Why is zkSNACKs shutting down?

Running a coordinator, especially for profit, involves many regulatory complexities. After careful consideration, they decided it wasn’t a path they wanted to continue pursuing.

What was the relationship between zkSNACKs and Wasabi Wallet?

The co-founder of zkSNACKs, nopara73, co-built Wasabi Wallet and co-authored the WabiSabi coinjoin protocol. His vision for zkSNACKs was to create a cycle where profits from the coordination service would be reinvested into developing better software. This collaboration allowed Wasabi Wallet to be well-funded and feature-rich, making it one of the best in the Bitcoin ecosystem, especially regarding privacy.

How will zkSNACKs shutting down affect Wasabi Wallet?

Wasabi will transition toward being more like other fully open-source projects with low and irregular funding. While Wasabi is already a fully functional, feature-rich Bitcoin wallet, maintaining and improving it without zkSNACKs’ funding will be challenging. Our focus now is to downsize the codebase, remove hard-to-maintain features, and make the software manageable for a few maintainers.

Can users still access their funds if zkSNACKs stops operating?

Absolutely. While some features like exchange rate and mempool updates will stop working, you can still open your wallet and send funds if zkSNACKs’ server goes down. We are currently working on making the wallet more resilient and backend-independent. Wasabi also enables connections to any backend, potentially leading to community-run backends. Last but not least, Wasabi Wallet is fully non-custodial and uses standard BIP39 seeds. You will always be able to recover your funds by entering the seed in another Bitcoin wallet.

What is the value of Wasabi Wallet without the ability to coinjoin?

Wasabi is much more than coinjoins. It’s available on most operating systems, includes Tor, uses BIP157 filters for synchronization, and employs various other privacy-preserving techniques such as change avoidance. Also, coinjoins are still implemented, and anyone can run a coordinator to gather users for coinjoins. In fact, we are already seeing many coinjoins with quite a lot of liquidity.

How can users discover a coordinator?

Currently, most coordinators are advertised through Nostr. There are software tools like WasabiNostr to discover them, pages tracking their liquidity such as LiquiSabi or wasabist.io, and the community also shares information. Wasabi Wallet does not promote any single coordinator, but we are working on an unbiased and spam-resistant coordinator discovery mechanism.

Is it risky to connect to a coordinator with no reputation?

Wasabi Wallet’s coinjoin client is designed to minimize trust in the coordinator. However, because zkSNACKs was the only coordinator, we’ve been complacent. Some attacks are possible to extract funds, but version 2.0.8.1 has significantly mitigated those risks. We are working to ensure it will be safe to connect to any coordinator and reduce attack surface.

How can someone run their own coordinator to coinjoin with their community?

The best way right now is using the BTCPayServer coinjoin plugin, which includes a customizable coordinator that is published on clearnet or as an onion service. We’re also working on integrating an easy way to run a coordinator directly from Wasabi Wallet.

Should Wasabi Wallet’s maintainers and contributors be worried about regulators?

No. Wasabi Wallet is an open-source tool for individuals seeking privacy and financial sovereignty. It’s not malware, doesn’t provide a service, and doesn’t generate revenue. It’s up to the coordinators and users to use our tools responsibly.

How can people help?

Contributions and funding are essential. We’re making it easier for open-source contributors, whether developers or not, to have a significant impact on the project. We’re also setting up donation channels for organizations and users to fund the project. Stay tuned for our first donation campaign announcement. Finally, simply use Wasabi Wallet and spread the word.

What about the long term? I’ve heard about Wasabi 3.

Our goal is to continue improving the best privacy-first Bitcoin wallet and set privacy best practices for the industry. We’re exploring changes for a hard fork of the coinjoin protocol to adapt to a more decentralized paradigm, including managing liquidity across coordinators, developing new revenue models for project resilience, and improving the engine in a small liquidity environment.

The post What’s next for Wasabi Wallet? appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Wasabi Wallet will continue to function as a regular bitcoin wallet, users can generate private keys to receive and send bitcoin. Even without coinjoins, Wasabi’s client-side filtering architecture, Tor integration and custom coin selection make it the most private light wallet available. However, the nature of the bitcoin blockchain prevents users from obtaining complete privacy without coinjoins.

This also affects users of other wallet clients that connect to the zkSNACKs coordinator, like Trezor Suite and BTCPayServer.

Wasabi Wallet is a free and open-source software and will continue to be maintained. Anyone can contribute, open new issues, submit pull requests, or even fork it. zkSNACKs will fund the continuous maintenance of Wasabi Wallet’s basic features.

When Wasabi Wallet was launched back in 2018, privacy on bitcoin was only an idea, a dream of cypherpunks. After years of research, trial and error, we proved that bitcoin can be used as anonymous money in a fully sovereign way. Coinjoin allows for a peaceful, secure, and effective way to reclaim financial privacy. We succeeded.

The day will come when someone will write the code to perfect all the properties of good money. Until then, let us be grateful for what we have accomplished together and be mindful of the challenges ahead.

The post zkSNACKs is Discontinuing its Coinjoin Coordination Service 1st of June appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

The question then becomes: How do coinjoin wallets compare on on-chain transaction fees?

Bitcoiners may find different protocols advantageous depending on the amount they are coinjoining, or how long they are willing to wait before spending. For example, if an input you want to coinjoin is of a ten million sats or less, WabiSabi wallets are ideal unless you’re willing to wait days or weeks coinjoining, which in that case Whirlpool would be better due to the free remixing policy. 

In cases where you are willing to provide liquidity and wait for others to coinjoin, you may prefer acting as a Joinmarket maker to passively earn sats. Finally, if you’re coinjoining more than 1 BTC, Joinmarket basically almost always wins in terms of fees. 

It’s also important to remember that this analysis was purely from the fees to be paid point of view, and didn’t take into account how strong each privacy guarantee is for each protocol. To learn more about the benefits and the tradeoffs of each coinjoin protocol and wallet, visit the open-source educational website Coinjoins.org. 

If you want to know how WabiSabi, Whirlpool and Joinmarket fee structures work, read on. We’ll define all the fees of a coinjoin transaction, the way fees are calculated for each protocol and finally, which one is better for many different user profiles. 

What are the Different Fees for Coinjoin Transactions?

To answer what are the different types of fees on a coinjoin transaction, we will explain how coordinator fees work for each protocol, and then how mining fees work for each protocol. 

What are Coinjoin Coordinator Fees?

Protocols like WabiSabi and Whirlpool use a centralized coordinator model to scale privacy, allowing multiple users to cooperate in a transaction without any participant knowing which coins belong to the others. Cryptography and discreet network communication are required in order to ensure that movements of funds are not revealed to the coinjoin coordinator. To learn more about how coinjoin protocols work, read more on Coinjoins.org.

Coordinator fees are what you pay the third-party in exchange for their services. The fee can be static (fixed amount) or dynamic (percentage). 

