[banned mixer] Mixer Review Program #2
Bitcointalk username: Mikeywith
I started with using the Clearnet version on Chrome, unfortunately, regardless of testing different browsers (Brave, Tor, and even Edge) I kept getting this error on the Captcha step.
An error has occurred. Please refresh the page and try again.
I wanted to contact their support but it also had a similar issue saying
Leave us a message
An error has occurred. Please refresh the page and try again.
At this point, if I was just a regular user I would have moved on to another mixer, but I contacted their support on the Bitcointalk forum and moved on to testing the Tor Mirror
Mix #1 : Browser: Tor
Standard:
2 receiving addresses
78.99% (8 hrs.2min) and 21.01% (10hrs.19min)
service fee : 1.88%
1- Enter receveing address/es
Positive Notes: - The mixer checks for the validity of the address as you type, all mixers I used have the validity check but some of them do that at the back end and thus you will have to submit the page first.
- The option of choosing delay in both hours and minutes is an advantage over some of the other mixers which only have the delay in hours.
2- Confirming the deposit address:
Negative Notes:- The (Please, download the letter of guarantee before a transfer) is hardly noticeable, it must be more visible than the deposit information.
3- Sending the deposit.
Positive Notes:- The process was showing in real-time, I broadcasted the transaction and it showed in the mixer right away, and it took only a few seconds to reflect the first confirmation on the blockchain.
Negative Notes:
- The tumbler code is somewhere at the bottom of this page, very easy to miss if you don't scroll down and honestly I almost forgot about it since my attention was on the deposit process, the page has a ton of blank space at the top, alongside the logo and steps icons at the top, all of which are taking a lot of "wasted" space
-I think this page should be squeezed to fit a single screen without having to scroll down, where everything needed (Letter of Guarantee + Deposit status + tumbler code appears in the same height level without needing to scroll)
- No easy way of entering the order number should one close the page by mistake, if someone doesn't pay enough attention to the URL which contains the order number /order#JTPFXE5B-ABCDE then it will be hard for them to go back to the same order without contacting the support team.
4- Receiving the transaction:
Positive Notes:-My deposit was broadcasted at 4:29 PM, and the received transaction was sent at 12:44 AM, a total of 13 minutes delay which is perfectly fine given the nature of the blockchain.
- I received the first transaction which had 18 sat/Vbyte when the current mempool estimator showed 13, so the mixer's estimator is rather good, I have used other services with far less accurate fee estimation where they either pay too low or too high a fee.
Negative Notes:
-Despite receiving the transaction the timer is still running on the order page as if it's still yet to come.
* Notice at this point the transaction is confirmed on the blockchain, yet the timer is lagging.
Mix #2 : Browser: FireFox
Unfortunately, up to this point (nearly 9 hours) and despite contacting the support both on Bitcointlalk as well as their website, the clearnet is still not functioning, so I had to use tor mirror on Firefox as well.
Premium:
1 receiving address
100% (19 min)
service fee: 5%
-I used the tumbler code for the second mix so that I don't get my previously sent coins which worked (of course, it could have failed if the timing was better so I had to do another test Mix #3)
Negative Notes:-The warning that says after the deposit is made:
If one of the outputs has a round value (like exactly 0.1 BTC) — this output can be considered as the recipient. Instead of sending 0.1 BTC, send for example 0.100124.
Is pretty useless at this point, it should show on the first page, and then again on the top of the deposit page not at the bottom, now since you can't control what the user sends, you could at least control what you send by slightly modifying your 0.0002
BTC fee to make it in a dynamic range of say 0.000015 - 0.0002
Looking at this transaction which I received from the mixer
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/b761724de390b75b26639e3515f5da975a70e2f99f565cca072b968e8e67eb0eThe output of 0.00075000
BTC came from the deposit of 0.001
BTC, which had a 5% so that resulted in 0.00095
BTC - 0.0002 BTC = 0.00075
BTC, this could have been avoided by you if the fee was 0.000019 instead of 0.00002, it's pretty unrealistic to expect the user to perform that calculation especially if modifying their deposit amount will result in leaving dust, and these things do happen on random bases even though not so often.
Example: sending 0.10329897 with 3% will result in an output of 0.1
BTC, and thus, adding a simple function that checks for the final output and adjusts the fees accordingly would be a good addition.
Also once you click on that exponential mark to view the warning, there is just no way of getting rid of it unless you refresh the page!
- My initial pick is 19 minutes, and that matches what is in the letter of guarantee
Signed message: We hereby confirm that [banned mixer] has generated the address bc1q6tcjl4tw9z68fqdly8me70vkt93e5aj47n7t6k in order to transfer incoming amount (minus fee) to the following addresses: 100% to bc1qjnwttvr2uvqyc9g42nfcv4y65zwu67klk7ecwm after 19 min
However, the timer on the website is showing 1h.17mins (not sure why)
Mix #3 : Postive Notes:- I tried to time the receiving of this mix to match the receiving of the second transaction of the first mix, just to see if one of the deposit addresses would be used for the other transaction, I received both transactions within 9 minutes difference and they were not related.
Negative Notes:In this transaction
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/c9a3b09f602b02c433f11fed1e5cc5c1e1207c8c71b34539b0e01445eb04f2dbI see that you did two things:
1- You consolidated 3 smaller outputs that were not needed
This input > bc1qkpgugjv55lp0my23m0txn0azww5rvxwyf8qh5p of 0.00022350 is clearly the change address of this transaction
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/29cecb7abf2b2455ac842f0f2ca20bc64eeafa650244f100dc2ec248549de845Which came from this address bc1qmtxzrvnzr3ryak5jeprz3eqqsgpq9t4hzvd2g5
the same address that was used to fund my first mix address (bc1qpshee3qva79zxqllgm8z7lxtk556793c4crhkj).
By doing this you revealed that all of these were change addresses owned by you
bc1qpw90m6znhrv9rpks6kfcrv06sl244megp0n7yr
0.00023799 BTC
6.85 USD
bc1qjjksuengqn64k50apyq26xrxy09k9fhl7q2nkm
0.00022350 BTC
6.00 USD
bc1qkpgugjv55lp0my23m0txn0azww5rvxwyf8qh5p
You did all this despite the fact that this output (bc1q5cjh3h6pv2aexgy9ee6mq9l3lcuyg8aursvv2r is 0.00120709) which is more than enough for my deposit, what is the reasoning behind doing this? I can see that you consolidated all of them to a P2SH address which makes it look like it's not the change address but rather mine (unless of course it was actually another client's address since it's higher than 0.00075
BTC we can't tell), but I still don't understand the logic behind doing this in a transaction you are mixing for the client, interested in hearing your mixed input.
General Positive Notes:- Overall the mixer is easy to use.
- The process is fast and the website is not laggy even running on Tor behind a VPN.
- The GUI is nice and pleasant to the eye.
General Negative Notes:- I don't like the security level options, it's complicated for the average user, and there should be only one type of mixing, a mixing that works, and the fees to be different only in regards to the outgoing transaction network fee, not that actually privacy result.
- The website should be translated into more languages, personally, I'd like to see it support Arabic.
