Topic: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥 - page 30. (Read 12718 times)

As far as my understanding goes, we need both the deposits and also the deposit sums to establish a certain amount of anonymity.
Since the anonymity mining campaign rewards the user with a fixed percentage of their deposit, there is an incentive to deposit higher amounts. There is pretty much no point in depositing 15$ to earn 1% each month ($0,15) especially with the current transaction costs. Therefore people would deposit more to earn more money. Please correct me if I am wrong but I think those are the key points.

As of right now, there havent been an unusual large amount of deposits since the anonymity campaign went live but that will probably change once there is an official announcement in Services.

What is more important to the Anonymity set, the number of deposits or the total amount? if I understood correctly it's both, but according to what I understand from the "Anonymity Mining campaign" the goal is to increase the number of deposits only -- simply because when the 10,000 deposits number is reached there will be no incentives for people to keep their funds in the pool, so you would end up with 10k deposits and maybe next to nothing of BTC in the pool.

The reason why I ask is that I think there could be "easier" and probably "cheaper" ways to create those deposits if the only result required is a certain number of deposits, I understand that the pro of doing the Anonymity Mining campaign is that it would increase the level of trust since a mixer that ones had 1000 BTC and did not exit scam is unlikely to do so when they have 500 BTC.

Exactly. I was talking about the No (Create Only) option. Thanks for taking it into consideration.

Right. I thought it was an address from Whirlwind. But, I get it after your explanation. I've sent a few satoshis to that address. It's not much. Still, I will try to import the private key into a wallet and try to access the funds.

Do they also recover data from the disks? I am curious what data they have collected. I mean, Mixers doesn't collect users' personal information. All they can have is your transaction hash and wallet address. I don't care about IP collection data as well. I don't think they can prove they don't store your info. I mean, it's not possible without giving you access to their server  . I know you don't want access to their server.

I can't think of any way to prove you've deleted something. You can prove that you have something, but you can't prove that you don't have it. See the philosophical burden of proof:
And even if a server would be audited, that doesn't guarantee it doesn't get changed later.

There is still a lot of mystery surrounding what was found on the disk recovered by authorities related to the CM money laundering website therefore is there any way to independently verify this claim. I am not doubting what you are saying but can the claim be proven?

The databases (backend and the 3 signers) only contain the encrypted Note public addresses and their balances, no sensitive information about deposits/withdrawals or pay to note transfers. Whenever a user performs an action it has to be validated by the backend and all 3 signers individually. These proofs are deleted immediately after their use.


That appears only if you select No(Create only) when asked if you want to deposit now, but I understand your point and we will adjust the wording and info buttons to explain the process better.

That is probably your Legacy Bitcoin address corresponding to your Note private key, it's not the deposit address. Whirlwind on-chain Bitcoin deposit addresses start with 'bc', as a rule of thumb if you are not on a page where you can download a Letter of Guarantee for the deposit you are not in the right place. Understood your point and we will make the process easier to understand for new users.

Thanks for the explanation. Once again, How is an average Joe supposed to know who is new to mixing and wants to mix their coins? The I Button says You can share this public address with other users to receive payments. Don't you think it will be better to write a warning there, like do not send your Bitcoin to this address? However, the address is invalid, and I guess people won't be able to send Bitcoin to this address.

As You said, These are Legacy Bitcoin addresses. I searched my address on Blockchain, and it seems it is valid. For testing purposes, I've sent a few Satoshis. I am not sure if it has anything to do with Whirlwind. I am curious if it's reached whirlwind. Since it's a small amount and doesn't meet the minimum deposit requirement, It won't appear in my balance. But I am curious if Whirlwind received the transaction.  https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/12xmfzikTonuQc3iw7Xezvd9qwHibxryRj

As all the ww-address transactions take place on Whirlwind and are not associated with the Bitcoin network, the question then arises how safe or secure is the database is that contains all the details of the addresses and transactions. Is it encrypted at REST?

If you say you didn't catch them on spoofing your website, I can believe you. If you say you've never heard about them altering the contents of a single http request, this still sounds plausible because it is hard to detect such alteration. But if you say you've never heard about them cutting off pieces of webpages by breaking some of the (many) http requests a browser makes when it loads a (single) page, thus also damaging webpages' integrity, I will not believe you. Cloudfare does this all the time, and this is easily detectable by looking at the list of http requests and their results in "web developer tools" in a browser.