Coordinator Fees for WabiSabi Coinjoins

For example, in WabiSabi wallets like Wasabi Wallet, BTCPay Server or Trezor Suite, coordinator fees are 0.3% (dynamic) of what you’re mixing (for the zkSNACKs coordinator). You’re only charged on the first transaction so remixing is free of coordinator fees. Also, if someone sends you coinjoined bitcoin, your coordinator fees are waived too. This feature is called Friends don’t pay.

In addition, the Plebs don’t pay feature makes it that coordinator fees are waived for any coinjoin input less than 1,000,000 satoshis (0.01 BTC). This improves accessibility for users with low amounts of bitcoin. 

Coordinator Fees for Whirlpool Coinjoins

On the other hand, on Whirlpool wallets like Samourai, Sparrow, and Bitcoin Keeper, coordinator fees are of a fixed amount, depending on the liquidity pool you choose to be part of. Here’s the breakdown per pool:

• 100,000 satoshis pool: 5,000 sats of coordinator fees
• 1,000,000 satoshis pool: 50,000 sats of coordinator fees.
• 5,000,000 satoshis pool: 175,000 sats of coordinator fees.
• 50,000,000 satoshis pool: 1,750,000 sats of coordinator fees.

You might be wondering what a coinjoin pool is. In short, it’s the coinjoin output denomination amount. The 100,000 satoshis pool will result in coinjoined outputs of that precise size. Here’s a visual example for the 5,000,000 satoshis pool: 

As you can see, every output is of the same value. When you enter a pool, you pay the fixed fee amount. However, you can enter a pool with much more than the pool denomination, to be exact you can enter with up to 70 times the pool denomination, split across 70 outputs (for the 100k sats pool it’s only 25 times). 

Now on to Joinmarket, which doesn’t have coordinator fees but there are coinjoin fees.

Coinjoin Fees on Joinmarket

Joinmarket works differently than other coinjoin protocols because it doesn’t have a centralized individual entity coordinator, but rather two user roles in a P2P (peer-to-peer) environment: makers (who provide liquidity for a fee) and takers (who pay a fee for liquidity and coordinate the transaction). Any user can be a maker or a taker.

In short, instead of paying for coordination, you pay for liquidity. There’s an orderbook with all maker offers and at different price points. Some charge a static fee (fixed amount) but most charge a dynamic fee (a percentage of the liquidity used). 

When you’re a taker, you use the liquidity of many makers in a single transaction, usually 8, which makes 9 participants including you. You pay each maker what they ask for. For example, if there’s 8 makers and each charge a dynamic fee of 0.0001% BTC for the liquidity used, and you use 1 BTC of each, you pay a total of 10,000 sats * 8 = 80,000 sats.

This is the case for each Joinmarket transaction you’re the taker on. If you’re a maker, you enjoy privacy and you get paid for it: the best of both worlds.

How Mining Fees Work on Coinjoin Transactions?

Mining fees are part of every transaction on the bitcoin network, and coinjoins are no exception. It works differently for all three major protocols. Here’s a tool to calculate bitcoin transaction size. 

Mining Fees on WabiSabi Coinjoins

On WabiSabi coinjoin transactions, you only pay the fees associated with the blockspace your inputs and outputs take. For example, if you have a P2WPKH (segwit native) wallet and you have 3 inputs and 5 outputs in a coinjoin transaction, and the current fee is 50 sats/vbyte, you will pay:

Total blockspace: 3 * 68 vbytes + 5 * 31 vbytes = 359 vbytes

Total mining fees: 516.5 vbytes * 50 sats/vbytes = 17,950 sats

You pay exactly what you consume in blockspace, in every coinjoin transaction you participate in. 

Mining Fees on Whirlpool Coinjoins

The mining fee structure of Whirlpool coinjoins is a bit more complicated, but nothing that we can’t explain. Here it goes.

First off, it’s important to understand that before the coinjoin process begins, a premix transaction, also known as Tx0, takes place. The claimed purpose is to split your total input amount into the outputs to coinjoin, the non-private change output that goes into a separate wallet account called BadBank, and the coordinator fee to pay. 

For example, if you have a 1,500,000 sats UTXO for the 1,000,000 sats denomination pool, your premix transaction (Tx0) will have 1 input and three outputs: one output to coinjoin, a 50,000 sats output to pay the coordinator, and a non private change output that goes to the BadBank wallet account.

It’s important to understand that your premix can have many inputs and many outputs to coinjoin (up to 70), but the minimum number of inputs is 1 and outputs is 2 (if there’s no change). 

The first part of the mining fees for Whirlpool coinjoins is the fee you pay for the premix transaction. However, there’s a second part: you have to pay mining fees for the first coinjoin transaction, and not only for you, but for anyone remixing in it. You share that cost with at least one additional user out of 5, but it can be up to 4 out of 5 participants. When you remix and enter further coinjoins, you don’t pay any fees.

How to calculate Whirlpool Tx0 Mining Fees

The formula for the mining fees on Tx0 is as follows (assuming all are P2WPKH UTXOs): 

Total vbytes: Base transaction vbytes + input vbytes * number of inputs + output vbytes * 2 (for change and coordinator fee outputs) + output vbytes * number of coinjoin outputs

Which comes out to: 10.5 + 68 * inputs + 31 * (2 + cjOutputs)

For example, if there are 5 inputs and 10 cjOutputs, the total vbytes will be:

Total vbytes: 10.5 + 68 * 5 + 31 * (2 + 10) = 722.5 vybtes

Total fees (assuming 50 sats/vbyte): 722.5 * 50 = 36,125 sats

How to calculate Whirlpool Coinjoin Mining Fees

Regular Whirlpool coinjoin transactions have 5 inputs and 5 outputs, which comes out to a total of 505.5 vbytes. Considering that 2 new entrants are paying, this splits the duty in two. You’re then responsible for paying 202.75 vbytes, for each one of your 10 coinjoin outputs.

Total fees (assuming 50 sats/vbyte): 202.75 * 50 * 10 = 101,375 sats

This gives you a total of 36,125 + 101,375 = 137,500 sats to pay on mining fees. However, this is a one-time fee, and you will be able to remix for free, for as long as you want.

Now, let’s cover the remaining protocol, Joinmarket.

Mining Fees on Joinmarket Coinjoins

By default, a taker is in charge of paying all the mining fees for a Joinmarket coinjoin transaction. However, there’s a setting for makers to include a mining fee contribution in their offers. In practice, as of the 10th January 2024 at 6:00 AM UTC, there’s not a single offer that includes a mining fee contribution out of 65 offers.

This means that as a taker you will almost certainly pay the entirety of the mining fee required for the Joinmarket coinjoin. This means that for every input, there will be a coinjoin output and a change output. If there are 9 participants, there are at least 9 inputs (there can be more), and at least 18 outputs. It’s also not mandatory that everyone uses the same wallet standard, which means some inputs can cost more than others. Let’s assume every input and output is P2WPKH and that every participant only has 1 input.

