Re: 'Wasabigeddon' article discussion (it supposedly solves fungibility)
Hi guys, I glanced through this thread. Let me clarify a few things.
First of all, despite our differences of opinion, I really appreciate your reply! It did clear up a few things for me.On the CEO of zkSNACKs. I did start Wasabi and I did co-found zkSNACKs, the company responsible for the bulk of the development on Wasabi, however I was never the CEO. zkSNACKs had two co-CEOs since its inception until this year when Max took over. That's not to say they are to be blamed for the blacklisting plans, but I am the one who pushed the idea through. It however doesn't mean that I am "advocating for it," quite the contrary, I am not philosophically aligned with it.
On conflating the company with the software project. IMO most of the times it's ok to say things like "CEO of Wasabi" as the separation between the company and the project most of the times isn't relevant. It becomes important to separate the two things when censorship resistance is in question. Wasabi is censorship resistant, zkSNACKs isn't.
Interesting. I think we've heard the argument before ('without us, and without blacklist, there will be no privacy in Bitcoin'), but I still don't get how it's possible to push something through that someone's not philosophically aligned with. However, I guess it's still good to know and I appreciate the honesty on this. Also regarding censorship resistance and rough company structure (i.e. how closely Wasabi and zkSNACKs are tied together).On conflating the company with the software project. IMO most of the times it's ok to say things like "CEO of Wasabi" as the separation between the company and the project most of the times isn't relevant. It becomes important to separate the two things when censorship resistance is in question. Wasabi is censorship resistant, zkSNACKs isn't.
On fungibility. I guess the debate here comes down to the question: is it fair to say that Wasabi is making bitcoins fungible? AFAIK it is: Fungibility, sometimes called interchangeability or indistinguishability is a property of good money. Two instances of a currency are fungible - interchangeable - with each other if there are no meaningful differences between them: they have no marks, nor history. That's exactly what Wasabi Wallet coinjoins are doing. Two coinjoined coins are indistinguishable from each other. It doesn't matter which coinjoined coin you have. That's fungibility between two instances of a currency.
Two Wasabi-coinjoined coins might be indistinguishable from each other, but are they indistinguishable from non-Wasabi-coinjoined coins? Because if they're not, Wasabi added one more way to distinguish Bitcoin UTXOs.On the question if we're working on fungibility or privacy. Going with our knowledge on fungibility, how does privacy come into the picture at all? And let's throw anonymity into the mix, too, since we're at it, shall we? 
Privacy is your ability to selectively reveal yourself to the world. Anonymity is a mathematical tool which we can utilize to build privacy for the individual, like a privacy Bitcoin wallet. And adoption of a private Bitcoin wallet or a comprehensive Bitcoin privacy technology leads to the fungibility of the money itself. Learn more on this here: https://nopara73.medium.com/privacy-fungibility-anonymity-451d029355f7
The fungibility = privacy? question was picked up by nullius earlier and explained rather well, I believe. It does make sense on a theoretical level (for me most simple to understand privacy / anonymity => fungibility, e.g. like how in Monero coins are fungible, because that follows from privacy). I'm just not sold Wasabi = fungibility, though. Especially since the blacklisting 'idea' (?) - maybe here's a good place to ask whether it will be implemented, since a bunch of time has passed and as far as I can tell, it's not there yet. Privacy is your ability to selectively reveal yourself to the world. Anonymity is a mathematical tool which we can utilize to build privacy for the individual, like a privacy Bitcoin wallet. And adoption of a private Bitcoin wallet or a comprehensive Bitcoin privacy technology leads to the fungibility of the money itself. Learn more on this here: https://nopara73.medium.com/privacy-fungibility-anonymity-451d029355f7It is pretty illogical to want to create a fungibility-enhancing tool, but at the same time discriminating between inputs.
I think the problem is that what you're trying to do would need to be done on protocol layer.
In my opinion, there are 2 options:
[1] Everything remains as it is, and we ignore the fact that Bitcoin is not fungible - we mix it to get privacy and deny any notion of taint: just like it is done with fiat paper money. Those bills are non-fungible, but everyone acts as if they were, so they are.
[2] We implement privacy measures at protocol layer, which give us fungibility, like in Monero.
I don't think you can do option 2 'as a service', because there will always be users who don't use Wasabi, hence their funds will be distinguishable both from other non-Wasabi-users' funds, and also distinguishable from Wasabi-users' funds.
Further, they may even be denied usage of Wasabi, since you opt for 'full option 2 (but as a service)' and do not also commit to option 1 as well (accepting any and all funds). I do not see how this is going to be Bitcoin's ultimate fungibility and privacy solution.
Of course I am more than happy to hear thoughts on this topic, but I hope I demonstrated that my fungibility claims aren't pulled out of my ass, in fact they are the result of years of research on the topic, so I'd appreciate not calling me a liar, because of them.
I believe the lying accusations stem from the discrepancy between your 'philosophical alignment' and 'actual actions'; I know that people often (have to?) do something like that, but it can easily come across as a hypocrisy / lie - I think that's easy to understand.