Topic: Wasabi blacklisting update - open letter / 24 questions discussion thread - page 3. (Read 2293 times)

I don't take it as an endorsement of Wasabi, rather just a shot at Samourai. There has never been any love lost between Samourai and Bisq. For example, here's Samourai taking shots at Bisq a year ago: https://nitter.it/samouraiwallet/status/1388095210912092160

Samourai are maybe spying on you, but you can still achieve privacy by running your own server. Wasabi are provably spying on you, and there is nothing you can do about it. I wouldn't use either.

Meanwhile, here is nopara73 claiming responsibility for the fact that coin control is in use today, while also saying that you are all too stupid to use it and therefore shouldn't have it: https://teddit.net/r/WasabiWallet/comments/w8r7pw/why_i_wont_be_using_v2_of_wasabi_after_having_it/ihtvm0p/. He also slips in a quick reminder that they are only bastion of hope for bitcoin fungibility, despite actively treating bitcoin as non-fungible. Excuse me while I roll my eyes so hard I have to go lie down.

The platform wouldn't matter as far as blacklisting is concerned - it's implemented server-side in the coordinator, so all builds would have to access it by default anyway.

At first I was confused on zkSNACKs blacklisting but as you explained it in detail I came to understand it. But why it is that Wasabi Wallet is only for desktop computer? They would have Developed Android version so that those who are not using desktop can use phone for although the idea is best known for them.

It appears as though the rest of the world (outside of this forum) is less and less concerned about wasabi's blacklisting and more concerned with whatether conjencture they made up against Samourai.

Unfortunately, Bisq's twitter admin has stepped into this drama.  Yesterday he retweeted a post that disparaged Samourai Wallet, and many interpreted that as support for Wasabi.  Today he justified his post, which I believe has since been taken down.

The premise of the original tweet is that Samourai/Whirlpool is the FED.  I mean, of course they are.  They're all FED, and if you're smart you'll assume the same.  In fact, the only centralized mixing service that is certainly not FED is Chipmixer.  And I'm not saying that because I'm wearing their signature.  I'm wearing their signature because I believe that.  If you don't believe me, just google "chipmixer" and witness all the scams that pop up in it's place.  That would never happen if they were FED.

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Now, I don't want to come off like a right-wing, tinfoil capped nutjob, but the truth is I'm treading a thin line.  Just because I have nothing to hide from the fed doesn't mean I want them to know everything about me.  I have nothing to hide from the FED today, but, I'm old enough to remember and never forget 1994 when the fed turned millions of Americans into criminals as they slept.  They did it with firearms, they can do it with bitcoin.  Your freedom is a threat.

Such gaslighting is a recurring theme:


How convenient that the docs for 2.0 have been under construction this whole time! The one thing which will apparently make it clear that they are blacklisting, anti-privacy, and pro-censorship, but it just happens to not be finished yet. Plenty of time to write nonsense blog posts like the one I linked to earlier or launch their own spyware TikTok channel, but no time to write their official documentation. Oh well. But let's have a quick look at what is included so far. Specifically, this page: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WasabiDoc/blob/docs-2.0/docs/why-wasabi/TransactionSurveillanceCompanies.md

Wow. They make some very good arguments about why taint is complete nonsense and blockchain analysis companies are not to be trusted. Still no mention anywhere of the fact that they do the exact opposite of all of this and use your coinjoin fees to pay for blockchain analysis firms to spy on you. The bottom of the page even includes a list of blockchain analysis companies. Perhaps we could open a GitHub issue and ask them to put an asterisk next to the ones they work with.

Regarding discrepancy between actions and 'their documentation', this was part of the 24 questions. Their reply probably means that what was written in docs.wasabiwallet.io, is not valid anymore.

I guess if they're being honest, documentation of Wasabi 2.0 will not include statements such as the deliberately misleading statements you mentioned, anymore.

I'm not sure it's as innocent as you describe it, but I do hope I'm wrong.  I'm starting to grow a significant amount of distrust for this development team, and their continued use of the word "fungibility" is starting to sound calculated and sinister.  Could it be that they are trying to drive a narrative by saying obviously ignorant things like "fungibility is an essential property of good money"?  What is bad money?  If it's money it's fungible regardless of how many strippers' thongs it has visited or lines of coke it has ducted.  It's neither good nor bad, it's just money.

Bitcoin is fungible with or without Wasabi.  They are not assisting in any of the fungibility properties of bitcoin but blacklisting can only hurt.  They must know this.  I cannot reconcile the idea that they are so skilled as developers, yet so ignorant to not understand the meaning fungibility.