Your website doesn't have to be even the first case of altering the contents of a single http request. If you don't know about such precedents, this doesn't mean they don't exist. They may just stay completely unnoticed if the admins of those previous websites don't access them from various IPs.

This is better than what you said before "automatically shut down the clearnet version" (without any plans for the future), but still, the only price for cloudfare we are sure about is just one website leaving them. You are taking for granted that this is "the complete opposite of 'not too bad' for Cloudflare", while this is doubtful to say the very least, especially given the fact how obviously they damage other websites, as I explained two paragraphs above. What's worse, you put your users safety in dependence of the actual validity of this claim that you just take for granted.

I'm not ignoring anything, it's just you pretend I'm ignoring. As long as cloudfare has 0% false positive, their attack does not contradict your observations you describe here. Once 1% false positive happens, your observations will not anymore be the same as you described here until now. But this alone does not yet mean that 100% accuracy is necessary for cloudfare for all the time in foreseeable future. In simple words: they could have some luck so far.

Unless your server is closely monitored by a third-party, you will not have undeniable proof for anyone except yourself. Cloudfare can claim that it were you who put the damaged files at your physical server, and you will not have evidence it wasn't there. And if someone else independent closely monitors your server and can witness that the files there were not changed, this is even worse, because this third-party access is also a danger for the security of your users.

It is relevant: absence of remote access and distance from your physical location means lower a priori probability for cloudfare that you are testing them, they can rely on this information.

Again, it is possible. At some point cloudfare might get caught, but before that they will have already collected a "large scale" of users' data.

You can call my criticism "invalid" as much as you like, but I still can (and do) warn other users about the risk of their data being accessed by cloudfare.

You are right apologies for the confusion.

It should work either way though, actually you don't even need to change 1 to ww and Pay to Note will still work. We tried to make it as hard as possible to make an actual mistake that would result in loss of funds for a user. As long as you have the private key you have nothing to worry about. For example if you want to use Pay to Note you can send to either one of these 3 addresses and it would still work:

18Sf8x3GBUiTxg55RQEzynf2Cdyy7F1ihh
ww8Sf8x3GBUiTxg55RQEzynf2Cdyy7F1ihh
18Sf8x3GBUiTxg55RQEzynf2Cdyy7Fwwihh

For 'on-chain' withdraws only the real Bitcoin address is accepted as valid, so only the first option from above.

@o_e_l_e_o explained perfectly, I would add that the only way to make a Bitcoin deposit on Whirlwind is going through the deposit process on the website. (on the 'Create Note' tab generate a Note and select 'Yes' when asked 'Deposit now?', after you go to the next step and you will get the Bitcoin address where you're supposed to send your deposit)

It is not an address on the bitcoin network, but rather an address on the Whirlwind platform.

They should be sending coins via the Whirlwind website (not via a bitcoin wallet) to the address which starts with "ww".

Sending coins to 12xmfzikTonuQc3iw7Xezvd9qwHibxryRj via a standard bitcoin transaction will not have them show up on Whirlwind. This is just a standard bitcoin transaction. You could access these coins by importing your Whirlwind private key in to a normal wallet, but this transaction has nothing to do with Whirlwind.

If someone wants to send coins to ww2xmfzikTonuQc3iw7Xezvd9qwHibxryRj, then they do so via the pay to note feature on Whirlwind. These coins will only show up on Whirlwind and will not show up on the bitcoin network.

It is not possible to use Electrum (or any other bitcoin wallet) as you have tried to do to sends coins to an address which begins with "ww", as such a transaction will be invalid.

I'll take a post from the signature thread here too:
Allow me to nitpick: you mean the first '1', not every '1'.

I am moving the discussion from the Signature Campaign thread to this thread since it's more relevant here. Responding to your previous post here.


Okay. This increased my confusion further. Let's say I am not a Bitcointalk user, and I am not a signature participant too. I am an average Joe from a Google search and want to mix my Bitcoin. How do I suppose to know that I have to replace that ww with 1? I mean, I did not find any explanation or any instruction regarding the address. I never saw a Bitcoin Address Start with ww, so I asked in the signature campaign thread.

ww2xmfzikTonuQc3iw7Xezvd9qwHibxryRj This is the Note Public address I got from my note, and the description/ I button says You can share this public address with other users to receive payments. What if someone sends their Bitcoin to this address without replacing the ww with a 1? I know some wallets will give a warning that it's an incorrect Bitcoin address, just like my Electrum wallet did, but my question is still the same how is an average Joe supposed to know that this is a Legacy address and he has to send his Bitcoin to 12xmfzikTonuQc3iw7Xezvd9qwHibxryRj and not to ww2xmfzikTonuQc3iw7Xezvd9qwHibxryRj.

