine naughtiness of coins?

Since the coordinator code is all open source, you get to decide your own criteria yourself.

Being open source means absolutely nothing here because nobody has any way of knowing what the actual source code the centralized default coordinator is running.

Here's another idea if we're about to utilize layers: exchange BTC for XMR and XMR for BTC a little while later. Leaves no traces, much better than Wasabi + lightning altogether. You could then coinjoin the bitcoin, just to minimize the blockchain connection with the previous owner.

This doesn't provide you additional privacy since you leave a trace at step 1 when you send your non private BTC to your XMR counterparty.

It does as it successfully breaks the link between the bitcoins you convert to XMR and the bitcoins you get after selling XMR because of the way Monero is implemented.

[BlackHatCoiner]

As I already pointed out with my McDonald's example, purchasing a business's product does not constitute a "partnership". Here is the list of zkSNACKs' partners

Do we have more information about what zkSNACKs purchases from the chain analysis company? Because as far as I'm aware, we aren't even sure what's the business they purchase "product" from.

Since the coordinator code is all open source, you get to decide your own criteria yourself.

I'm a little confused by the terms the user agrees on when using the backend software, so please enlighten me. The backend is released under the MIT License, which gives the people the right to use the software with no limitations. However, in your legal documents, it says the following:

The client application (“Client Application”) is software, with the sole purpose of allowing You access to the Bitcoin network and our Services (as defined below)

Then, it defines the Services as:

The CoinJoin Coordinator Service is an online service that implements trustless CoinJoin to prevent third parties from spying on the Blockchain.

Later on, it continuously uses terms such as "our Services" and "Service provider", signaling that there is just one such provider.

For instance:

You agree that You will not use the Services to perform any type of illegal activity of any sort or to take any action that adversely affects the performance of or the provision by the Service Provider of the Services. Furthermore, You agree that You will not use the Services on Bitcoin that is created, received or given in exchange for, or as a result of, any type of illegal activity.

If I get to decide the criteria all by myself, then how can I accept these terms?

This doesn't provide you additional privacy since you leave a trace at step 1 when you send your non private BTC to your XMR counterparty.

I leave no trace other than the information that person with UTXO(s) x, y, z wants to trade them for either some cryptocurrency or fiat (specifically for what, is an information only known by the other person). Just as with coinjoin, I signal that I want UTXO(s) x, y, z to be mixed.

[Wind_FURY]

what the user could do before using Wasabi's coordinator is like what Peter Todd said in the video. Use layers.

Here's another idea if we're about to utilize layers: exchange BTC for XMR and XMR for BTC a little while later. Leaves no traces, much better than Wasabi + lightning altogether. You could then coinjoin the bitcoin, just to minimize the blockchain connection with the previous owner.

But but I want my UTXOs to go through a government-approved CoinJoin to get the highest value on those UTXOs. The government could force exchanges to make that a requirement before they can accept deposits, so I want to teach as much people to use their "tainted" UTXOs to go through JoinMarket -> Lightning Network -> Back to Bitcoin blockchain -> To Wasabi CoinJoin.

Let's give thanks to WasabiWallet for giving us this wonderful opportunity.

 

If you have "low value", "tainted" UTXOs from the Dark Markets, you could use JoinMarket, and use those UTXOs in Lightning, then send them to yourself. Convert them to onchain Bitcoin then use Wasabi CoinJoin. You now have "government-friendly" UTXOs ready for cold storage. Thanks Wasabi!

See, that's the problem. You think Wasabi implemented blacklisting and now their coinjoined coins are government friendly. We have absolutely no clue with what factors their chain analysis works. We only know that chain analysis is evidently not scientific; what Coinfirm deems as "clean" coins does not necessarily imply the same for other firms.

Are you saying that we can sue zkSNACKS for false advertising if our Wasabi CoinJoined UTXOs are blocked, locked, and confiscated?

 

[Kruw]

Being open source means absolutely nothing here because nobody has any way of knowing what the actual source code the centralized default coordinator is running.

Being open source means you can run your own coordinator.

It does as it successfully breaks the link between the bitcoins you convert to XMR and the bitcoins you get after selling XMR because of the way Monero is implemented.

I leave no trace other than the information that person with UTXO(s) x, y, z wants to trade them for either some cryptocurrency or fiat (specifically for what, is an information only known by the other person). Just as with coinjoin, I signal that I want UTXO(s) x, y, z to be mixed.