Total vbytes: 9 * 68 + 18 * 31 = 1,170 vbytes

Total fees (assuming 50 sats / vbyte): 58,500 sats

In short, the formula to calculate the mining fees paid is (68 * number of inputs + 31 * number of outputs) * mining fee in sats / vbyte.

Now that we’ve broken down how exactly to calculate the fees for every coinjoin protocol, let’s examine which would be better for different profiles.

I have a 990,000 sats (0.099 BTC) UTXO to mix. Which protocol is better for fees?

If you have a million sats or less, here are the coordinator (liquidity for Joinmarket) fees paid for every different coinjoin protocol:

• You won’t pay any coordinator fees with WabiSabi.
• You can only enter the 100,000 sats pool on Whirlpool and you will pay 5,000 sats in coordinator fees.
• FOR TAKERS only: On Joinmarket, it depends on the orderbook: as of the 10th of January 2024, you will pay an average of 0.0007% for 8 makers, which would be a maximum of 56 sats (depending on the mining fee market to know how much you have left in sats). 

Here are the mining fees to pay for every different coinjoin protocol (assuming 50 sats/vbyte);

• WabiSabi: Assuming you have 1 input and 7 outputs (extremely high estimation) are created, you will pay 17,925 sats for the first coinjoin transaction. For each further coinjoin transaction, considering you will have 7 inputs now, you will pay 35,175 in sats.
• Samourai: assuming you have 1 input and 8 coinjoin UTXOs will be created, you will pay a total of 120,650 sats for the Tx0 and the coinjoin mining fee.
• Joinmarket (FOR TAKERS only): assuming you have to pay for a total of 9 inputs, and 18 outputs, you will pay a total of 62,150 sats for each coinjoin transaction. 

In total:

• WabiSabi: 17,925 sats for first, 35,175 sats for further transactions.
• Whirlpool: 125,650 sats in total.
• Joinmarket: 62,182 sats for each transaction.

The conclusion for this user profile is that WabiSabi is better if you’re doing 4 transactions or less, but Whirlpool will become more economical after that. It depends on whether you want to mix fast or slow, and also it’s important to consider that to gain the same level of privacy as with 4 WabiSabi transactions, you will need to make many more on Whirlpool.

Joinmarket is not worth it for this amount unless you’re a maker.

The winner for this user profile: WabiSabi Coinjoins.

I have 10,000,000 sats (0.1 BTC). Which wallet is better?

Now that we’ve broken down the first user profile, we can just jump straight to total fees for the next ones. We keep the same assumptions. 

Total fees for each coinjoin protocol:

• WabiSabi: 30,000 sats (coordinator fee) + 17,925 sats (mining fee) = 47,925 sats for first + 35,175 sats for further transactions.
• Samourai 1M sats pool: 50,000 sats (coordinator fee) + 134850 (total mining fee) = 184,850 sats (5M sats would be possible too but not as economical and with more change)
• Joinmarket (FOR TAKERS only): 317 (liquidity fee) + 62150 (mining fee) = 62467 sats for each transaction

Joinmarket is more competitive but the result remains the same. WabiSabi is better for 3 transactions or less, and Whirlpool for continuous remixing. However, 3 WabiSabi transactions gives you a sufficient level of plausible deniability that is enough to make tracking the transactions of most users super hard.

Winner: WabiSabi (unless you’re a Joinmarket maker)

I have 100,000,000 sats (1 BTC). Which wallet is better?

Total fees for each coinjoin protocol:

• WabiSabi: 300,000 sats (coordinator fee) + 17,925 sats (mining fee) = 317,925 sats for first + 35,175 sats for further transactions.
• Samourai 5M sats pool: 175,000 sats (coordinator fee) + 276850 (total mining fee) = 451,850 (50M sats would be possible too but not as economical and with more change)
• Joinmarket (FOR TAKERS only): 3168 (liquidity fee) + 62150 (mining fee) = 65,318 sats for each transaction

For this category, Joinmarket is the winner under 7 transactions, then Whirlpool is more economical. WabiSabi is better than Whirlpool for 3 transactions or less.

Winner: Joinmarket

I have 1,000,000,000 sats (10 BTC). Which wallet is better?

Total fees for each coinjoin protocol:

• WabiSabi: 3,000,000 sats (coordinator fee) + 17,925 sats (mining fee) = 3,017,925 sats for first + 35,175 sats for further transactions.
• Samourai 50M sats pool: 1,750,000 sats (coordinator fee) + 276850 (total mining fee) = 2,026,850 sats in total
• Joinmarket (FOR TAKERS only): 31680 (liquidity fee) + 62150 (mining fee) = 93,830 sats per transaction

For this category, Joinmarket is the winner under 20 transactions, which means it’s the winner hands down. 

Winner: Joinmarket

Conclusion

We explained how fees work on every major coinjoin protocol such as WabiSabi, Whirlpool and Joinmarket. We then compare them in different contexts ranging from a user that has less than a million sats to one that has a billion sats. Many assumptions are required to be made, but the formulas are shared so you can calculate it in other scenarios where variables such as the number of inputs, the number of outputs and the current mining fee, change. 

It’s also important to remember that this analysis was purely from the fees to be paid point of view, and didn’t consider how strong each privacy guarantee is for each protocol. To learn more about the benefits and the tradeoffs of each coinjoin protocol and wallet, visit the open-source educational website Coinjoins.org. 

The post How Coinjoin Wallets Compare on Fees appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Coinjoins.org was announced earlier this year by Thibaud and Gustavo as a new public resource to discover and review bitcoin wallets with coinjoin features. Today, 3 new wallet reviews were released to help consumers discover the best bitcoin wallets for privacy. 

Trezor Suite and WabiSabi 

Trezor Suite is an easy-to-use bitcoin wallet desktop application with hardware wallet integration (Trezor T, One and Safe) and a built-in coinjoin feature using WabiSabi, the same coinjoin protocol used in Wasabi Wallet. 

One benefit is that Trezor Suite is the only wallet that allows you to coinjoin directly from a hardware wallet account, significantly increasing the security of your bitcoin. There is no need to use a hot wallet.

One limitation is that the process of coinjoining is somewhat manual. Users need to create a separate coinjoin wallet account, block filters have to be downloaded, and once the funds are deposited, a user need to manually click start to join a round.

The coinjoin integration was co-announced by Trezor and Wasabi Wallet back in April of this year. 

Find the full Trezor Suite review on Coinjoins.org. 

Jam and JoinMarket 

Jam is a web interface for JoinMarket focusing on user-friendliness and ease-of-use. It aims to provide sensible defaults and be easy to use for beginners while still having the features advanced users expect.

One benefit is that Jam significantly improves the user experience by abstracting away the complexity of Joinmarket. Joinmarket is the most censorship-resistant coinjoin on the market due to the competitive nature of a peer-to-peer free market with many takers and makers. There is no single coordinator in Joinmarket, but each round has a central coordinator (the taker).