As I said last time we can agree to disagree, but it's obvious that either you don't understand how our system works, or you have other reasons for continuing this discussion and trying to spin the argument your way. No matter which one it is, you debunked your statements yourself so my 'job' is done and I won't reply to any further messages from you unless they contain suggestions or any sort of valid criticism.

They can check whatever they want, it's not enough. Also as I said before remote access is irrelevant to the discussion so there is no reason to bring it up. The only scenario in which you were right and we were wrong is if Cloudflare managed to discover a magical 100% accuracy prediction model, and I think anyone with a bit of common sense would agree that this is impossible.

'false negative' percentage is irrelevant in this discussion, there is no reason to mention it

'false positive' is what matters and the scope of this discussion, since that's what we are checking. While Cloudflare may have a terrible reputation already, I have not heard of any proven cases where they spoofed a website, and I seriously doubt they'd risk this being the first time it happens while we are such a small platform, not to mention we would have undeniable proof of it all. This paired with the fact that if it happens once we would quit using Cloudflare immediately makes the 'price of a false positive' the complete opposite of 'not too bad' for Cloudflare. You are free to think otherwise of course.

So you say they don't need 100% accuracy, but then proceed to give the only example where an attack would be possible while completely ignoring the fact that even in this case they would still need 100% accuracy .

Thank you for confirming our theory is right nonetheless, even though it certainly wasn't your intention. Just to be clear for everyone: 0% false positive means 100% accuracy needed from Cloudflare. Even 1 false positive means over 0% false positive or under 100% accuracy, however you want to count it. Once is all we need to have undeniable proof of it all and at that point we obviously would never use Cloudflare or any other 'DDoS protection' ever again. Simple as that

Also don't forget about this:

Correct, and considering that as soon as Whirlwind gains more popularity and we confirm that it's a viable business model we will switch back to our own proprietary solution we do not consider this to be an issue.

Again, a large scale attack is not possible in the way you described, our previous response was entirely accurate as long as cloudflare didn't discover the only 100% accuracy prediction model that ever existed which IMO is safe to assume didn't happen.

Of course. To check that cloudfare sends your website the same way to various IP address, you (or someone who you trust) need to have either physical access to that requesting IP address, or remote one. This is not my assumption, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation, this is just how internet works. Speaking of particular ways of checking remote access, the three I mentioned were the most obvious examples (and they often can be checked even without being cloudfare and without controlling the outgoing traffic from your various IP addresses), but cloudfare definitely had more time to think about this detection as well as much more data to analyze, including the outgoing traffic. This way they can check the computer knowledge level of the users at that IP as well.

Again, this is wrong. The price of a "false negative" result of a check by cloudfare (they think you are checking them for spoofing, while this was a third-party user trying to mix his or her bitcoins) is just that they miss the tracking of this particular user and will not be able to reprt him or her to the authoriries in the future. This will not prevent cloudfare from tracing and reporting other users.

And the price of "false positive" (you are checking, but cloudfare doesn't recognize you) is not too bad for cloudfare either. At worst, they will lose your webiste if you decide not to use their "ddos-protection" ever again (and even this you don't say, you just say "automatically shut down the clearnet version", but you don't say how long you are going to keep it down). As for the other webistes they MITM/"ddos-protect", your observation of spoofing will not really have much effects with cloudfare's already-terrible reputation. And for your users who already mixed their bitcoins, it will already be too late.

So, 100% accuracy is not necessary for cloudfare. Even 30% false negative with 0% false positive does not contradict the observations you say here, in this thread.

Where did you say it's temporary? If it's temporary, then: as long as you collaborate with cloudfare, this continues to be a battle of shield and spear at best, for all of the period you use cloudfare.

I agree with this. But I don't think it's a good reason to introduce one more attack vector. You could disable https altogether with the same reasoning.

If your server is not on-premises, this is one more attack vector, yes.

A side-remark is that if there is no tampering with distribution of the tor address of your server, and there is no tampering with distribution of tor browser itself, then this is as secure as your own open-source app.