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Brave is a good example, but to this day I don't know if they truly valued integrity at first, or if was nothing more than a brilliant marketing ploy.

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Agreed, they certainly aren't making a big deal about blacklisting, nor making much of an effort to address the criticism.  I think they're hoping that if they just ignore it (us) the whole thing will just go away.  Even in the blogpost where they spilled the beans, they gaslight the ramifications by describing it as a "debate" and "for the greater good."  I'm sure they're banking on the fact that many people won't know about the blacklist, and that many of those who do won't understand the greater implications.  Just look at the other posts on their blog, they still portray themselves as the authority on private use of bitcoin.

Absolutely. Remember when Brave started and was being hailed as the next big privacy browser. Then ad companies paid them to whitelist their ads, so they did. Then Facebook paid them to let all their trackers through, so they did. Then Binance paid them to inject their code in to the browser, so they did. As soon as most people get offered money, then morals and principles quickly go out the window.

Absolutely. They make deliberately misleading statements on their documentation which suggests that they are still anti-censorship, while making absolutely no mention whatsoever of their blacklists. They outright lie, such as the statement that they have "solved fungibility". Their website makes absolutely no mention anywhere of censorship, blacklists, blockchain analysis, etc. It is a deliberate campaign of misinformation to keep their users in the dark about what they are actually doing.

I'm saying it's a possibility. I remember the days Zuckerberg said the users came first. Then, he got rich

Could it be many of their users don't even know and simply believe the privacy claims?

Yes, this somehow makes no sense. I just created another thread just in case someone wants to discuss it and / or nopara73 wants to take some time to explain how this contradiction in his opinion makes sense.

Are you implying they 'changed priorities' ('a little less privacy' / 'enough privacy for most people' - Wasabi team statements) because they had made a lot of money? That greed got to them? I have no idea; I wouldn't do such speculations, but I honestly don't even understand their move from a 'greedy business perspective'.
If a wallet that never claimed anything about privacy makes a decision that negatively impacts privacy, not many will complain. But if you literally made your business about 'having the best privacy' and whatnot and then turn around 180 degrees, without a lot of PR, you can quickly destroy your business.

Maybe I'm mistaken, and maybe I've fallen for some carefully planned PR, but until recently I got the impression Wasabi Wallet was created as a privacy solution with very low fees. I also assumed that's why so many people were vouching for it on Bitcointalk.
My next impression is they never expected nor planned to earn a lot of money from it, but suddenly the 0.003% fee turned into substantial amounts of money, and their priorities changed because of that.

I have no doubt that different people on the team feel differently about their new anti-privacy and pro-censorship stance, but that's why I made the point in my last point about the two positions being mutually exclusive. It does not matter if some individuals have different values, understandings, ethical dilemmas, moral considerations, and so on. Stating you have solved fungibility while enforcing non-fungibility is an outright lie, regardless of personal opinions.

Also worth pointing out that the article linked was written by nopara73, who has obviously been very vocal in defending their decision to enforce blacklists and censorship.

Interesting, I've missed this article. To be fair, I don't follow Wasabi's every step.
One reason for the discrepancies between statements, ideas and actions might also simply be because of varying degrees of technical understanding, privacy understanding, degrees of importance that different people on the team put into their values and varying degrees of greed and willingness to throw out such values for profit.

It's possible that some Wasabi developers do believe in fungibility and oppose blacklists, but are overruled by a slight majority within the team. I have no idea, I'm just trying to give them a little 'benefit of the doubt' and making sense of this mess they've put themselves in. At the same time, I'm the first to point out issues and as such created the 24 questions and this whole thread, of course.

At least someone on their team must have known and informed them. Which means the only conclusion you can reach is "They don't care". They don't care that they are encouraging their users to download spyware on their devices and potentially link every bitcoin wallet and address on their device with their real identity. What have you got to hide, right!?

I reached this conclusion when they tried to defend asking a blockchain analysis company to spy on their users as somehow good for privacy. This just cements that conclusion.

Which they themselves still claim:

I cannot fathom how someone can write articles claiming they have "solved fungibility" while simultaneously enforcing arbitrary blacklists. Those two positions are mutually exclusive. That is not up for debate; that is a simple fact. You cannot state you have solved the issue of some bitcoin being discriminated against while you are actively discriminating against some bitcoin.

This particular app is a fucking abomination, and makes Facebook's privacy invasion look like angels by comparison (at least FB openly admits it!).