One limitation is that Jam is not easy to install if you don’t have a full node system such as Umbrel, Citadel, Start9, Raspiblitz, MyNode and Raspibolt. Running Jam still requires technical skills. If a user doesn’t buy the pre-built node systems, it also requires technical skills to DIY (do it yourself).

Find the full Jam review on Coinjoins.org. 

BTCPay Coinjoin Plugin

BTCPay Server is a self-hosted, open-source bitcoin payment processor that includes a bitcoin wallet with a WabiSabi coinjoin plugin. 

One benefit of using BTCPay Server is that it is the most censorship-resistant WabiSabi bitcoin wallet because you can browse coordinators on Nostr (uncensored social media platform) and also run your own coordinator and publish it for discoverability.

One limitation is that it’s harder to run your own BTCPay server instance than it is to install a desktop or mobile wallet application. To use the WabiSabi coinjoin plugin, you need to install it after deploying BTCPay. It’s mandatory to use coinjoin on your own instance because you need to use a hot wallet.

Find the full BTCPay Server Coinjoin Plugin review on Coinjoins.org. 

Contribute 

Coinjoins.org is a free and open source project developed and maintained by Thibaud and Gustavo. If you would like to share suggestions, please open an issue on the GitHub repository, or even fork the project to show improvements. 

The post Coinjoins.org Presents 3 New Coinjoin Wallet Reviews appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

As software, Bitcoin is programmable, and its transactions can be made collaborative to protect users from leaking sensitive transaction details. Coinjoins are bulk bitcoin transactions that do just that. Coinjoin allows users to prevent personal information leaks on the public Bitcoin network, reclaiming their privacy. Users can protect their transaction history while retaining the ability to choose who to share confidential financial information with.

Coinjoin for Everyone, Anywhere

For a long time, coinjoin protocols have been difficult to develop and implementations have been difficult to deploy and maintain, with many performance, reliability and efficiency quirks. 

Now, with a simple Coinjoin API recently announced, collaborative bitcoin transactions are accessible to anyone, including companies that want to add powerful and robust privacy features to their bitcoin products, such as wallets, brokers, custodians and more. Over the past five years, Wasabi Wallet has shown that coinjoins can bring privacy to a large number of consumers without any tradeoffs on security or sovereignty. With an ever-growing interest in recording and analyzing public bitcoin transactions, bitcoin companies must now find new ways to protect the privacy of their customers as they move to a Bitcoin standard. The Coinjoin API makes this available to the enterprise market and increases the value proposition for Bitcoin itself. 

“Anonymity loves company, and that’s why we love that anyone can use our Coinjoin API to join the privacy party of our existing users. WabiSabi is efficient, fast, and flexible, where alternative clients can pioneer cutting-edge features. BTCPayServer users can efficiently batch multiple payments in a single coinjoin, and Trezor Suite users are the first to enjoy hardware wallet security of their private keys in coinjoins. This freedom to innovate on the edges will let a thousand flowers bloom” – Max Hillebrand, CEO at zkSNACKs and Wasabi Wallet contributor. 

With over a million devices sold, Trezor, one of the world’s most popular bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturers, has already integrated the Coinjoin API developed by zkSNACKs earlier in 2023. 

“Our mission is strengthening the power and independence of the individual. Coinjoin is an essential piece in the privacy puzzle and we try to make it as simple as possible. Now anyone can reclaim their privacy without compromise on security.” – Hynek Jína, Head of Development at Trezor

As a self-hosted bitcoin payment processor, BTCPay Server has integrated the WabiSabi coinjoin protocol into a plug-in, making this feature available to all of its merchants, who can now even run their own coinjoin coordinator infrastructure. 

“BTCPay Server has always championed privacy-centric solutions. When the WabiSabi protocol became production-ready, it was a no-brainer for me to build an option to incorporate it. The flexibility of WabiSabi is astounding, allowing me to innovate by using a privacy solution as a scaling solution. Now, merchants can schedule and batch their bitcoin payments to be broadcast through coinjoins, hitting two birds with one stone. BTCPay Server even allows you to effortlessly integrate WabiSabi coinjoins into your operations through its extensive API. And with the upcoming payment protocol, a service provider will be able to offer the most private financial settlement experience possible to its customers, at no extra cost.” – Kukks, BTCPayServer

In the early Wasabi Wallet 1.0 version, Cyphernode and Chaincase had already successfully integrated the API to build clients with new functionalities such as multi-wallet management for the former and deploying on the iOS platform for the latter. Even with these early innovations, we’re still at the beginning of scaling accessible Bitcoin privacy to millions of users, and the Coinjoin API is a new product to help bitcoin businesses on that path forward. As new partners integrate with the zkSNACKs Coinjoin API, liquidity improves, which provides better service to all existing users. In other words, coinjoins are social and benefit from network effects to improve the level of privacy for all users with an optimal level of speed, cost and ease of use. 

Existing bitcoin companies can leverage new opportunities to monetize a high-traffic wallet or broker through an affiliate program with revenue sharing. Offering an additional feature to existing users creates new income diversifying revenue streams, while potentially attracting new users by providing state-of-the-art Bitcoin privacy features. With regular user data breaches targeting bitcoin exchanges, brokers and lenders, companies can now mitigate the impact on their customers by preventing address clustering and transaction tracking. Companies can also fully comply with local and regional consumer privacy laws by protecting users’ personally identifiable information, preventing non-consensual sharing of user data on the public Bitcoin network. 

If you are a Bitcoin company interested in joining the affiliate program and learning more about the Coinjoin API, please contact zkSNACKs at integrations@zksnacks.com. 

The post Announcing Private Bitcoin for Enterprises with a New Coinjoin API appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Participate anonymously to have the chance of gaining more than $1,500 USD in bitcoin, or multiple other prizes such as 4 Coldcard MK4s, 2 Cryptosteel Capsules and bitcoin merchandise.

Hunting Sats at Bitcoin Amsterdam is sponsored by Wasabi Wallet and 8 partners including BTCPay Server, BTCTKVR, Bull Bitcoin, Coinkite, Cryptosteel, Trezor, Vexl, and Wizardsardine. Read this article to understand how it works, why Bitcoin Amsterdam is the place to be, and to read additional information on all partners involved.

How Hunting Sats at Bitcoin Amsterdam Works

A bitcoin wallet was created and backed up with a standard 12-word recovery phrase with over $1,500 of bitcoin. All the words from the recovery phrase are hidden in the Bitcoin Amsterdam venue, as seen in the map below.

Together, these words make up the recovery seed of the wallet which is securing the prize money. Find the words, place them in the right order and get over $1,500 of bitcoin rewards. First come, first served! Placing them in the right order requires brute forcing software. 

You have all the words but can’t find the correct order? Find @thibm_ at the Bitcoin Amsterdam venue to win 4 Coldcard MK4s, 2 Cryptosteel Capsules and some Bitcoin merch. Hurry before it runs out!

