Privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet Wasabi Wallet announced on Sunday that it will begin to prevent certain unused transaction outputs (UTXOs) from participating in CoinJoin rounds and will spark. surprise When Rebellion On Twitter, users wondered why the project made a decision that seemed to go against the uncensored spirit of Bitcoin.
but, The decision is only made by Wasabi’s default coordinatorCentralized entity mission Build a CoinJoin transaction using the input provided by the Wasabi user performed by the company zkSNACKs behind the Wasabi project.
“The zkSNACKs coordinator begins refusing to register certain UTXOs for coin joins,” Wasabi said. Tweet on Sunday.
Amazing movements make many people believe Some regulatory pressure must have been applied to force the company to take such an unpopular route.
However, Bálint Harmat, co-founder and CEO of zkSNACKs, said: Bitcoin magazine The decision to prevent some users from using Wasabi for their privacy needs was positive because there is no current law requiring users to do so.
“People began to identify wasabi with torts and actors, and we wanted to differentiate ourselves from these players in space,” Harmatt said.
Harmat explained that the company does not want to be involved in any kind of criminal activity, and multiple reports over the past year linking hackers, money launderers, and other malicious individuals with Wasabi and zkSNACK do so. He added that he partially encouraged movement at various angles. It damages the image of the brand.
“We were always against use [CoinJoin] Many actors have begun to use the software because of illegal activity, and as far as the news shows, “Hermat said. “And this produced really bad news for us.”
“Wasabi is for people to protect their privacy, not to hide their illegal activity,” he added.
zkSNACKs The legal entity behind Wasabi Wallet. Adam Ficsor, Gergely Hajdú, and Harmat set up a company when Wasabi began to grow, promoting recruitment and further growth, Harmat explained.
“We were hoping this project would grow, and it’s now,” Harmatt said. “We were expecting a lot of people [to be] We believe it is important and necessary to have a legal entity in order to come in, work for us, pay them and be able to engage with them. And in the long run, this is probably the foundation of a growing business. “
Much of CoinJoin’s media coverage Focused on illegal useHarmatt said he hopes the flow will change as wasabi emphasizes how the practice is beneficial to regular Bitcoin users.
However, the self-preservation movement of zkSNACKs questioned the company’s motives as consumers struggle to understand the reason for this censorship, given that coordinators do not fall into the regulatory category of “remittance companies”. Is throwing. However, Hermat explained that developing targeted regulations is only a matter of time, so this choice may serve as long-term insurance.
“We did some research and actually looked at the legal details,” said Harmatt. “There are no ongoing regulations on coordinators, but we are aware that this will change in the future.”
The Financial Times Reported earlier this week The National Crime Agency (NCA) in the United Kingdom has sought regulation of CoinJoin, known as the “Distributed Cryptographic Mixer.” Such tools claim to be used by criminals to avoid detection when doing money laundering via Bitcoin.
“These provide a’tiered’service, stir the criminal’s cash, its source and audit trail, much like criminals use their cash business to legalize cash through the banking system. It can be used to obscure, “said Gary Cascato, Head of Finance. Survey at NCA, FT..
Hermat commented on the news and FT NCA’s allegations, along with similar discussions highlighted in a report by Europol and chain analytics firm Elliptic, added that they were not “real-life”, and zkSNACKs “with developers working hard for a better future. It’s just a team of economists. ” .. “
Contrary to Popular belief, CoinJoin is not a mixing service and is not managed. Rather than that It’s a joint bitcoin transaction Various people provide input in an unreliable way to break the heuristic links that funds may have when they have crossed the Bitcoin blockchain in the past. Therefore, the remittance company is not involved.
“The CoinJoin Coordinator is just a message parser,” said Samourai Wallet, another privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet with CoinJoin built in. Tweet Monday. “They are not senders, nor are facilitators who just pass data packets to connected clients. Clients do not give up custody to any third party. Clients work together.”
However, while the zkSNACKs coordinator will start censoring some UTXOs when building a CoinJoin round, in theory, the user could choose to use Wasabi Wallet’s privacy features with another coordinator. However, “there is no’configuration’like the solution right now,” Harmat said, adding that users need to modify their clients to connect to another coordinator.
“I wasn’t thinking about implementing a new user interface to switch coordinators,” said Harmat, with Wasabi taking proactive steps to ensure an easier way for users to choose a different coordinator. I was asked if I would take it. “Obviously, the whole project is open and anyone can do whatever they want.”
co-founder of zkSNACKs Adam Ficsor I posted a message On Tuesday’s Wasabi Wallet public telegram channel, the company said it “needs to hire” a blockchain analytics company and “excludes CoinJoin’s registration.” This is a plan repeated by Harmat.
However, zkSNACKs does not yet have a detailed plan on how to choose which UTXOs to block, so it currently has no clear concept of which particular transaction needs to be censored. .. “To eliminate these illegal types of activities.”
Positive steps to maintain the legal well-being of a company make sense in the business industry, as management must make difficult decisions to ensure a prosperous future for the company and its employees. increase. However, it is not clear why this aggressiveness was needed in certain cases of zkSNACK, as CoinJoin coordinators cannot be equated with remittance companies. This is because there are strict regulations Violators will be heavily prosecuted..
Therefore, the recent move of zkSNACKs can be regarded as one of self-preservation, but the watchdog regulation that does not yet understand what CoinJoin really is and is trying to apply non-compliant rules instead. There is no doubt that it justifies overkill. Inviting regulatory practices and more overkill in the future is of little benefit in the long run.
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