Reflecting on it, it's quite sad how it has captured most of the young generation and making them dumb. There are a few tough bunches who resisted subjugation (such as quite proudly myself), but it's grasp is near total, that I even read somewhere that the US. Army is using it for promotion.

I was about to say. The degree of incompetence in the highest levels, for me started to really manifest itself when they spoke in those Twitter 'spaces' (I believe that's what those were called?) - those voice-only livestreams where everyone can listen and join to ask questions.
When they threw around phrases such as 'incredible privacy, if you're not in an extreme situation'. Or 'Maybe there is a little more privacy in Lightning'. Just the word 'maybe' is so wrong in this context. If you are a lead developer of what's supposedly the 'last hope for Bitcoin privacy' you should have a very clear idea of what existing solution is most private, why, how and to what degree. As well as knowing exactly how much more private your solution is, and if it's not, ask yourself why you're even developing it.

Them creating an official TikTok account just highlights this again. I'm not sure how they were even able to code a CoinJoin implementation (some amount of skill and knowledge is required), while at the same time apparently being so extremely naive on the whole subject of privacy.
It gives me real 'well we have nothing to hide so we don't need to worry about TikTok data privacy problems' vibes. Just to reiterate: 'I have nothing to hide' is the prime example of a total lack of understanding of privacy.

It must be one of the two; but I can't understand how the intelligence required to implement CoinJoin functions simultaneously with being completely oblivious and naive with regards to the TikTok privacy catastrophe.

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Hey Agbe; it's possible that the website does collect user information, while the application doesn't. The only thing that can be verified is the code that is available open-source and we only have that for the Wasabi application. About issues with user accounts, I don't think that's a problem either since a proper software wallet shouldn't have 'accounts' at all in the first place. Download numbers can also be tracked without tracking users; that's just a matter of counting accesses to a certain file on your webserver (or in their case just done through GitHub).

The issue at hand is that they are discriminating between coins (UTXOs). Even propagating and legitimizing the idea of this (called 'taint') is extremely anti-Bitcoin, which they even claimed themselves in the past. That's why I reference it in the 24 questions. The whole idea of Bitcoin is to have free(dom) money that everyone can send to anyone, anytime, anywhere, without intermediaries and without the possibility of getting a payment intercepted, rejected, blocked, confiscated, et cetera.

In interviews / 'Twitter spaces', official statements and now through creating a TikTok page, they are giving the impression of having very little clue about privacy and extreme naiveté, which is obviously terrible coming from a 'privacy wallet'.

I have a disturbing question on this thread. Although I am not a programmer and I can not develop an app or a software but I can design website with Adobe Dreamweaver CSS and HTML code. That means I have small idea on different a website even though I am not a professional.

zkSNACKs company targeted audience are the bitcoiners, which is other cryptocurrency users can not user the software to avoid confusion of coins. Wasabi Wallet company does not or have nothing to do with users data and the information, yes it is possible since the software is designed to be open source but the software was developed and lunched by human not robot, that means they most have access to the users data to set and make things easier for the users. If the company do not know the Users data then how will they know the total number of users of the wallet? If a particular User account is having issue, how will they resolved it?

Finally. From my point of view your (OP) post history, I came to the conclusion that you are a computer software engineer plus a programmer that is why I am asking you. Keep it up. I really like your threads. You did full review on hardware and software analysis.

How does anyone involved in cryptocurrency to the level of developing a "privacy wallet" not know the implications of using this particular app?  I thought everybody knew that TikTok was CCP spyware.  The former president of the US attempted to block them from operating their service in the US, and settled on the ByteDance (the parent company,) creating a service specifically for the US and storing all the data on US servers (it's worth noting that the current administration has reversed those restrictions.)

I am of the opinion that blocking UTXOs based on arbitrary taint-proclamations was a really stupid move, but I never thought of the Wasabi development team as stupid.  I mean, they're software developers, how can they be this stupid?  Right?  It makes me think they are in the "don't care" phase and are just trying to shill their wallet in any way they can, without any real concern for their clients' privacy.

Wasabigate keeps getting muddier and murkier.

Which would be bad enough on its own, but they guy in the second video is Norbert Lévai, the project manager at zkSNACKs, meaning you can't pass this off as a PR fuck up. The highest level people in Wasabi are promoting Chinese spyware to all their users. And the Wasabi Twitter account has never struck me as being run by some random PR hire, but by the developers themselves.

I honestly can't wrap my ahead around what is going on here. They are either so completely out of touch with all things privacy that they genuinely have no idea TikTok is spyware, or they are aware of this fact but the just don't care at all. Which is worse?