The prospect of mixers in a congested mempool

[stomachgrowls]

I do not think so, with the rate people are making bitcoin transactions. If you look at the amount of fee mixers are charging their customers, it is also not also small at all and many people do not think about the fee.

Your mixer changes from 0.7 to 4.7%.
If you make a deposit the mixer has to move the coins you sent, they also have to send you the mixed outputs, that's two tx at least, not including at least one just the bare minimum before the final output as they don't want to pay directly from, splitting that in half since they can use multiple outputs,  that and you got at the current fees around 30$ in fees if the user chooses 0.7% and mixes $1000 worth of BTC your mixer loses $24 every mix.

Love how the whole thing has become so elitist right now, the fees are nothing if you move or mix $10k otr $100k worth of BTC, because yeah, that's your average Joe money for the week around here, right?

Want to say the same thing on which if you are that someone who do really tend to mix out 10k or even 1k worth of coins then even up paying $20-30 when it comes to fees then it wont really be that an issue.

Not to make out some discrimination about into those small time mixer users to be mindful about the fees. We do know that mixing services arent the ones who are mainly affected with this recent surge
of network transactions which we know that this isnt something a condition that do happen often.If it turns out that there would really be some additional fee then it would be understandable that mixers would really be just adjusting basing up on to those dynamic fees. It might look that much reaching about 4.7% then it would be on your choice whether you would be proceeding or not.

Just like on what i have said which people who do make use of these mixers arent talking about small amounts that they are transacting.
So fees wont really be that issue basing up on the privacy that it do gives. So it wont be that much of an issue.

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[Marvelman]

You make a good point about how the latest network congestion has driven transaction fees and wait times through the roof.  This could really gum up the works for mixing services, seeing as each mixer tries to stand out by having faster settlement times.  I'm curious whether these snags might push the industry to come up with some clever solutions, or if this will be a huge obstacle for the whole mixing landscape going forward.   

It's anyone's guess whether the congestion and delays are just a temporary slowdown that mixing platforms will find creative ways around, or if itll remain a persistent issue that really hampers adoption.  Perhaps some companies will explore methods like batching multiple swaps together, or tapping other Layer 2 solutions to keep costs and lag time lower.  One thing is certain, the mixing of smaller amounts of coins will probably die out, which will certainly affect the anonymity of many users' transactions.

[Hamza2424]

There is no doubt that Bitcoin mixer is a great innovation. It is actually what makes Bitcoin retain some of its key attributes like privacy and anonymity. However, the recent congestion of the mempool resulting in high transaction fees and longer waiting time for transactions confirmation might have huge impact in mixing business considering that mixers usually have time range for settlement, this being unique for each mixer and often used as competitive advantage.  

Do you think this could be a major challenge to the business of coin mixing?

Yes, this would be a big problem for them and especially for those people who have to make payments on time. This problem is hitting big businesses while small businesses must already have moved to another payment method like Matic, or tokens with lesser transactional fees. But, BTC mixer can't even do that as they are dealing in BTC coin, not in Matic.

They might prefer to pay the high transaction fee for the sake of customers but this will cost them a lot, I can't imagine what would be the situation of small vendors who must have left the BTC as payment method a long time ago.

Another point is when we have to send funds on the mixer-provided wallet, we also have to pay the high fee and also have to wait for a longer period of time for the completion of our transaction from our side.

[panganib999]

Mixers aren't really in the negative here per se. The fact that this is a niche aspect in the world of crypto allows them to literally pass the increased fee charge to their users, or they can be altruistic and as what some in this thread have said, take part or the entire fee for the user, in which case they are still not at a disadvantage as this will literally paint them in a good light, and allow users to trust them fully. Mixers are going to be the last of your worries when congestion happens, since for one, as said earlier it's a niche, not everyone in this industry wishes to have their cryptocurrencies mixed up, so it's not like the entire crypto industry is affected, and this also opens the opportunity for mixers to charge their users a little higher, as once again mentioned beforehand.

[nakamura12]

Both of the party are affected here since you need to send the coins and at the same time the mixer also in lose if they not increase their fee. We can expect not many people are going to mix their coins at the moment.

