Quote from: dkbit98 on April 24, 2023, 09:47:53 PM

This all sounds nice on paper but I wouldn't compare this new Pay to Note feature with monero, since this is fully centralized system, I think that privacy is inferior, and we need to trust you.
If your website goes down both on clearnet (like it is now) and onion version than we have nothing left to withdraw.
On positive note, paying zero fees is a nice feature, but I will always have some reservation towards centralized mixers, especially after CM takedown aftermath.

We fully agree with you on the centralization risks, but considering our architecture we might go as far as say that unless we choose to exit-scam ourselves it's pretty much impossible to exploit Whirlwind or take it down. You can find more detailed technical explanations in this thread if you are interested to learn more about it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5444933.60

Sure, you can argue that it's impossible to prove that we are not planning to do an exit-scam and you are completely right, but consider that if this was the plan all along we had a million other ways to do it in a way that would be much more profitable and required a lot less effort and dev time. We built a product that is light-years ahead of the competition from a technical point of view, name another service that you believe is better and we'd be happy to give our take on that. The only thing that could be argued here is that our anonymity set is not big enough yet, but this can't really be considered a disadvantage because we just started and once we exceed a certain number of deposits there is no going back.

If you are concerned about us stealing your funds then you can just withdraw as soon as you got paid, you don't need to keep the BTC inside Whirlwind. The risk still exists for that short period of time, but it's the same with any other service and in that case you wouldn't get to benefit from the same privacy level and unique features that we offer. Monero is still the better option, at least for now, but not everyone has the ability or knowledge to exchange BTC to Monero and back or they simply do not want to wait or pay extra in fees to go through that process, and in that case Whirlwind is the only option you have on the Bitcoin blockchain that offers instant, feeless and anonymous transactions.

Clearnet is still down because it wasn't a priority until now, we wanted to finish up all changes on the actual product before dealing with this. It's on the list for tomorrow, and once we solve it we don't expect any more downtime. It's also worth noting that the Tor service wasn't offline at all as it's completely unrelated to the Clearnet server.

As discussed since before starting Whirlwind our end-goal is to decentralize the service, and we went to great lenghts to build the system in such a way that it is possible to do it anytime assuming there are willing users to run signers. Whirlwind could already be considered a blockchain, the only issue is that we are the only ones who are running the 3 signers (validators). Real decentralization can be achieved in one of two ways:
1. Find some trusted community members and simply add them to the multi-sig.

The problem with this approach is that even though it would solve the centralization issue, there is no way we can properly verify these 'trusted community members', so in reality we might actually introduce more risks instead of solving the actual problem so this is not acceptable.

2. Open-source everything and implement something similar to a Proof of Stake mechanism making the process to run a signer(validator) trustless

We are exploring this approach as we speak and we might soon come to a conclusion on the best way to do it. As soon as we do we will start implementing it. Even though this requires a lot more effort than the first option it's the only way to do it safely given Bitcoin's technical limitations. We won't give too many details for now but this is a very high-level overview of how it would work, keep in mind it's just an example so ignore the numbers:

In order to run a signer and be added to the multi-sig you would need to stake a minimum of 10BTC. Only 1 new signer gets added to the multi-sig each day, so after you made your deposit you will be added to the queue which will be sorted in a descending order by amount. If your staked amount is higher than that of everyone else in the queue in any specific day you will be accepted and added to the multi-sig.

There would be a slashing mechanism to penalize bad actors and expel them from the system. Ideally the total staked amount between validators should be higher than the amount held in the multi-sig

Below is the changelog with the latest updates, and tomorrow we will solve the Clearnet issues and completely eliminate the withdrawal fee of 2500 sats/address. This means that if you choose to donate 0, you will pay nothing using Whirlwind. You deposit 100000 sats, you get back 100000 sats.

Our most important short-term goal is to grow the Anonymity Set and we hope that this change will help us achieve it by attracting more users. The multi-sig balance is also steadily increasing and we appreciate the trust that current users are placing in us.

Open question for everyone: We could fund some wallets ourselves and offer users an extra option to receive the private key of an address that was funded before they made their deposit instead of withdrawing from the multi-sig after the deposit was confirmed. In your opinion is this something worth pursuing?

Quote from: whirlwindmoney on March 28, 2023, 01:42:28 AM

04.24.2023 04:00:00 PM UTC
-UI changes for a better user experience
-Website now fully responsive for all devices
-Donation button introduced on the Dashboard page
-Info buttons updated with better directions