Monero is not the weak link in this equation, Bitcoin is.  Step 1 of "Exchange your BTC for Monero" is where the privacy is lost since your Bitcoin transaction history is revealed to your exchange counterparty (unless you coinjoin to do this exchange, in which case you have no need for Monero in the first place since you already have privacy on Bitcoin).

[Pmalek]

Since the coordinator code is all open source, you get to decide your own criteria yourself.

Are you going to go back to suggesting that we can run our own coordinators if we don't agree to what zkSNACKS is doing? Touching upon that subject again is a waste of time. We are now talking about your coordinator, as in the default coordinator. zkSNACKS accepts whatever assessment the blockchain analysis company makes about coin dirtiness and won't allow such coins to coinjoin. Right or wrong? 

And the open-source nature of Wasabi or your coordinator doesn't matter on the subject of taint. It's the blockchain analysis firm that determines taint according to their interpretations. The questions I asked and you didn't answer are about that. So, here they are again.

How do you know stolen coins are getting rejected? You keep talking about open-source, where can we see these rules publicly?
According to whose criteria will certain UTXOs be added to whatever list is being used to determine naughtiness of coins?
Who made that list and in whose name? What entity or government agency is responsible to maintain it, make changes, and decide what's good and what's bad?
Who do I get in touch with if my UTXOs were rejected for reasons unknown to me?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Let's give thanks to WasabiWallet for giving us this wonderful opportunity.

Did Wasabi hire you too?

Are you saying that we can sue zkSNACKS for false advertising if our Wasabi CoinJoined UTXOs are blocked, locked, and confiscated?

When did zkSNACKs promise you government approved coins?

Step 1 of "Exchange your BTC for Monero" is where the privacy is lost since your Bitcoin transaction history is revealed to your exchange counterparty

Public ledger is public. My Bitcoin transaction history is already accessible by everyone. Exchanging for Monero is where the tracing stops, just as when you do coinjoins. To put it this way: arguing that, is like saying coinjoining is weak, because the coordinator knows the coins' history.

[Kruw]

Are you going to go back to suggesting that we can run our own coordinators if we don't agree to what zkSNACKS is doing?

Open source solves your problem which is why I keep suggesting it.  If your notes were censored by a Nostr relay, then I would tell you the same thing:  Run your own relay.  Your obsession about the reasons why some other Nostr relay isn't storing your notes is no longer your problem and not really interesting in the first place.  I do the same thing when opening Lightning channels:  Attempt a new peer if I am rejected by my first choice.  I don't open a petition against Lightning software development companies because they don't want to accept my channel, I can use simply use their software to connect to any node.

[philipma1957]

You are using the terms "partnership" and "cooperation" to describe a relationship between a customer and a business, which is misleading.  There are companies whose business model involves aggregating reports of coins being stolen, and zkSNACKs buys those reports in order to avoid accepting those stolen coins.  If zkSNACKs were to buy a McDonald's hamburger, that does not mean "zkSNACKs is partnering with McDonald's".

Wasabi or zkSNACKs aren't private customers, though. They are businesses using the services of other business entities (blockchain analysis) whose version of the truth and estimation affects their own operations. In other words, you accept the decision of the blockchain analysis company's views regarding the cleanliness of my UTXOs. My participation in your coinjoins depends on the truth the blockchain analysis firm serves to you. I call that a partnership and cooperation. You are free to use any other terms you like.

How do you know stolen coins are getting rejected? You keep talking about open-source, where can we see these rules publicly?
According to whose criteria will certain UTXOs be added to whatever list is being used to determine naughtiness of coins?
Who made that list and in whose name? What entity or government agency is responsible to maintain it, make changes, and decide what's good and what's bad?
Who do I get in touch with if my UTXOs were rejected for reasons unknown to me?

Being in possession of stolen money or other means of payments doesn't necessarily make the owner a thief. You do understand that money and crypto circulate. As someone involved in the crypto business, you should know that those rules your blockchain partners present to you can't be applied to cash and fiat, otherwise a lot of it would have to be confiscated and taken out of circulation because many bills had contact or were used in illegal actions at one point in their past.    

This is a good point what prevents a 'coin' from bring blacklisted.
What allows one to fight the claim that a coin is tainted.