For More Information, Visit HuntingSats.com 

For all the general information regarding the contest, including updates about this contest’s edition!

Additional Information on Bitcoin Amsterdam 2023

On top of hosting Hunting Sats’ latest edition, Bitcoin Amsterdam is a festival for financial freedom. If you want to learn the basics of Bitcoin or go deep, this conference will be great to push further your educational objectives. 

Don’t forget that it’s all about networking here, and you can do so talking not only about bitcoin but art and culture as well. Amsterdam is one of the greatest cities on earth. Visit huntingsats.com/amsterdam for more information. 

Official Hunting Sats Amsterdam Partners 

There are 9 partner projects and companies who each have contributed to this Hunting Sats edition along with our team at Wasabi Wallet. All partners have bitcoin-only products and care deeply about security, privacy and Bitcoin education. 

BTCPay – A self-hosted, open-source bitcoin payment processor. It’s secure, private, censorship-resistant and free. 

BTCTKVR – The home of insightful Bitcoin articles, podcasts, videos & music.

Bull Bitcoin – The World’s best non-custodial Bitcoin company. Buy, sell and pay bills with Bitcoin. Our Mission: Destroy Fiat.

Coinkite – A leader in security and hardware manufacturer. Maker of some of the most iconic Bitcoin products, such as OPENDIME, COLDCARD, BLOCKCLOCK and more.

Cryptosteel – The mother of all backups. A fireproof, shockproof and waterproof offline tool that you own to backup your bitcoin and passwords. 

Trezor – A hardware wallet providing advanced security for handling bitcoin.

Vexl – Vexl is a mobile app giving its users a simple, accessible and safe way to trade bitcoin as it was intended – peer-to-peer and without KYC. 

Wizardsardine – A team of bitcoiners with a passion for security. Our mission is to make bitcoiners sleep better at night. We focus on safety: preventing both theft and loss.

The post Hunting Sats is Back at Bitcoin Amsterdam 2023 appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Bitcoin network mining fees rose as high as 643 sats/vbyte for the next block confirmation in May 2023, which is the highest bid required since 2017. This has disrupted the on-chain activity of many users and businesses, forcing companies like Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, to work on implementing the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s leading scaling solution. Wasabi Wallet’s implementation of the WabiSabi coinjoin protocol doesn’t integrate with the Lightning Network yet, but what does the  Lightning Network-enabled coinjoin future look like?

Opening payment channels with private coins created from Wasabi is currently done by completing the coinjoin and channel opening individually, creating multiple unnecessary on-chain transactions. A new implementation called Vortex allows for Lightning Network channels to be created directly from the private outputs of a Chaumian coinjoin, but has some caveats. A future potential Lightning Network-enabled WabiSabi coinjoin could fix some of these issues. Lightning Network channel closures are at a different level of complexity, so this article won’t cover them.

Read further to learn more about the details of why the Lightning Network is Bitcoin’s leading scaling solution, why payment channel openings and coinjoins go well together, how to currently open a Lightning Network channel from a Wasabi Wallet private UTXO, how Vortex presently handles the direct opening of channels from coinjoin outputs, and finally, how a future Lightning Network-enabled WabiSabi coinjoin might solve that problem.

The Lightning Network as Bitcoin’s Main Scaling Solution

As of 2023, it’s not a controversial statement to say that the Lightning Network is Bitcoin’s main scaling solution; it’s simply a fact. New technologies might emerge, and research is highly encouraged. Still, the Bitcoin business and developer communities have converged towards working on solutions to make the Lightning Network user experience seamless for many as a top priority.

What is the Lightning Network?

Lightning Network is a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that allows instant, low-cost bitcoin transactions. Participants open a payment channel, which means they lock funds on the blockchain with another peer to transact with them freely in an off-chain manner. A participant can simply close the payment channel to bring back their funds on-chain. If you want to learn how the Lightning Network works, read here.

The critical part to retain is that the Lightning Network isn’t a magical solution; it requires payment channel openings, closures, and liquidity management. It’s also important to understand that Lightning is a privacy solution per se; it has some complex implications that you can learn about on Lightning Privacy, a research project sponsored by zkSNACKs and the Wasabi Wallet team.

Let’s follow up by looking at how Wasabi can be used today to open Lightning Network channels. Initiating your journey on the Lightning Network with private UTXOs is essential.

Open a Lightning Channel with a Wasabi Wallet Private UTXO

In this section, we will go through all the steps required to achieve the stated goal by using Wasabi Wallet to obtain private UTXOs, sending your funds to a Lightning Network wallet, and opening a payment channel.

Be aware that Wasabi can only provide private UTXOs to open Lightning channels with and can’t guarantee the privacy of transactions made within the Lightning Network.

Using Wasabi Wallet

To obtain private UTXOs, you only need to generate a wallet on Wasabi, back up your seed phrase, receive funds, and wait for the coinjoin magic. Depending on the amount and your settings, this will take a few minutes to a few days.

Once you have a private UTXO, you’re ready to send it to a Lightning Network Wallet, but first, you should choose a wallet.

Choosing and Using a Lightning Network Wallet

To choose a Lightning Network Wallet, you need to consider the level of security, privacy, and sovereignty you wish to have. For example, options like Wallet of Satoshi or Blink (Bitcoin Beach Wallet) are straightforward but fully custodial. This means they have a theft risk, so we don’t recommend custodial solutions.

On the other hand, you could use an LND or Core Lightning server on the command line, and you would have the most control over your funds and your lightning network experience, but this is often reserved for technical users.

Breez and Blixt Wallet are non-custodial solutions, private (implementing block filters, same network privacy as Wasabi), and easy to use. Still, there are also many other good wallets to choose from.

Whichever you decide to use, you will have to install it, generate a wallet, and send an on-chain transaction from Wasabi to this new wallet.

Open a Lightning Network Channel

If you’ve paid attention, we’ve made three transactions so far and still haven’t completed our goal. You must execute a final on-chain transaction by finding a peer and opening a channel on the user interface of your Lightning Network wallet.

It’s evident that it takes a lot of work to go from a non-private UTXO to having private funds on the Lightning Network.

Combining the privacy benefits of a coinjoin with the scalability of the Lightning Network is essential for a promising bitcoin future. Let’s look at how these two technologies go so well together.

Why Coinjoin and Lightning Network Channel Opens Go Well Together

To understand why a coinjoin is a perfect place to open a Lightning channel, let’s go back to the basics and the exact definition of a coinjoin:

A distributed task that requires every participant to be online and reactive at the same time so they can follow a protocol to build and then sign a transaction together within a specified timeframe.

But wait… This exact definition also applies to a Lightning Network channel opening! That’s why these processes blend so nicely together.

The only real difficulty is to settle the Lightning Network channel negotiation within 10 minutes, which is the time frame. All the processes between channel negotiations until the broadcast of the coinjoin must happen within 10 minutes.

Constructing a coinjoin with many participants can be much more time-consuming than opening a channel. As a result, it might be easy to pass this limit, resulting in one party revoking the channel opening.

