Alright, everybody; I'm publishing here a list of 24 questions that was sent to Wasabi CEO (I'm actually not 100% who that currently is). It took me a few hours to go through most of the pages in this thread and summarize all of the 'core issues' and questions that came up. It still got pretty long, and I believe if we get answers to all of these, the answers will also explain other questions that did not make the list. I also told icopress that they don't have to answer everything; but that the whole list will be published, so afterwards we know what was answered and what wasn't. I hope everyone's happy with the list and that I didn't miss anything big.

• Who is your target audience / target user demographic? Due to the recent changes, we must assume it's people who are interested in mixing coins, while at the same time not having a problem with the mixer discriminating between UTXOs. Mixing with a blacklist seems like an oxymoron to us and we struggle to see the use case.
• Related to point 1, we found comments on your own Twitter profile from presumably former Wasabi users, like:
  Quote from: https://twitter.com/vryfokkenou/status/1503484457029976066
  What's the point of a washing machine that only washes clean laundry?
  - do you have a response for that?
  
• Is it correct that you now officially focus on institutional investors and chose to implement a blacklist for this reason? Your blog post and other statements make it seem like this is the case. For example in this interview: https://stephanlivera.com/episode/364/, Max Hillebrand said: 'if you, as a CoinJoin coordinator, if you want to work with institutional clients, hedge funds, insurance funds, Michael Saylor, and all these people, well, even if ZKSnacks were not to be regulated, those customers might very well be, maybe because they're custodians of other people's money or whatnot. And then these regulated entities can only become users of a coordinator—arguably, I'm not sure—if such a blacklisting is involved.'
• If institutional investors are now your target audience, why didn't you communicate this openly and transparently - maybe even continued running Wasabi 1.0 for the vast majority of users, without all this tainting and blacklisting and explicitly stated that this 'Wasabi with blacklisting' is dedicated to such investors that are regulated and thus aren't allowed to use a mixer that has no blacklist?
• We believe:
  Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286821.msg60339712#msg60339712
  If Wasabi were actually being targeted by laws and regulations, then the correct course of action is to let all their users know about it, inform all their users how to mitigate it, explain to their users how to swap to a decentralized coordinator, create easy tutorials for people to set up and run their own coordinators, and shut down their centralized coordinator long before they are forced to start cooperating with blockchain analysis.
  Did you consider taking such a course of action instead of the pretty low-key Twitter announcement that got very little visibility and no changes to the website (front and docs page)?
  
• Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286821.msg60415914#msg60415914
  Why do the institutions of all people need to use CoinJoin on their assets in the first place? Do they have something to hide too?
  It seems odd that institutional investors want to use a mixing service; since they usually rather prefer to keep their Bitcoin investments in the hands of a broker / exchange or hold Bitcoin ETFs. Or are the 'institutional clients, hedge funds, insurance funds' trying to hide something from their customers?
  
• Your website still says:
  Quote from: https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/why-wasabi/TransactionSurveillanceCompanies.html#attempt-to-destroy-fungibility
  The aim of bitcoin is to be a decentralized digital currency, but if all users are eventually required to consult centralized blacklists before accepting bitcoin, then its decentralization will be destroyed.
  This stands in direct contrast to your blacklisting update. Has your opinion on blacklists changed or how is this view compatible with providing a Bitcoin anonymity service that only allows certain UTXOs to use it?
  
• WasabiWallet also states this; which we all agree with.
  Quote from: https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/FAQ/FAQ-GeneralBitcoinPrivacy.html#how-is-financial-privacy-an-essential-element-to-fungibility-in-bitcoin
  If Bitcoin fungibility is too weak in practice, then it cannot be decentralized: if someone important announces a list of stolen coins they won't accept coins derived from, you must carefully check coins you receive against that list and return the ones that fail. Everyone gets stuck checking blacklists issued by various authorities because in that world we'd all not like to get stuck with bad coins. This adds friction and transactional costs and makes Bitcoin less valuable as money.
  - Now Chainalysis is the one providing such a list and you're asking them which UTXOs are on the list and which are acceptable. Don't you think you're helping set a precedent which may lead exactly to the scenario described, where everyone will be stuck checking blacklists upon blacklists, published by tons of different authorities, which will make Bitcoin less valuable as money? Are you now making Bitcoin less valuable as money?
  