A block analysis company can say you have a tainted coin so how do you check its methodology.

I think the concern is wasabi will be providing a piece of the puzzle to blockchain analysts not all the info but a piece of info.

[Pmalek]

Open source solves your problem which is why I keep suggesting it.

No, you keep suggesting it because you are avoiding to answer the questions. Where are the answers to my questions? Every time a tricky subject comes up that makes Wasabi or your coordinator look bad, you immediately divert attention to something else. I asked you why you have partnered with a blockchain analysis company and accept their inputs and views of what and how bitcoin should work and which coin are good and bad, and your response to that is the equivalent of let's not talk about that, but look at how we are giving donations to the Human Rights Foundation. Let's see if you will answer the questions now.

[Wind_FURY]

Let's give thanks to WasabiWallet for giving us this wonderful opportunity.

Did Wasabi hire you too?

HIRE me? Is that an accusation? Or are you merely too stupid to recognize sarcasm?

How dare you.

Are you saying that we can sue zkSNACKS for false advertising if our Wasabi CoinJoined UTXOs are blocked, locked, and confiscated?

When did zkSNACKs promise you government approved coins?

Then according to that, we can sue zkSNACKS for false advertising if a government entity, or an exchange, blocks, locks, or confiscates our coins because they are "tainted" even after going through Wasabi-CoinJoin?

That question goes to you too, Kruw.

[Kruw]

Open source solves your problem which is why I keep suggesting it.

No, you keep suggesting it because you are avoiding to answer the questions. Where are the answers to my questions? Every time a tricky subject comes up that makes Wasabi or your coordinator look bad, you immediately divert attention to something else. I asked you why you have partnered with a blockchain analysis company and accept their inputs and views of what and how bitcoin should work and which coin are good and bad, and your response to that is the equivalent of let's not talk about that, but look at how we are giving donations to the Human Rights Foundation. Let's see if you will answer the questions now.

I thought it was obvious your questions were rhetorical... but I'll answer them since you won't move on to the topic of open source software until you hear from me:

How do you know stolen coins are getting rejected? You keep talking about open-source, where can we see these rules publicly?

I don't know.

According to whose criteria will certain UTXOs be added to whatever list is being used to determine naughtiness of coins?

I don't know.

Who made that list and in whose name? What entity or government agency is responsible to maintain it, make changes, and decide what's good and what's bad?

I don't know.

Who do I get in touch with if my UTXOs were rejected for reasons unknown to me?

I don't know.

Then according to that, we can sue zkSNACKS for false advertising if a government entity, or an exchange, blocks, locks, or confiscates our coins because they are "tainted" even after going through Wasabi-CoinJoin?

That question goes to you too, Kruw.

I don't know.

[BlackHatCoiner]

HIRE me? Is that an accusation? Or are you merely too stupid to recognize sarcasm?

Yes, I'm the one incapable of recognizing sarcasm...  

Then according to that, we can sue zkSNACKS for false advertising if a government entity, or an exchange, blocks, locks, or confiscates our coins because they are "tainted" even after going through Wasabi-CoinJoin?

Obviously no. What made you think so?

Where are the answers to my questions?

You're asking the wrong person. Here you go: https://www.coinfirm.com/contact/.

The default coordinator knows nothing as far as I can tell from the unit tests. As I have said before, the default coordinator initiates a requests for every coinjoin in Coinfirm, they get the input (which is the list of the wanna-be-mixed inputs) and with probably no questioning select which coin is "naughty", remove it from the array and return it to the coordinator. In fact, in that thread we've covered how a Sybil attack could be executed that way.

[Kruw]

In fact, in that thread we've covered how a Sybil attack could be executed that way.

Not with WabiSabi, you can detect this happening since you can register multiple inputs independently:

The WabiSabi coinjoin protocol is uniquely resilient against the sort of Sybil attack you just described, I explain how a malicious coordinator can be detected by clients here: https://twitter.com/Kruwed/status/1643265823409143810

[BlackHatCoiner]

Not with WabiSabi, you can detect this happening since you can register multiple inputs independently

You register 10 (non-private) inputs, and 1 of them gets rejected, what is your conclusion? To me, absolutely none. Coinfirm might have deemed this one input as inappropriate, or it might be trying to get rid of some coinjoin inputs, so they can use theirs instead and de-anonymize the remaining registered inputs. Who knows. For instance, a 150-input long coinjoin can have its 75 inputs rejected, and replaced with 75 Coinfirm inputs. That leaves the firm with 50% less output set to account for.