However, since the coordinator decides on the timeframe for each phase, making the process less than 10 minutes is perfectly possible, assuming that channel negotiation between nodes happens at the end of the input registration phase.

The flowgraph above shows the two protocols mixed together to open a channel by sending the funding transaction using a coinjoin output.

Let’s follow up by examining how this is implemented on Vortex’s released solution and how it could work on Wasabi Wallet or another Wabisabi coordinator.

Open a Lightning Channel Directly from a Coinjoin

Vortex’s Case

Vortex is an open-source tool that you can use on top of Core Lightning, LND, or simply Bitcoin Core.  It allows you to execute taproot-enabled collaborative transactions, such as coinjoins, that can open directly a Lightning Network channel. This software is still in the alpha stage of development, but a transaction demo has been completed on the Bitcoin network. It’s based on the Zerolink protocol.

Vortex’s developer, Ben Carman, announced in December 2022 that even though the goal of opening a Lightning Network channel directly from a coinjoin transaction had been achieved with Vortex, it’s not optimal to use it with Core Lightning and LND but instead only with LDK, because privacy on Lightning lacks elsewhere.

He’s currently developing Mutiny Wallet, which is expected to implement Vortex lightning network channel open-enabled coinjoins.

Caveats of Vortex’s Implementation

Vortex’s Lightning Network-enabled coinjoin implementation has some caveats, most inherent to the ZeroLink protocol.

First, outputs must be registered during input registration (blinded outputs), the first phase of the coinjoin. As a result, channels must be negotiated at this time, which augments the time restraint. This is different from Wasabi Wallet’s current coinjoin implementation.

Then, Vortex inherits the toxic change problem from the ZeroLink protocol since the size of the private output is chosen by the coordinator server.

Finally, a challenge that Vortex is facing is liquidity. It’s already hard for a coinjoin coordinator to gather enough inputs interested in participating in a coinjoin. Therefore it’s even more complicated if we need every one of these participants to want to open a lightning channel specifically and even more challenging if we also need all these channels to be funded with the same amount.

To fix this last problem, Vortex uses an extra round before the inputs registration phase to gather enough inputs until a certain threshold is reached (2 is enough to break deterministic links). The same technique was used in Wasabi Wallet 1.0.

Now that we’ve explored Vortex’s caveats, let’s look at how the Lightning Network channel openings in WabiSabi could work differently.

Wasabi Wallet’s Future Potential Case

For the initial problem, the WabiSabi protocol makes it possible to begin negotiation right before the output registration phase, much closer to when the transaction will be broadcasted. This doesn’t fix the time restraint in an absolute manner, but it makes it an easier problem to fix.

The main advantage of using WabiSabi is that change from the Lightning Network channel openings is also coinjoined into private UTXOs in most cases. This allows the entire amount owned by each peer to be made private, not just the UTXO created for the Lightning channel. Consolidating these private UTXOs can still be problematic, so spending the whole wallet balance in one transaction should be avoided to ensure a payment can’t be recalculated to match the value of a specific coinjoin input.

We also saw that one of the issues of Vortex is to gather liquidity. This problem would be worse using WabiSabi because this protocol works best with many inputs. For example, the zkSNACKs coordinator requires 150 inputs to proceed with a coinjoin round.

One of the easiest ways to solve this problem is by using the zkSNACKs coordinator along with users of other services (Wasabi Wallet, Trezor, BTCPayServer…) to open the Lightning channels. Even if the other participants are not opening channels, coinjoining with them would be extremely helpful to make it hard to know who opened the channel (especially considering that it could be various inputs with dual-funded channels).

The implementation is also fully open-source, reasonably light (complexity is on the client side rather than the backend), and built to intentionally reduce the number of privacy leaks to the coordinator as much as possible. As a result, the coordinator has almost the same amount of information as any observer of the chain and can’t deanonymize users.

Remaining Issues with WabiSabi’s Implementation

Blame Rounds

Some issues remain, and the most tricky one is failed rounds. A round fails if some users register inputs but do not provide a signature for those inputs once the entire transaction has been assembled by the coinjoin coordinator. The next round is known as the “blame round”, where only inputs successfully signed in the initial round can register. These restricted rounds are recursively retried until all signatures are successfully collected or until there are not enough whitelisted inputs left.

Round failures can lead to friction with the current implementation of the Lightning protocol: A channel opening can’t be canceled; it can only fail if the transaction is not broadcasted after the allowed window (10 minutes by default).

But if a round fails, the commitment transaction previously created is not valid anymore, and the channel opening negotiation has to be started again, which is only possible once the first 10-minute window has ended.

So the whole coordinator must wait to accommodate the 10-minute timeframe for Lightning users, but waiting is terrible in coinjoins because it exponentially increases the probability of some clients becoming not responsive and disconnecting.

The simplest solution is to never participate in blame rounds if the intention is to open a Lightning channel. This solution is great, but it would take a lot more time to open channels because each attempt takes 10 minutes and has only a 15% success rate (based on data measured with zkSNACKs’ coordinator parameters), so it would take about 1 hour to broadcast the funding transaction.

Unpredictability

With WabiSabi, you can’t know upfront how much anonymity you will get from the round. Sometimes you will gain a lot of privacy; sometimes, you will gain almost nothing.

This is not an issue for normal Wasabi users because they can just participate in new rounds with their outputs if their anonymity gained is not as good as expected. But outputs used to open channels can’t be remixed, and therefore we must be sure that enough anonymity is reached in one shot.

There is no easy fix for that without changes to the WabiSabi protocol, or at least to its implementation (an example of a change would be for users to declare the denominations of the outputs they’d like to receive before the round). However, clients can just make a round fail if they see that they won’t gain enough anonymity, but this would be considered a DoS attack, and they’d be banned temporarily from future coinjoin rounds by the coordinator.

Conclusion

This article introduced the definition and direction of the Lightning Network, how Wasabi Wallet can be used today to open private payment channels, why Lightning Network-enabled coinjoin transactions is a powerful idea that is already possible with Vortex, and how a future WabiSabi implementation combining both technologies could differ and solve some caveats.

The post What Lightning Network-Enabled Wabisabi Coinjoins Might Look Like appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Merchants can now reclaim their privacy while managing their BTCPay Server stores the same way they did before. Any BTCPay Server merchant can activate the optional coinjoin plugin instantly for their stores. BTCPay Server stores that activate the coinjoin plugin will be able to automatically coinjoin all the bitcoin they receive. This protects the privacy of all their incoming and outgoing transactions by preventing sensitive information about their store’s payment history from leaking to unconcerned parties.

In addition to auto-coinjoin, the BTCPay Server plugin also offers an unprecedented payment batching in coinjoin feature. Utilizing BTCPay Server’s scheduled payouts, users are able to pay addresses directly within a coinjoin transaction, which saves block space and provides greater privacy compared to making a payment in two steps.

