I agree with the sentiment that Samourai is very misleading in that at first sight it appears you get anonymous mixing with or without full node, but then it turns out that if you don't run one, you lose all privacy by doing one of the worst things you could do; leaking your xpub.
Sure, zkSNACKs openly confesses to blacklist, but it also still claims to be a privacy wallet. While working with chainalysis. How doesn't this immediately sound like an oxymoron?
I wouldn't say either of them are a 'scam' in that they don't steal your money, but Wasabi sends your information to Chainalysis and Samourai deanonymizes you if you don't buy their node, so they're both going against their main proposed selling point (privacy) in a rather similar way. You could argue that Samourai holds the xpubs themselves, while you guys pass the info further right away, however I don't trust Samourai to be government- and three-letter-agency-secure if they come knocking at their door.
As long as Samourai devs remain anonymous, they can afford not to collaborate with three-letter agencies or chain surveillance companies. But once (not if) they get deanonymized, they will have no choice but to hand over to governments every piece of information they have collected about their users over the years of Whirlpool operation, including xpubs, pre-mix, and post-mix addresses. Law enforcement agencies already know which transactions were coming from Whirlpool and at which point in time they were made. They will come to Samourai devs and force them to disclose additional information about particular addresses. If they refuse to provide information and cooperate with whoever comes to them, they may find themselves in jail and be accused of facilitating money laundering and other illegal activities. Of course, they will collaborate and start secretly surveilling the users of Whirlpool reporting users' activity to agencies. Maybe they already do. All this will happen because everyone, including governments, is already aware of Samourai capability to collect such information, and this is why they will demand it from them eventually.
Samourai Wallet is a registered company in the United Kingdom, under Katana Cryptographic Ltd.
They are not anonymous.