• This statement on your website also strongly implies you are not censoring users, which you now clearly are doing.
  Quote from: https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/FAQ/FAQ-Introduction.html#can-the-coordinator-attack-me
  The only known possible 'malicious' actions that the server could perform are two sides of the same coin; Blacklisted UTXO's: Though this would not affect the users who are able to successfully mix with other 'honest/real' peers.
  In general, it seems like you intentionally never changed the website until the latest redesign (which didn't affect the docs page quoted here, though). Why was there so little communication around this huge update and everything kept so 'on the low'?
  
  (big credit to o_e_l_e_o for digging these out)
  
• Many users were puzzled about your very minimalistic Twitter announcement; and what the image is trying to convey isn't clear either. Was this intentional? Some of us speculate that you believe WasabiWallet to be something like a 'last glimmer of hope' for Bitcoin privacy or something like that, since it sounds like that in various interviews and Twitter voice calls, too. Or are you aware that other, even better solutions exist, especially for the people who need privacy the most?
  
  Quote from: https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-blacklisting-update/
  The alternative, discontinuing zkSNACKs would have set back Bitcoin privacy for decades. Blacklisting by the default coordinator, while undesirable, is a small price to pay for the future of Bitcoin's privacy.
  Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5395733.msg60020303#msg60020303
  That's exactly why we introduced blacklisting: so we can continue to operate and users can still have privacy using Bitcoin.
  Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5391971.msg59813544#msg59813544
  Wasabi Wallet 2.0 is decades ahead of other privacy solutions in Bitcoin.
  Such statements make it appear like you believe yours is the only privacy solution and that there is no privacy in Bitcoin without Wasabi. Would you confirm this? Actually, later you admit that LN has better privacy, so this already seems like a contradiction.
  