I think they would also combine different transactions to make it one transaction that goes to different wallets so that they could save some transactions fees and just bump if the fee increased. Well, the fees sre from the users of the mixers so I don't think it would be a challenge for the mixers but a challenge for those who will use the mixers because if the fee is low then you will have to wait longer.

[BlackBoss_]

Do you think this could be a major challenge to the business of coin mixing?

Cheap transaction fee does not last forever. Expensive transaction fee does not last forever.

Coin mixing services if have good products, can last very long time and their business operation will help them to gain good profit. Like exchanges or gambling site, if they are big, they can waive withdrawal fees for users when transaction fee is expensive. Because they do earn very big profit when fee is not expensive and likely time of cheap fee is more than time with expensive fee because bear market lasts longer than bull market.

[Learn Bitcoin]

Imagine you made a deposit to a mixer and cannot bump your transaction fees for some reason. At the same time, the mixer's deposit address won't be valid after 24 hours. This will be the worst situation for anyone.

At least you will not lose your coins, but you need to wait until few days or even a weak to be confirmed. If it's too long, your transaction might dropped from the mempool and you need to rebroadcast your transaction.

Indeed, you misunderstood my point. Some mixers do not support deposits after 24 hours. Let's say you send them a fund with 25 sat/vB, but the current fee is over 100 sat/vB. If congestion in the mempool does not decrease in the next 24 hours and you cannot bump the fees, it will remain unconfirmed. But if it gets confirmed after 25 hours, the mixer will close your order automatically, and any deposit made to those addresses will be considered a donation. So, you are losing your coins for this issue. I hope the explanation makes sense.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I've noticed a slight decrease in the number of free remixes I've been getting with Whirlpool coinjoin during the last few days, but nothing major, and overall capacity continues to increase: https://nitter.cz/SamouraiDev/status/1725484162734256442#m. So I'm continuing to mix my coins despite the high fees, and I'm not paying a single sat for the privilege.

Your other option would be to perform a single swap from Bitcoin to Monero, and then transact with Monero as much as you want where fees are more reasonable.

[franky1]

for mixers that do separate reserves.. where inflows are obfuscated for a week+ and the outflowed to different user a week+ later.
meaning the coins post-mix are from someone else last week-month..
these types of mixers have yet to feel the hurt of the fee mania.

mixers where the UTXO taint path from deposits(inflows) is only few blocks, hours, days (poor design mixers) they will feel the hurt more and will change their commissions or stop offering services or become less obfuscated to cut costs

[Eternad]

Do you think this could be a major challenge to the business of coin mixing?

Yes if this will continue to long term but I doubt people will keep using high transaction in long term because they will surely use an alternative to limit transaction until the fee back to normal.

There might be some adjustments in the future if this continue like hard fork or something to deal with the ordinal shit. Transaction fee will surely subside and this just some minor difficult time not only for mixer but to all services on Bitcoin ecosystem that rely on frequent sending of transactions.

[m2017]

There is no doubt that Bitcoin mixer is a great innovation. It is actually what makes Bitcoin retain some of its key attributes like privacy and anonymity. However, the recent congestion of the mempool resulting in high transaction fees and longer waiting time for transactions confirmation might have huge impact in mixing business considering that mixers usually have time range for settlement, this being unique for each mixer and often used as competitive advantage.  

Do you think this could be a major challenge to the business of coin mixing?

For bitcoin mixing itself this is unlikely to cause serious damage, but for individual providers of these services it is quite likely. It’s just that weak players in this market will be forced out by stronger ones, which will create some kind of monopoly, or rather, only large players and mixers will remain. I am a supporter of healthy competition and believe that the more bitcoin mixers there are, the better it is both for users (in terms of price-quality ratio of services) and for the crypto industry as a whole (it is easier to exert influence and pressure when there are few mixers) .

In general, any problem prompts the search for a solution to this problem and the improvement and progress of mixing services. Therefore, the problem with an overloaded mempool for mixers is actually not a problem at all, but a push for improvement. Sooner or later this problem would still arise, because many are waiting for bitcoin-mass adoption, but then the mempool will be constantly overloaded.