Also included is a detailed coin selection interface allowing merchants to spend their coins based on their gained anonymity scores. In addition to the default zkSNACKs coordinator server, merchants are able to discover alternative coinjoin coordination servers via the Nostr protocol and can easily run their own coinjoin coordination servers. Adding coinjoin in a BTCPay Server store only requires users to activate the option in plug-in settings and restart the server for new settings to apply.

By using Wasabi Wallet’s WabiSabi coinjoin coordination protocol, merchants can perform arbitrary amount coinjoins rather than fixed denomination coinjoins as required by other protocols. This greatly reduces the amount of non-private change users receive and also makes payments inside the coinjoin possible.

Protecting Customer Information, Company Funds, and Employee Salaries

Even with sovereign payment processing platforms such as BTCPay Server, privacy is hard to protect on Bitcoin. A BTCPay Server merchant earning bitcoin for their products and services should not have their transactions tracked. And yet today, merchants from all around the world unwillingly, and sometimes unknowingly, leak personal and commercial information via their bitcoin transactions. Up until now, merchants living on a bitcoin standard have had most of their business activities monitored by many parties such as clients, suppliers, or employees. This is a known issue inherent in the open design of the Bitcoin network and requires new technology to be mitigated.  

When a merchant consolidates bitcoin UTXOs from their store to optimize for network fees, all the wallet history gets leaked on the blockchain, allowing anyone who transacted with them to learn about payments made by other customers. The store’s transaction volume, total available balance, and customer base can be unwillingly leaked. This is unacceptable and is not something that merchants should be concerned about. Unfortunately, UTXO consolidation at the cost of privacy remains a common practice for many merchants processing high volumes of transactions. A merchant has only so many things they can focus on to deliver great products and services to their clients, and a lack of financial privacy should not be one of them.

“BTCPay Server is the most sophisticated merchant payment processing software for bitcoin. It only made sense that it would include an optional coinjoin plugin with the most sophisticated privacy-enhancing tool for Bitcoin. As a coinjoin protocol, WabiSabi has been designed with merchants in mind, enabling payments inside coinjoin and optimizing block space usage to save on fees.” – Max Hillebrand, Wasabi Wallet Contributor & CEO at zkSNACKs

BTCPay Server merchants can access a comprehensive dashboard to assess the level of privacy of their wallets, the details on the current coinjoin transaction they are participating in, and gain additional insights and control with coin selection in and out of coinjoin transactions.

Enabling New Coinjoin Coordinators

All BTCPay Server merchants can now benefit from powerful privacy tools straight from their store. BTCPay merchants can choose to coinjoin for a fee with a highly liquid coordinator provided by zkSNACKs, the company behind the privacy wallet, Wasabi Wallet. On top of that, all BTCPay Server admins can spin up their own coinjoin coordinators using their own terms, built upon Wasabi Wallet’s robust WabiSabi coinjoin protocol. They can then advertise this coordinator via the Nostr protocol. This can create a new free market of coinjoin coordinators with different policies and fees, opening up a wide array of choices for all merchants.

If users choose to run their own coordinator, the BTCPay Server Plugin offers an optional revenue sharing feature that by default donates a percentage of proceeds to the HRF and OpenSats foundation to further Bitcoin development. In addition, the plugin allows users to participate in different coinjoin rounds across multiple coordinators at the same time.

“BTCPay Server was created to empower individuals and businesses to regain their financial sovereignty. The Wasabi Wallet team and I are proud to offer even more privacy protection with this new coinjoin feature. I believe that financial privacy is a fundamental human right, this feature is my contribution to that cause.” ~ Kukks, Contributor at BTCPayServer and developer of the BTCPay Coinjoin Plugin.

For any questions about the BTCPay Coinjoin plugin, please contact https://chat.btcpayserver.org

About BTCPay Server

BTCPay Server is an open-source bitcoin payment processor that is censorship-resistant, free to use and self-hosted, which drastically improves payment processing for global merchants in all parts of the world. Features already include automatically generating unique addresses for each new payment, custom address labeling, invoicing, and advanced wallet management options such as coin control. More information here.

About WabiSabi

WabiSabi is an anonymous credential scheme for centrally coordinated coinjoin transactions. It utilizes keyed-verification anonymous credentials, homomorphic value commitments, and zero knowledge proofs to achieve privacy and flexibility. WabiSabi allows users to utilize arbitrary amount coinjoins rather than fixed denomination coinjoins and reduces the amount of non-private change produced in other coinjoin transactions. More information here.

About Wasabi Wallet

Reclaim your privacy with Wasabi Wallet, a free and open source bitcoin wallet with built-in coinjoins. Coinjoins are collaborative bitcoin transactions to enable cash-like privacy features for bitcoin. More information here.  

The post BTCPay Server Adding Coinjoin Plugin for All Merchants appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Cracking a Bitcoin Wallet

For this game, brute-forcing a bitcoin wallet means finding the seed words and a passphrase, in this case, arranging them in the right order and using the resulting backup as a way to recover the wallet’s funds. There are many ways to achieve this and general knowledge about bitcoin wallets, script types, derivation paths, checksums, passphrases and BIP-39 seed words will be helpful. Each partner will be sharing their own seed word and the passphrase to the public in random order for anyone to attempt to guess the wallet backup. As more words are revealed, brute-forcing gets easier, so time is ticking as people from around the world compete to crack the wallet.

Without Anyone’s Permission

Shadowy super coders and sociopathic sat stacking anons from all over the Internet are welcome. From Guatemala to New York, Seoul or Dakar, anyone can participate without permission. This is bitcoin! Participants are welcome to join and brute-force a passphrase-protected 12-word seed backup with 3,454,811 sats on it (0.03454811 BTC). Participants from bitcoin communities can share tips, scripts and educational content to achieve this individually or as a group. There is only one rule for participants joining from all around the world: first come, first served. Crack the wallet, earn millions of sats; or more accurately, take what’s now rightfully yours before others do! Anybody is also welcome to send more sats to the bounty address as the game unfolds.

How Hunting Sats Works

• A passphrase-protected 12-word (BIP39) bitcoin wallet was created
• One bitcoin address was generated and 3,454,811 sats have been sent to it (bc1q7kw2uepv6hfffhhxx2vplkkpcwsslcw9hsupc6)
• Each word from the wallet backup, including mnemonic seed words and a passphrase, were randomly distributed to the 12 Hunting Sats partners
• The Wasabi Wallet Twitter account will announce the start of Hunting Sats on January 23rd, 2023
• Each partner will randomly reveal their secret word on Twitter within a full week of the start using #HuntingSats.
• As each word is shared by partners, participants will attempt to brute force the seed backup and ultimately claim the sats.
• If no one successfully sweeps the wallet within a week, hints will be shared accordingly.

Visit HuntingSats.com

For all the general information regarding the contest, including updates about the words that have been revealed to the public.

Official Partners

There are 12 partner projects and companies who each have been trusted to share a random word from the wallet backup. All partners have bitcoin-only products and care deeply about security, privacy and Bitcoin education.

