Wasabi Wallet - Total Privacy For Bitcoin

[Kruw]

"FreeSabi" is a bot that tracks the liquidity of 0% fee WabiSabi coinjoin coordinators:

https://x.com/FreeSabiBot
npub1u4rl3zlfa2efxslhypf4v6r8va5e0c9smxyr5676pxkyk0chn33s0teswa

Freesabi now tracks paid coordinators as well, they have rebranded to "Liquisabi" https://x.com/LiquiSabi

[Kruw]

On chain fees are low right now, today is a great day to coinjoin! 128 input 140 output transaction from this morning:

https://mempool.space/tx/d874c5a2fa09a7c752118ddc40d24f09cb40d4db7065dce6c3217329e8b49b93

[stfugtfo78]

its running out of real business lol 

[Kruw]

Block 849436 after the fee spike earlier was dominated by coinjoin transactions  

[Wind_FURY]

its running out of real business lol 

That could also be telling that most of the users of Bitcoin don't need privacy for most of their transactions? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Because the people who absolutely need it - the reason could be for their own safety, to hide from "some entities", state-level or some institutions - WILL USE those tools if they are truly needed. Plus Bitcoin could be debated to be more private than other cryptocurrencies simply because of having a much larger set of users. A coin that has built-in privacy features, but with FEWER number of users, will probably be less private.

[BlackHatCoiner]

WabiSabi, as a protocol, is pretty decent. Maybe even better than Samourai. (And I apologize if I have ever argued the opposite.) The problem comes when the development team starts messing with their credibility.

It's been repeated constantly to not trust but verify, and this is the right direction, I agree. But, what people miss in here is that privacy services are reputation based, aka trust based. You do not sell your service with the "don't trust, verify" motto, if your reputation is going downhills. And let's face it, this was Wasabi's reputation for the past two years. They funded blockchain analysis and introduced blacklist filter in the main coordinator, or as I call it, sold out their users and turned pro-censorship. How do you expect the user to feel confident of his privacy if he knows he's funding the enemy?

Maybe the protocol is completely trustless as Kruw argues (even though I still have my doubts in some areas), but the reason people might not be using it, is because of bad reputation.

Wasabi has become more decentralized, which is beneficial for a privacy protocol. This shift eliminates the drawbacks of having a central entity exerting significant influence over the software's reputation. However, I believe people still remain skeptical due to the developers' immature and hypocritical behavior revealed in those last few years.

[PrivacyG]

Maybe the protocol is completely trustless as Kruw argues (even though I still have my doubts in some areas), but the reason people might not be using it, is because of bad reputation.

Even if the protocol itself is entirely Trustless, it still requires Trust for the majority of users.  Because most of us do not possess either the time or knowledge to verify by ourselves, so most of us will still rely on what more knowledgeable people WE TRUST say about it and its legitimacy.

Bitcoin Core is Trustless too.  Right?  But how many times do you check the Source Code to see whether there is any malicious line of Code in the last version of the Bitcoin Core?  How many times did you ever check the Open Source code of Wasabi before installing it?  Most of us rely on our Trust and verify the Signatures, but almost never if ever at all do we verify the Coding.

Would you Trust the next version of Bitcoin Core if the Developers announced they were working with a Chain Analysis company?  How would this change if the Developers started becoming evasive and nit picking?  Would it not be even harder to Trust their work?

So if Wasabi sold themselves out to the Enemy, the Trust between us is now gone.  This makes it extremely hard, just as you say, to get all the previous Customers and Users back.  Simply because if you have been fooled once already and felt betrayed, you are going to try to avoid falling in the trap a second time.

And even worse than that is how Kruw handled every single contradictory discussion.  If I was extremely mad at what they have done back when they decided to fund Blockchain Analysis, Kruw only made the situation worse by convincing me there is something very wrong about them and their intentions.  In my opinion, their reputation is forever tainted now and the damage is irreparable, so Wasabi is probably going to die off in a matter of months or years at most.

What can I say.  Congratulations to Kruw.  If Wasabi announcing Censorship was like a hammer to the fingers, Kruw hit the final nail in the coffin by picking words, avoiding facts and questions, evasively answering only questions that put him or Wasabi in a good light et cetera.  Give him a raise Wasabi, because a significant portion of your fall off is his merit.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin Core is Trustless too.  Right?

That was precisely my point. The overwhelming majority of people don't look at one line of code. It'd be better to say that they do trust, just not blindly. There's always a degree of trust, even the programmers need to trust their coding skills for proper verification.

