Wasabi Wallet - Open Source, Noncustodial Coinjoin Software

[NotATether]

Another question. Is setting up a coordinator difficult? Or could anyone, a non-coder, who was basic technical knowledge, and who could compile and troubleshoot be enough to set up and install one?

Plus the documents and the readme doesn't have much information on compiling/installing/configuring one. Perhaps it's time to encourage the BitcoinTalk community to run and boot-strap their own coordinators?

Provided that software already exists for it, I don't think so. It would just prompt you to load it with BTC to bootstrap the coordinator.

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[Kruw]

I was afraid that you might say that, but it could be a start and raise the topic that there SHOULD be challengeability, or else we're merely going to follow their rules.

Since the rules are proprietary information, there's not a good way to challenge or verify the results.

Another question. Is setting up a coordinator difficult? Or could anyone, a non-coder, who was basic technical knowledge, and who could compile and troubleshoot be enough to set up and install one?

It's easy with the BTCPay Server WabiSabi plugin, you just click "enable coordinator".

Provided that software already exists for it, I don't think so. It would just prompt you to load it with BTC to bootstrap the coordinator.

Running a coordinator doesn't require you to own any BTC

[Wind_FURY]

I was afraid that you might say that, but it could be a start and raise the topic that there SHOULD be challengeability, or else we're merely going to follow their rules.

Since the rules are proprietary information, there's not a good way to challenge or verify the results.

As a community, we should probably find a compromise. Because they, as centralized entities, can't truly be trusted, no?

🤔

Another question. Is setting up a coordinator difficult? Or could anyone, a non-coder, who was basic technical knowledge, and who could compile and troubleshoot be enough to set up and install one?

It's easy with the BTCPay Server WabiSabi plugin, you just click "enable coordinator".

Can a modified version of BTCPay Server then be used as a substitute as a CoinJoin app for mixing/tumbling is the next question. Haha. Trying to learn how to run a coordinator as a pleb is more complicated than I thought! But the smarter, more technical people in the forum look like they haven't shown any interest yet. Let's wait. I believe a BitcoinTalk group will start running one soon. If the incentives are worth it, it's a good opportnity.

[ABCbits]

Another question. Is setting up a coordinator difficult? Or could anyone, a non-coder, who was basic technical knowledge, and who could compile and troubleshoot be enough to set up and install one?

It's easy with the BTCPay Server WabiSabi plugin, you just click "enable coordinator".

Can a modified version of BTCPay Server then be used as a substitute as a CoinJoin app for mixing/tumbling is the next question. Haha.

If you check it's documentation[1], it's possible.

Trying to learn how to run a coordinator as a pleb is more complicated than I thought! But the smarter, more technical people in the forum look like they haven't shown any interest yet. Let's wait. I believe a BitcoinTalk group will start running one soon. If the incentives are worth it, it's a good opportnity.

Running one isn't very hard. But it becomes very hard if you need to consider other thing such as securing the server, configuring Tor properly and gaining trust of other people which take long time.

[1] https://docs.btcpayserver.org/Wabisabi/#usage

[Kruw]

As a community, we should probably find a compromise. Because they, as centralized entities, can't truly be trusted, no?

I agree, which is why they aren't trusted with anything meaningful.  As I mentioned in the previous thread, being flagged as a false positive is harmless since it doesn't cost you any fees, doesn't impact your privacy, and can't cause you to lose custody of your funds.

Can a modified version of BTCPay Server then be used as a substitute as a CoinJoin app for mixing/tumbling is the next question. Haha.

BTCPay Server's WabiSabi plugin is a substitute for Wasabi Wallet, it even offers many advanced configurations Wasabi does not:

Pleb Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGVCrwMKKn0
Scientist Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5nFckPfPcA

Trying to learn how to run a coordinator as a pleb is more complicated than I thought! But the smarter, more technical people in the forum look like they haven't shown any interest yet. Let's wait. I believe a BitcoinTalk group will start running one soon. If the incentives are worth it, it's a good opportnity.

Complicated how? It's a single button: https://i.imgur.com/dA1YkUp.png

[ABCbits]

Trying to learn how to run a coordinator as a pleb is more complicated than I thought! But the smarter, more technical people in the forum look like they haven't shown any interest yet. Let's wait. I believe a BitcoinTalk group will start running one soon. If the incentives are worth it, it's a good opportnity.

Complicated how? It's a single button: https://i.imgur.com/dA1YkUp.png

Maybe he refer to complexity when installing and configuring BTCPay itself, assuming he prefer not to use 3rd party.