• We're talking about political refugees, government critics and investigative journalists for example; these are amongst the ones needing privacy the most (and therefore switching to Bitcoin in the first place). But in https://twitter.com/HillebrandMax/status/1537503087987937283, at 1:32:10, Aviv Milner says that 'the average person who's using the product especially if you're not in a situation where you're your life depends on it and there's a large government organization that's well funded that's looking to to find you and hunt you down if you're not in that extreme situation then wasabi provides an incredible amount of privacy'. So it means WasabiWallet is not the 'ultimate privacy solution' for Bitcoin after all; just maybe for 'getting a little privacy' or how should we call that? Someone who really, really needs actual privacy cannot rely on Wasabi then? What should they use in your opinion? On one hand, you say Wasabi is the only / best option for privacy, but then admit it doesn't provide enough privacy if someone's life depends on it; so what's the point of it all then? We don't believe privacy is something quantifiable; it's more a yes-or-no kind of deal. Either your UTXOs and transactions are private or they're not.
• We noticed your download numbers have almost collapsed since the blacklisting announcement; did you expect this and how does this reflect on the anonymity set? https://tooomm.github.io/github-release-stats/?username=zkSNACKs&repository=WalletWasabi
• Are there any insights on how you blacklist? Do you rely solely on the data from Chainalysis or do you pre- and / or post-process the data? Since we assume blacklists are used to block coins from illegal origins; which laws or rules are used to determine if an origin or past activity is legal or not? Since Bitcoin is a global currency tied to no nation in particular, it appears impossible to declare 'legality' in this context. For example, copyright laws differ widely across the world; or when it comes to anything sexual, some stuff is illegal in certain countries, but totally legal in others. How can a legal ground be found to determine which UTXOs are 'good' and which are prohibited?
• Are all UTXOs sent to Chainalysis for inspection, whenever someone wants to do a CoinJoin or only if after some pre-filtering you have some suspicion?
• Let's take an example: An investigative journalist uncovered a government or other wealthy entity's dirty secrets and now they're after them. People want to donate to the whistleblower or they want to spend their donations through WasabiWallet. However you get a notice to block those UTXOs, so you do exactly that; isn't this exactly the target audience? Isn't this exactly the person who needs a Bitcoin privacy solution? (This refers back to point 1). Don't you also go straight against Bitcoin's original goal of pseudonymous, fungible currency that can be received from and sent to anyone, anywhere, anytime? What's the use of a privacy solution if the ones needing privacy are not allowed to use it? (this refers back to point 2)
• We believe that starting censoring some users opens the door to censoring anybody and everybody. Would you agree with this?
  Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286821.msg60219453#msg60219453
  Again: Bitcoin is either censorship resistant, or it isn't. You cannot pick and choose who it is censorship resistant for. If you, like Wasabi, start censoring some users, then you open the door to censoring anybody and everybody
• Let's take a step back to the beginnings. Did you consider building something decentralized instead of the current coordinator model? As we can see now, it created a central point of failure.
• You already said this isn't the case; so you don't have to confirm or deny if this happened; but if we're being skeptic, we have to consider the idea that you were pressured by authorities after all, with an extra clause that you're not allowed to say anything about it. Did you ever consider that a privacy-enhancing service would sooner or later be targeted and pressured by authorities? Other similar services explicitly made sure from the beginning that the creators and developers are anonymous, pseudonymous or generally unknown, to make sure such pressure can't be exterted on the project. Actually, satoshi himself may have left Bitcoin to remove such a central point of failure (through pressure on the creator).
• Did you pay for this post? https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/wasabi-wallet-2-contains-new-features-for-optimizing-bitcoin-coinjoins We wonder how it completely ignores the blacklisting update, given the generally bad reception by the (vocal, even on Twitter) community. There is no mention of collaboration between WasabiWallet and blockchain analysis companies.
• Another question quoted directly from the community:
  Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286821.msg60374195#msg60374195
  I'm also interested in the scenario (which will definitely happen sooner or later) where someone is allowed to mix their coins and then afterwards Wasabi decide that their inputs were tainted and they shouldn't have been allowed to mix them at all, since the document linked to above also invites you to inform them of any illegal transactions and states that they will fully cooperate with any investigations. Why would reporting an illegal transaction to Wasabi achieve anything at all, unless they have the ability to track those coins and are going to share that information with law enforcement?
• Automatic CoinJoin and the removal of manual UTXO selection altogether is a deal-breaker for some users (especially in the context of the whole update). We believe it's unexpected behaviour of a wallet to automatically (without user opt-in) send all of a user's UTXOs to a blockchain analysis company for vetting (whether blacklisted or not) and afterwards be mixed. Some users are worried that the very act of mixing makes the UTXO 'tainted' in the eyes of the exchange and that it will freeze those funds. By the way: this is exactly what you predicted in your old docs pages; if everyone starts coming up with 'taint definitions' and blacklists, using (moving) Bitcoin will become infeasibly cumbersome.
• Another quote from the same recent Twitter group chat: https://twitter.com/HillebrandMax/status/1537503087987937283 (at 1:32:40) - Aviv Milner says that 'Maybe there is a little more privacy in Lightning'; and elaborates that LN is tricky to use though, so he implies that Wasabi is actually less anonymous / less private than Lightning, but just easier to use? Would you confirm that, that Wasabi CoinJoin privacy is lower than Lightning privacy? So if I need the absolute most privacy, you would recommend to create a Lightning channel and / or doing a submarine swap instead of doing a WasabiWallet CoinJoin? This is practical, important information for a lot of users who need as strong privacy guarantees as possible.
• Right before, he also says that it's much more private than the vast majority of alternatives; what are those alternative privacy solutions that are much worse than WasabiWallet? Or did he talk about the 'alternatives' as non-privacy-promising, plain and normal non-custodial wallets, with no CoinJoin implementation in them; that these are less private?
• For the last point, we have an important observation:
  Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286821.msg60395578#msg60395578
  Wasabi Wallet doesn't utilize any post-mix spending tools, and if part of the users practices bad spending behavior (like spending directly to a centralized exchange), then the other part of the users (more advanced) can potentially be deanonymized in a process of elimination.
  If I recall correctly, this is also a potential issue / attack on other such mixing technologies; where bad behaviour (unintentional or even intentional) can put the privacy of other users at risk. This sounds like a loophole / security issue just looking to be exploited. Would you confirm this issues and if yes, are there any plans yet to improve this?