The good thing with writing open-source software is that you're broadcasting your statement in public, and everyone is able to join, read your work and extend it. Add to the equation that there's competition among privacy services, therefore incentive for your competitors to find exploits in your code, and you have another game theory; you cannot afford to write bad software in public.

But that's under normal circumstances. When there's cooperation with the enemy, childish responses from developers for our concerns, the head of Wasabi doxxing his competitors and examples of Wasabi coinjoins reusing addresses (were accessible from KYCP.org, but it's taken down), then I don't care about the software. I've simply lost trust.

And even worse than that is how Kruw handled every single contradictory discussion.

He handled it terribly. Avoiding the questions, mocking users with a mixer signature, being pro-censorship, and as the icing to the cake, wished death to another fellow user he disagreed with.

Red flags for a privacy service.

[Kruw]

They funded blockchain analysis and introduced blacklist filter in the main coordinator, or as I call it, sold out their users and turned pro-censorship.

Sparrow Wallet completely removed Whirlpool from their client, shouldn't you be outraged that they implemented 100% censorship?

If the answer is "No", then you must recognize that services have no obligation to engage in trade with anyone. If you show up to a fancy club wearing sandals and a swim suit, the bouncer at the door will not let you in, even if you are willing to pay the entry fee. This sort of exclusion is a deliberate business choice that the operator makes on behalf of the other customers who prefer a specific environment or atmosphere.

You can claim that the blacklisting was not on behalf of the customers but on behalf of the operator who wants to legally cover their ass. But this policy presents a business opportunity: I told the critics over and over that anyone can run their own coordinator and provide service for the censored. These critics could have easily charged a lower (or zero) service fee to attract liquidity from the default coordinator.

But they didn't. Instead, the critics engaged in destroying the reputation of open source software because they didn't like the customer policy of a company running that software.

Wasabi has become more decentralized, which is beneficial for a privacy protocol.

Unfortunately not, there's a tradeoff. Splitting liquidity among many coordinators reduces the block space efficiency/privacy efficiency compared to liquidity being concentrated with a single coordinator.

Wasabi coinjoins reusing addresses

BlackHatCoiner, didn't you hear Peter Todd?

That's not Wasabi fucking up, that's Wasabi users fucking up.  Wasabi, they fundamentally are not in a position where they can go prevent people from installing the same seed on multiple wallets at once and using it on multiple wallets at once.  It's not reasonable for them to go prevent that.  Also, when you talk about address reuse, for instance, if I'm a Samourai user and I reuse an address that's an input to a coinjoin, well I mean that's just something you can expect to support.  There is no way for a coinjoin implementation to reasonably prevent that.  And there's also good use cases for it, maybe I want to have a public donation address, but then I want to preserve the privacy of the coins that get sent to that donation address and where they go.  That's an obvious thing I can go do.  Similarly, on the other side of this, when I could have a Wasabi Wallet and I could use that wallet to make donations to a singular donation address.  Again, that's coins taken from the coinjoin and going to the same place. In both cases, addresses are being reused.  It doesn't matter how many steps you add before and after that process, the fact is addresses are being reused either before or after the coinjoin for completely reasonable reasons.  It's just not in their position to try to prevent that, there's no reason they should.

Avoiding the questions,

What question did I avoid? Provide a direct quote.

mocking users with a mixer signature,

My only regret is that I didn't repeat my warnings about these scams enough. BlackHatCoiner, do you simply not have any sympathy for the users who lost their coins and data to the scamming sites you promoted to them? Have you tried to pay any of your victims back yet?

being pro-censorship,

I'm supporting freedom of choice, which is a basic tenet of libertarian ethics. Are you suggesting that businesses should be FORCED to serve customers they don't want to? If you don't think that you should use force against businesses, don't you think it's reasonable to suggest competing against them in the free market?

wished death to another fellow user he disagreed with.

I didn't "wish death" on a "fellow user I disagreed with": I exposed the scamming that o_e_l_e_o was performing where he was deceiving users into forfeiting custody of their coins and data. You can see the massive amount of evidence I've compiled against the scammer here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5482198

[BlackHatCoiner]

Sparrow Wallet completely removed Whirlpool from their client, shouldn't you be outraged that they implemented 100% censorship?

The fact that you consider this to be censorship further strengthens my feedback that you engage in whataboutism and evade to answer the essence of my questions. We all know that Sparrow removed their whirlpool feature, because Samourai's servers were confiscated by the feds. Portraying this as swift to censorship is complete twist of the facts and misinformation.