[Wind_FURY]

Trying to learn how to run a coordinator as a pleb is more complicated than I thought! But the smarter, more technical people in the forum look like they haven't shown any interest yet. Let's wait. I believe a BitcoinTalk group will start running one soon. If the incentives are worth it, it's a good opportnity.

Complicated how? It's a single button: https://i.imgur.com/dA1YkUp.png

Maybe he refer to complexity when installing and configuring BTCPay itself, assuming he prefer not to use 3rd party.

No, it was because I was under the presumption that everything a person needed had clear and concise documentation on how to compile, install, configure, and deploy a coordinator when Peter Todd said "just run your own coordinator" when asked about what to do if a user doesn't want use zxSNACKS' coordinator in a video.

But it doesn't really matter for me personally, I merely wanted to explore and see what I can do with my limited technical knowledge. But I hope mixers start running their own coordinators and offer CoinJoin as another option for their service.

[DaveF]

Are you using block space efficiently?  Wasabi's coinjoin of the week conserved 59 UTXOs in a single private transaction! https://mempool.space/tx/e4af29d4544af4d3ac4641b6e330db66d55e6ee5476963a566129d035eaf1523

Number of inputs: 316
Number of outputs: 257
Value: 30.86650977 BTC
Fee rate: 43.69 sats/vbyte
Input anonset: 5.96
Output anonset: 7.79

Is there any reason that you are not enabling RBF?
If there is a coinjoin and fees spike it has the potential to sit there for a long time.
I realize bumping might lead to some privacy issues but can't think of a reason not to have it enabled.

-Dave

[Kruw]

Is there any reason that you are not enabling RBF?
If there is a coinjoin and fees spike it has the potential to sit there for a long time.
I realize bumping might lead to some privacy issues but can't think of a reason not to have it enabled.

-Dave

Normal payments sent from Wasabi signal RBF, but coinjoins do not.  This is to make DoS attacks (in the form of a double spend of unconfirmed coinjoin inputs) marginally less likely to propagate. 

[Wind_FURY]

Kruw, because Wasabi's mission and vision is to protect user privacy and to preserve Bitcoin's fungibility, I believe this service's business model might be interesting to you and your team, https://[banned mixer]/

zkSNACKS could probably set up a platform using the same model but also using your software for coordinating CoinJoins. It could encourage the community to set up more coordinators, it could incentivize zkSNACKS through charging fees made from their coordinators, and such a platfrom could also make it easy to start/boot-strap a coordinator.

[NotATether]

Provided that software already exists for it, I don't think so. It would just prompt you to load it with BTC to bootstrap the coordinator.

Running a coordinator doesn't require you to own any BTC

But without any capital, isn't a coordinator effectively useless?

If there is no BTC, there is no anonymity set to get UTXOs from for making CoinJoins. It's not possible to bootstrap a CoinJoin with just user inputs as you know.

I guess it only makes sense if you are developing or debugging some coordinator software.

Kruw, because Wasabi's mission and vision is to protect user privacy and to preserve Bitcoin's fungibility, I believe this service's business model might be interesting to you and your team, https://[banned mixer]/

zkSNACKS could probably set up a platform using the same model but also using your software for coordinating CoinJoins. It could encourage the community to set up more coordinators, it could incentivize zkSNACKS through charging fees made from their coordinators, and such a platfrom could also make it easy to start/boot-strap a coordinator.

Jambler is for making bitcoin mixers, not coordinators for wallets

[Wind_FURY]

Kruw, because Wasabi's mission and vision is to protect user privacy and to preserve Bitcoin's fungibility, I believe this service's business model might be interesting to you and your team, https://[banned mixer]/

zkSNACKS could probably set up a platform using the same model but also using your software for coordinating CoinJoins. It could encourage the community to set up more coordinators, it could incentivize zkSNACKS through charging fees made from their coordinators, and such a platfrom could also make it easy to start/boot-strap a coordinator.

Jambler is for making bitcoin mixers, not coordinators for wallets

That's why I said zkSNACKS merely use the same business model because it's a good model for setting up privacy solutions. But instead of using a proprietary mixing software, use zkSNACKS open source software for coordinating CoinJoins.

It could work, no? And from the viewpoint of a community that cares about privacy and Bitcoin's fungibility, the pros probably outweigh the means.

[Kruw]

If there is no BTC, there is no anonymity set to get UTXOs from for making CoinJoins. It's not possible to bootstrap a CoinJoin with just user inputs as you know.

Coinjoins are made up entirely of user inputs, there's no requirement that the coordinator participates in coinjoins they coordinate.

That's why I said zkSNACKS merely use the same business model because it's a good model for setting up privacy solutions. But instead of using a proprietary mixing software, use zkSNACKS open source software for coordinating CoinJoins.