[Wind_FURY]

HIRE me? Is that an accusation? Or are you merely too stupid to recognize sarcasm?

Yes, I'm the one incapable of recognizing sarcasm...  

OK, then I beg for forgiveness ser. Haha. But the same hypothesis, I want people to "clean" their UTXOs from "taint" and send "dirty" UTXOs from the Dark Markets through Wasabi's CoinJoin by first going through JoinMarket -> Lightning Network -> Bitcoin blockchain, then Wasabi. They could also add Samourai for another layer before Wasabi.

Then according to that, we can sue zkSNACKS for false advertising if a government entity, or an exchange, blocks, locks, or confiscates our coins because they are "tainted" even after going through Wasabi-CoinJoin?

That question goes to you too, Kruw.

I don't know.

You don't know? But a centralized entity making claims such as zkSNACKS should be regulated by an authority in case those claims aren't real, no? That's probably something to think about.

[Kruw]

Not with WabiSabi, you can detect this happening since you can register multiple inputs independently

You register 10 (non-private) inputs, and 1 of them gets rejected, what is your conclusion? To me, absolutely none.

Given that 9 out of the 10 inputs were accepted, you can conclude the round is not under attack since 9 out of 10 would have to be rejected for the attack to be effective.

[BlackHatCoiner]

But the same hypothesis, I want people to "clean" their UTXOs from "taint"

If by "taint", you mean the list of coins which are treated unequally by chain analysis firms (some of which do get funded by the US government), then we actually don't know what will happen, and probably neither any Wasabi developer knows. As I said, their coordinator makes a request to Coinfirm and will enforce that UTXO list to the coinjoin round. Your coins could be accepted even if you're wanted by the FBI, or could be refused even if you're innocent.

You don't know? But a centralized entity making claims such as zkSNACKS should be regulated by an authority in case those claims aren't real, no?

I still don't get where you're confused. Which claim by zkSNACKs is false if they approve a coin which is deemed as "naughty" by some chain analysis firm?

Given that 9 out of the 10 inputs were accepted, you can conclude the round is not under attack since 9 out of 10 would have to be rejected for the attack to be effective.

If random inputs are getting rejected, shouldn't that be a concern since the chain analysis company may be trying to weaken the coinjoin by replacing the rejected coins with theirs?

[Pmalek]

I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I don't know.

That's exactly what I wanted to hear, thank you. You don't know! You (as in Wasabi and zkSNACKs, not you personally) have no idea what are good and what are bad coins. You don't know the reason someone isn't allowed to improve their privacy. They don't tell you. You accept the decisions made by Coinfirm without asking, hey, what exactly is wrong with those UTXOs?

Why would a company that preaches openness accept unknown rules and requirements by someone that doesn't explain to them those same rules and requirements? If there is such a thing as dirty bitcoins, don't you think everyone should know what that is and not rely on some weird entity that presents that information to you for whatever reasons they think they should?   

[Kruw]

Given that 9 out of the 10 inputs were accepted, you can conclude the round is not under attack since 9 out of 10 would have to be rejected for the attack to be effective.

If random inputs are getting rejected, shouldn't that be a concern since the chain analysis company may be trying to weaken the coinjoin by replacing the rejected coins with theirs?

You should be concerned of an active Sybil attacker regardless of whether other inputs are rejected or not.  Mining fees prevent continuous attacks, large sized rounds prevent single attacks.

I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I don't know.

That's exactly what I wanted to hear, thank you. You don't know! You (as in Wasabi and zkSNACKs, not you personally) have no idea what are good and what are bad coins. You don't know the reason someone isn't allowed to improve their privacy. They don't tell you. You accept the decisions made by Coinfirm without asking, hey, what exactly is wrong with those UTXOs?

Why would a company that preaches openness accept unknown rules and requirements by someone that doesn't explain to them those same rules and requirements? If there is such a thing as dirty bitcoins, don't you think everyone should know what that is and not rely on some weird entity that presents that information to you for whatever reasons they think they should?  

If rejections were arbitrary and commonplace then that would give you an eager customer base from which you could attract users to your own WabiSabi coinjoin coordinator.  Why haven't you set up your own WabiSabi coinjoin coordinator yet?