And you know. You know that this is not censorship, because you're not dumb. You deliberately choose to ignore this, because they're a competitor of yours.  

You can claim that the blacklisting was not on behalf of the customers but on behalf of the operator who wants to legally cover their ass.

If you want to "legally cover your ass", you do not go and fund the enemy. I can't highlight this enough. There is no good enough excuse to do that.

Unfortunately not, there's a tradeoff. Splitting liquidity among many coordinators reduces the block space efficiency/privacy efficiency compared to liquidity being concentrated with a single coordinator.

I'm glad we agree that liquidity is important for a coordinator, and we can't just spin off coordinators and expect to attract decent amounts of bitcoin out of nowhere.

But they didn't. Instead, the critics engaged in destroying the reputation of open source software because they didn't like the customer policy of a company running that software.

You mean the company developing that software? I can't help but notice that you're still deliberately evading the essence. zkSNACKs wasn't just a company. It was the company that created Wasabi. nopara73 is the man behind both zkSNACKs and Wasabi. And since the reputation of zkSNACKs was ruined after people heard of cooperation with chain analysis company and blacklisting, it was natural that they would hesitate using their product, Wasabi Wallet.

Critics criticized the company, not the open-source client. But since the company owned the default, main coordinator with the most liquidity, it was a matter of time before the client was not appealing to use.

BlackHatCoiner, didn't you hear Peter Todd?

Didn't you hear Max Hillebrand, main contributor of Wasabi, publicly admitting it was Wasabi's fault? (For both Wasabi 1.0 and 2.0.)

Now, it's time to drop some cheap excuse like: all these address reuses occurred deliberately by the users who were reusing the same seed on multiple clients for some reason.

I'm supporting freedom of choice, which is a basic tenet of libertarian ethics. Are you suggesting that businesses should be FORCED to serve customers they don't want to? If you don't think that you should use force against businesses, don't you think it's reasonable to suggest competing against them in the free market?

I'm not suggesting coercion of any kind. I'm simply sticking with principles I'd expect to be taken for granted. A privacy software should provide privacy regardless the user. You have every freedom to deny serving a client you dislike, just as I have every freedom to claim that by doing so, you become pro-censorship.

Do you want to talk to us about zkSNACKs promising privacy for everyone, bragging that it is a basic human right, and a couple of months after publishing a blacklisting filter? Be in a Wasabi user's position. How would that make you feel about the integrity of that company?

[Kruw]

Avoiding the questions,

What question did I avoid? Provide a direct quote.

You accused me of avoiding questions, yet, you ironically avoided my inquiry about which questions I avoided. Why can't you provide any evidence of this claim?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Every question from post #350 was just avoided.

[Kruw]

Every question from post #350 was just avoided.

I'm not going to answer further accusations until you prove your previous ones.

[BlackHatCoiner]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5465398.msg62805263#msg62805263

[Kruw]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5465398.msg62805263#msg62805263

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5465398.msg62805427#msg62805427

[BlackHatCoiner]

Feel sad for you. There you go. There's the unanswered question:

Instead of acting the judge in the Bitcoin court, derailing the thread, would you like to talk with us about the part where you're recommending a practice that literally supports the development of effective chain analysis, from developers who're doxxing their competitors and outright lying about their product?

Your deleted post nowhere answers this question. You're just asking me (again) this:

What question about Wasabi do you have?  I'll answer it.

[Kruw]

Instead of acting the judge in the Bitcoin court, derailing the thread, would you like to talk with us about the part where you're recommending a practice that literally supports the development of effective chain analysis, from developers who're doxxing their competitors and outright lying about their product?

This isn't a coherent question at all. What "practice" are you talking about?

[BlackHatCoiner]

My time is too valuable to spend it talking on semantics with you. If you want to reply to my post, do it. If you don't, find an excuse. Won't be the first time avoiding answering.

[Kruw]

My time is too valuable to spend it talking on semantics with you. If you want to reply to my post, do it. If you don't, find an excuse. Won't be the first time avoiding answering.

Cool, so then this confirms you don't have any evidence at all that I "recommended" any "practice".

[PrivacyG]

You accused me of avoiding questions, yet, you ironically avoided my inquiry about which questions I avoided. Why can't you provide any evidence of this claim?

Every question from post #350 was just avoided.

I'm not going to answer further accusations until you prove your previous ones.

This is embarrassingly funny.  Ask for evidence, evidence is proven, then you change the subject.  Do you also need a lawyer be provided to you, Kruw, in order to further answer questions?

You are only proving further that posts 346 to 348 are true.