BTCPay – A self-hosted, open-source bitcoin payment processor. It’s secure, private, censorship-resistant and free.

Trezor – A hardware wallet providing advanced security for handling bitcoin.

Cryptosteel – The mother of all backups. A fireproof, shockproof and waterproof offline tool that you own to backup your bitcoin and passwords.

Blockstream – The global leader in bitcoin and timechain technology. They make financial markets more efficient by reducing reliance on trust.

Bull Bitcoin – World’s best non-custodial Bitcoin company. Buy, sell and pay bills with Bitcoin. Our Mission: Destroy Fiat.

Hodl Hodl – P2P bitcoin trading & lending platform that doesn’t hold funds.

Bitcoin Reserve – Easiest way to unlock the professional OTC buying and selling experience, without all of the hassle and high-trade minimums of traditional brokerage desks.

Coinkite – A leader in security and hardware manufacturer. Maker of some of the most iconic Bitcoin products, such as OPENDIME, COLDCARD, BLOCKCLOCK and more.

Swan Bitcoin – On a mission to inspire and educate 10 million new Bitcoiners. Start buying Bitcoin in 10 minutes or less. Services for HNWI, companies and financial advisors.

BTCTKVR – The home of insightful Bitcoin articles, podcasts, videos & music.

mempool.space – Explore the full bitcoin ecosystem and be your own explorer with The Mempool Open Source Project.

Wizardsardine – A team of bitcoiners with a passion for security. Our mission is to make bitcoiners sleep better at night. We focus on safety: preventing both theft and loss.

“Entropy is still a very alien concept for most people. When your money is at stake, you should spend some time to understand how it impacts security. Breaking a wallet without any info? No. Breaking a wallet when you find 6 of the words? Well, maybe. How many will the cracker need? 7? 8? Let’s see.” – Kevin Loaec, Co-Founder & CEO at Wizardsardine

“Gamification is a good way to educate users and that is what Hunting Sats is all about. On the one hand, it shows how brute force becomes more achievable if users reveal part of their seed – for example, if they expose it to cloud storage or split their recovery seed into parts. On the other hand, when users work responsibly with their seed and keep their private key in dedicated cold storage, the risk of cracking the wallet is practically zero. We’re excited to watch how the game will play out and looking forward to further cooperating with Wasabi Wallet.” – Jiří Kroulík, PR Manager at Trezor

“Brute-forcing Bitcoin wallet by playing around the seed phrase sounds like a fun game, but in fact, it is all about educating us on the delicate security that our private keys need to be attributed with. Understanding these basic concepts is one of the first steps towards self-sovereignty and self-custody. We are happy to be part of this initiative and cooperate with companies that share our values.” – Hodl Hodl

“Hands-on learning through fun games like Hunting Sats is a fantastic way for users to learn about seed phrase security and other benefits of self-custody. At Coinkite, we have been creating Bitcoin security & fun devices for over a decade. Today, we are excited to support Hunting Sats, a fun and engaging way to educate and for freedom-loving people.” – NVK, Co-Founder & CEO of Coinkite

“For years, we’ve made a constant effort to spread the word and educate about the need for financial self-sovereignty and best security practices for private key protection. Entering 2023, we’re happy to begin celebrating our tenth anniversary by joining this exciting event organized by Wasabi. Best of luck to all the contestants – may the hackiest hacker win!” – Team Cryptosteel

“As bitcoiners, we wanted to organize a fun game to start 2023 on a high note with projects and companies we respect and use every day. Bitcoin security and privacy are essential and we hope Hunting Sats can bring together bitcoiners who care about these principles.” – Thibaud Marechal, Contributor at Wasabi Wallet

If you have additional questions, please reach out to the Hunting Sats organizers on Twitter by DMs to @thibm_ or via email to thibaud@zksnacks.com. Don’t forget to follow @wasabiwallet and all the partners on Twitter for the latest announcements and join the contest with #HuntingSats.

About Wasabi Wallet

Reclaim your privacy with Wasabi Wallet, a free and open-source bitcoin wallet with built-in coinjoins. Coinjoins are collaborative bitcoin transactions to enable cash-like privacy features for bitcoin in the era of digital surveillance. Download, verify and try Wasabi Wallet here.

The post Announcing Hunting Sats, a Contest to Earn Bitcoin from Cracking a Wallet appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Having a Savings Account Makes Sense Again

I remember in the olden days, my grandma deposited her money into the bank because the interest rate was high enough to make this worthwhile. In the last thirty years, this has not been the case.

Things have changed with the introduction of digital currency. It has been said that having a lot of FIAT is the worst option you can have as it is constantly losing value. A better option would be storing your value in Bitcoin – it’s worth keeping as much as possible in savings.

One of my favourite things, however, is gifting this experience to my friends and family members who are unfamiliar with Bitcoin. Take a look at Riccardo’s article on how to do this with Wasabi Wallet.

~ Dávid

User-Friendly Wallets

Wasabi Wallet is the only privacy bitcoin thing that I use because it’s the only thing that is user friendly enough for a bitcoin noob like me.

~ Jumar

Do Nothing and Earn

This is a little off-topic, but I used to play World of Warcraft and there’s an expression that means ‘Do Nothing And Win’. With Bitcoin, the concept is the same: you do nothing and Earn – DNAE.

When I was at my workplace before Wasabi, we were in contact with Dávid. He told me about a possible job opportunity but when we got into the details I was not sure about it. How could I stay alive if I received my salary in Bitcoin? How will I turn it into fiat currency?

When Dávid told me that he keeps his savings in Bitcoin, I asked him immediately, “isn’t that risky? What if it drops in value?” He said, “if it drops, then it will rise again and the best thing about keeping it in Bitcoin is: you do nothing but you get richer.”

I bought 10 USD worth of Bitcoin then and at the end of the month, it was worth 12 USD. At that point, I understood what Dávid meant … I did nothing with it but it was worth more.

The Bitcoin system is stable but the missing key is privacy. We at Wasabi Wallet have solved this. Bitcoin will grow to the moon. What is worth 1x today, will be worth 2x later.  We just need to plan for the long term, be patient and it will pay off.

~ Roland

The Shortlist

• BTCPay
• JoinMarket
• Bitcoin Core
• Bitcoin Knots
• Lightning Network

~ Nopara

ColdCard

COLDCARD is an affordable hardware wallet that can be backed up easily via an encrypted microSD card. It’s one of my favourites because it can pair with any hardware wallet which is a very unique feature that enables you to send and receive directly to and from a hardware wallet.

Bitcoin ATM

The ability to turn cash into Bitcoin in only a few taps on a tablet screen not only makes Bitcoin ATMs AMAZING INNOVATIONS but another one of my favourites. It doesn’t take much effort to get the coins. All you need is cash to Buy bitcoin from your local ATM and nothing is more private than cash.

~ Dolapo

The post Our Favourite Things About Bitcoin appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.