I honestly haven't seen the previous layout since I'm new to Chipmixer, but damn the simplicity of the current layout sure is sexy!
I can't speak for the usability though, since I haven't used it. But it definitely looks very promising.
Well, i can assure you that the design is a whole lot better compared to the last generation of site design. Last one was clean as well, and surprisingly simple, but this one makes the site look way more slick.
I will be using the mixer soon. For privacy reasons, once I use it, I'll let some time pass before coming back and updating the post with my thoughts on the mixer. I don't personally use Electrum, so I cannot give any feedback on it. If I get the chance, however, I will try out the Telegram bot and report back on how smooth it goes. I admit I am surprised by the responsiveness and the development speed of the devs of this project. The interaction with the community is one of the reasons why I happen to trust this more than other projects going around.
I was planning to try the mixer out this week but transaction fees right now are stupidly high. I will probably hold off until Saturday-Sunday when the fees are around 6 times lower and then report back. From what I have seen in actual practice, however, I am wondering what is the session key for? If I deposit bitcoin but lose the session key, what happens to the money?
At the least one of the advantages is that using the "chips" gets rid of transaction fees on the way out, which given the high fees currently, is quite beneficial.
1. Why not try it out now? There is absolutely no reason to delay your trial run because transactions fees aren't going to be lower until a scaling solution like segwit comes past. I have never heard of the fee be 6x lower on weekends either...
2. Session key is essentially your username and password. If you lose your session key, you're going to lose access to your funds. Chipmixer can't help you with this either.
3. You're missing the point. Chips on the way out will still incur transaction fees if you sweep or send bitcoin to other people. It is extremely unlikely that you would want to hold the private keys, because after all there is counterparty risk. The point of chipmixer is not to save on tx fees but rather a way to provide more privacy to the btc network.
About #1, if you don't believe me, try sending out a transaction on a Sunday. I've had transactions be confirmed within the hour at only 40 sat/b which comes out to around $0.20 worth of transaction fees in contrast to sometime like today when the fee is around 300 sat/b. It all depends on the mempool load, which happens to be lower during weekends. That being said, I still think a scaling solution is a must for Bitcoin, but that's outside the scope of this thread.
About #3, yes, you are right that if you wanted to keep holding that BTC it would be obviously better to sweep the the addresses given to you rather than keeping the private keys. However, imagine a situation in which you want to mix and spend right away. You could spend using the private keys they give you and only have to pay the fee twice (once for mixing, another one for spending) while with any other mixer you would have to pay 3 times (for mixing, receiving, and spending). This obviously varies depending on which mixer we are comparing to, but ChipMixer is certainly one of the better ones in this regard.