Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on April 27, 2024, 02:32:06 PM

Quote from: alani123 on April 26, 2024, 10:07:47 AM

Are Wassabi devs still feel safe and confident? Would be nice to have this reassurance from them in a statement perhaps.

You've probably not followed the events of Wasabi in 2022. Here are a few topics to read:

- The default Wasabi Wallet coordinator will start censoring "illegal" UTXOs.
- Wasabi blacklisting update - open letter / 24 questions discussion thread.
- Re: Petition to remove Wasabi from recommendations of bitcoin.org.

To me, it is crystal clear that Wasabi is not to be trusted. Maybe some coinjoins will work, but there is a vast amount of accusations, lies, inappropriate and diplomatic responses from the developers, and on top of that, they are funding blockchain surveillance.

Quote from: Pmalek on April 27, 2024, 02:01:20 PM

zkSNACKs and Wasabi Wallet has been blocked for US citizens.

How can they block access to US citizens if connection to the coordinator is established via hidden service?

Quote from: Kruw on April 27, 2024, 02:09:14 PM

What a disgusting statement.

Are you capable of experiencing emotions? That's quite groundbreaking news.

I think that we have to be understanding of Wasabi's position before such conclusions. Developers that know how to develop bitcoin could apply to 10 positions today and have a very high acceptance rate for new job opportunities. Plus, when you make a piece of software free and open source, revenue avenues are kinda limited because it can't realistically be sold or licensed.

The devs somehow need to get paid or they won't develop FOSS at all.
So when it comes to developing a wallet solution that offers additional features on top of the bitcoin stack, the voluntary-funded model hasn't proven to work yet. Bitcoin-core developers might get external sponsors because it's a very knowledge intensive task and people need to pay their bills too if they spend tons of time doing something they've spent a large part of their life learning (without getting paid) to do.

But who would fund a privacy wallet? Even with bitcoin, nearly all of the dev funding comes from corporations and from the occasional well-meaning tech billionaire. Would these corporations and billionaires want to risk seeming as defying U.S. authorities and regulations though? I think most definitely not.

We can't realistically expect any software development to happen from developers operating without salaries and/or without knowing each other's person, operating in a rogue manner. Feature-packed privacy wallets are vast and can't be developed without any organization. So whoever is organizing things also could face liability against state entities.

The alternative to external pressure for a software project is always to give up and find jobs elsewhere. But instead Wasabi devs built offices in Budapest, found a team of professionals in the space, found ways to LEGALLY pay them a stable salary to continue development, and to this day offers a feature-packed bitcoin wallet with additional privacy services on top. They already do so much to develop the software and keep their operation sustainable.

After seeing what happened to Samourai devs, we just have to be glad that Wasabi is still standing and the devs behind it are still willing to provide the software, albeit with limitations. The software existing and being developed is what matters. If anyone wants to use it in whatever ways it should be on them and not in the developers. But if the US gov doesn't see it that way, what can be done?

Maybe we could try crowd-fund the development of a privacy coordinator and development team to operate out of Russia or Iran or at least anonymously and not have to worry about them being sent to a U.S. jail. But to my knowledge, no one has taken up to that endeavor and secondly I've seen overall nearly non-existent willingness of users to crowd-fund bitcoin privacy wallets. Let alone the fact that operating our of a non-western state and/or being anonymous doesn't guarantee that developers of such a project will be left alone.

To make a long story short, Wasabi is one of the best things we have for bitcoin privacy as of now. It's not perfect but it's they're operating with certain limitations that are very hard to overcome. We have to appreciate their efforts and recent developments with Samourai shows that they're dedicated for wanting to continue and more prepared overall.