It is possible to organize an attack that will allow cloudfare to know the connection between a certain percentage of incoming and outgoing mixing transactions, even if not all of them.

Thank you, the sooner the better for everyone!

Anonymity Mining rewards will start accumulating automatically whenever you have funds on your Note.

Your balance will increase every day until you withdraw your funds, it doesen't matter if they came through a deposit or pay to note transfer or they simply sit there. As long as you have funds on the Note you will receive rewards every day.

We will create a separate thread for the campaign in the Services section and we will post daily updates with the multi-sig balance and the amount distributed as rewards.

@whirlwindmoney I hope that you will reach the anonymity goal soon!

How would we combine the rewards from the signature campaign with the anonymity mining campaign? When we give Hhampuz our public deposit address for the signature campaign and he sends the weekly payment to our note/address, the anonymity rewards should automatically start occurring right?

Will the rewards then also increase the next day or are the rewards only calculated by deposits that come from an external address and therefore increase once a week (if we take the signature campaign as an example)?

As long as we reach our Anonymity Set goal we have no reason to extend the campaign. We also want this to last for as little time as possible but it all depends on how fast the public reacts, we will also create a twitter profile and present Whirlwind there.

The only risk is theft by us, the operators. If you don't think we will steal your Bitcoin you should at least give it a try, there are no fees and Pay to Note is very smooth to use. It's a very useful feature according to the feedback we received until now. Even with the Anonymity Mining campaign live it might still take a while until people decide to give us a try, but when they do they won't be dissapointed.

We have an automatic system that distributed the daily reward through Pay to Note to all funded Notes from one of ours. If you think it'd help we could also offer a Letter of Guarantee downloadable for 24 hours after each distribution from the Dashboard page.

If you want to participate you do not need to do anything extra besides using the platform as usual. Your Note balance will automatically increase every day so it's 1% a month, but compounded daily.

That makes much more sense with limited amount time set for this campaign, and I hope this time won't get extended in future for some reason.
Daily rewards are not bad and they are not suspiciously high as I initially understood, but I would like you to clearly state all the risks before starting this campaign, and try to minimize them (maybe using multisig with trusted forum member).

Are you planning to manually send all this rewards as Notes to mining participants, or you are using some automatic system with payments directly to Bitcoin addresses?

What is Anonymity Mining, how does it work and why is it needed?

In order to achieve privacy, Whirlwind uses a multi-sig that acts as a pool and consolidates all deposited Bitcoin. Once funds are withdrawn by a completely new address from this pool, the on-chain link between the source and destination is severed, thus anonymising the withdrawn Bitcoin.

The goal of this pattern is to aggregate different deposits into a single pool, such that distinguishing between them becomes unfeasible. The only factor to keep in mind is that this pattern is useless if there are not many deposits of varying sizes, such that the set of probable suspects is too small. We aim to overcome this issue by launching the Anonymity Mining campaign. The more people use Whirlwind, the more secure it becomes for everyone. We will consider the bootstrapping phase over when the Anonymity Set crosses 10,000 deposits.

Anonymity mining is an incentive to increase the level of privacy Whirlwind offers by rewarding participants with Bitcoin dependent on the deposited amount and how long they keep their assets in the pool. The campaign will run for a limited time until the Anonymity Set hits 10,000 deposits and it will be structured in the following way:

In return for increasing the Anonymity Set Whirlwind rewards all funded Notes with 1% monthly interest on their balance. The rewards will be paid out automatically on a daily basis and they are withdrawable anytime. All you need to do in order to participate in the campaign is make a deposit and wait for as long as you want to accrue rewards before withdrawing.

Example: If the multi-sig’s average balance during a month is 100BTC Whirlwind will pay out 1BTC in rewards during that month on a daily basis. 1BTC/30 days = 0.03333BTC paid out daily. If you have a Note with a balance of 1BTC you will receive 1% of 0.03333BTC which is 0.000333BTC every day.

It’s important to emphasize that the rewards will be paid out from our personal reserve and only for a limited amount of time until the Anonymity set passes the 10,000 deposits threshold, at which point incentives won’t be needed anymore. We will monitor the progress and make adjustments if needed.

Looking forward to your questions!

---

Below you will find the changelog with the latest updates and an illustration that should help you better understand how Whirlwind works and why it's so important to have a large enough Anonymity Set.