Yes, if the integrating client supports network privacy features (Tor/xpub protection), then zkSNACKs will reward affiliates: https://zksnacks.com/coinjoin-api/

[DaveF]

Is there any reason that you are not enabling RBF?
If there is a coinjoin and fees spike it has the potential to sit there for a long time.
I realize bumping might lead to some privacy issues but can't think of a reason not to have it enabled.

-Dave

Normal payments sent from Wasabi signal RBF, but coinjoins do not.  This is to make DoS attacks (in the form of a double spend of unconfirmed coinjoin inputs) marginally less likely to propagate. 

But, how do you protect from fee spikes? Yes, it's an edge case but other then CPFP there is not much you can do and it does leave the potential of having a coinjoin sitting out there for hours / days.
From what I can see the fee paid is about what it should take to get it into the next block, but we all have see that blow up in peoples faces when there is a long gap between blocks and some ordinal garbage hits.

-Dave

[Kruw]

But, how do you protect from fee spikes? Yes, it's an edge case but other then CPFP there is not much you can do and it does leave the potential of having a coinjoin sitting out there for hours / days.
From what I can see the fee paid is about what it should take to get it into the next block, but we all have see that blow up in peoples faces when there is a long gap between blocks and some ordinal garbage hits.

-Dave

Yes, fee estimation is a higher stakes problem with coinjoins compared to single party payments, I started a Github discussion about it - https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/discussions/12046

[Pmalek]

@Kruw
With everything that happened with Sinbad and the campaign's escrow address landing on the OFAC sanctions list, has zkSNACKs implemented the same sanctions to the address and/or all others connected to it? More precisely, since it isn't zkSNACKs that implements the sanctions and its the blockchain analysis company, is the suggestion that zkSNACKs receives to allow or disallow UTXOs into coinjoins from the above-mentioned users? I don't use Wasabi, but it would be interesting to hear how it would handle it.

[Kruw]

@Kruw
With everything that happened with Sinbad and the campaign's escrow address landing on the OFAC sanctions list, has zkSNACKs implemented the same sanctions to the address and/or all others connected to it? More precisely, since it isn't zkSNACKs that implements the sanctions and its the blockchain analysis company, is the suggestion that zkSNACKs receives to allow or disallow UTXOs into coinjoins from the above-mentioned users? I don't use Wasabi, but it would be interesting to hear how it would handle it.

If an address is specifically listed as OFAC sanctioned, it's definitely going to be blocked.  I don't know how coins that have proximity to that address are affected.

[NotATether]

@Kruw
With everything that happened with Sinbad and the campaign's escrow address landing on the OFAC sanctions list, has zkSNACKs implemented the same sanctions to the address and/or all others connected to it? More precisely, since it isn't zkSNACKs that implements the sanctions and its the blockchain analysis company, is the suggestion that zkSNACKs receives to allow or disallow UTXOs into coinjoins from the above-mentioned users? I don't use Wasabi, but it would be interesting to hear how it would handle it.

If an address is specifically listed as OFAC sanctioned, it's definitely going to be blocked.  I don't know how coins that have proximity to that address are affected.

That's fine and it a much better stance to take than some other websites are doing, who are outright blocking anyone with an IP from any country with related sanctions from doing financial transactions.

[Pmalek]

That's fine and it a much better stance to take than some other websites are doing, who are outright blocking anyone with an IP from any country with related sanctions from doing financial transactions.

Ahh, yes. The land of the free and all its possibilities. I had no idea that Stacker.news had such a discriminatory policy towards whole countries and regions. I don't use it, so I don't care. I am going off-topic but somehow while reading your post and the announcement by SN, I remembered Borat's pledge to the US, when he said "we (Kazakhstan) support your war of terror." The whole crowd goes nuts thinking he just made a grammatical error and was trying to say something completely different. I will stop there.

[Wind_FURY]

@Kruw
With everything that happened with Sinbad and the campaign's escrow address landing on the OFAC sanctions list, has zkSNACKs implemented the same sanctions to the address and/or all others connected to it? More precisely, since it isn't zkSNACKs that implements the sanctions and its the blockchain analysis company, is the suggestion that zkSNACKs receives to allow or disallow UTXOs into coinjoins from the above-mentioned users? I don't use Wasabi, but it would be interesting to hear how it would handle it.

Do you hold UTXOs that were sent from Sinbad's sanctioned wallet? Why not do a small experiment, "for the science".

You send some coins to zkSNACKS' coordinator and check if your UTXOs are blocked. If they are, send those UTXOs to the Lightning Network, then send them to yourself. Get them out of Lightning, in a new "clean" address, then send them to zkSNACKS' coordinator.