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Wasabi Wallet, the privacy-focused bitcoin software wallet, has set an ample time frame for the release of Wasabi Wallet 2.0. The goal is not only to make the wallet easier to use as more people start adopting bitcoin, but also to implement the privacy enhancements of the WabiSabi protocol, including making CoinJoins automatic by default.
In a blog post detailing the wallet launch timeline, Wasabi announced that the updated version would get a complete UI (UI) rewrite and user experience improvements, as well as make a CoinJoin easier for your average user. At the moment the team is in the midst of the first steps for all three of these developments. Although the most likely timeline for release is nine months, it could take three to 14 months.
The post also stated that manual coinjoining will be a “power user” thing.
Read more: Wasabi Wallet is revamping its CoinJoin design to allow for the mixing of Bitcoin with different values
“Wasabi adds complications to traditional Bitcoin wallet workflows with its manual coinjoining process and mandatory coin checking features,” Adam Ficsor, Wasabi co-founder and lead researcher, said in an email. at CoinDesk.
“To improve them, we’re planning to make coinjoining automatic by default and build on the knowledge that checking coins is mostly friction when the user would like to spend joint coins, so we should be able to introduce a simple send for that. “
Automatic CoinJoins
A CoinJoin is a method for bitcoin (BTC) users to make their payments harder to track by combining multiple payments from multiple senders into one transaction, confusing the ability of third parties to see who paid whom.
Ficsor said its plan currently is that upon creating the wallet, users will be asked if they want the wallet to take care of CoinJoins or if they would prefer to do it manually, as is the case now. Users would also set a privacy goal (Ficsor eliminated levels like none, some, high, and Snowden) and then everything would happen automatically from there.
“CoinJoins would be done while the wallet is open (and even when it isn’t), so all the user would have to do is use his wallet like a regular bitcoin wallet,” Ficsor said.
He said that although this is his plan, the final product may turn out different based on what the team learns along the way.
How WabiSabi improves on CoinJoins
In the original Wasabi Wallet there were limits to CoinJoins functionality.
My colleague Colin Harper wrote about some of these earlier this year:
“For this to work effectively, each user in a CoinJoin transaction must send a minimum amount of bitcoins to the mixing pool (e.g. 0.1, 0.01, etc.) to ensure they receive the same output as the other users when CoinJoin is complete, “Harper wrote. “If recipients don’t receive the same amount of bitcoin at the end of a join as other users in the mix, transactions could easily be anonymized by blockchain surveillance.”
Read more: Europol defines privacy wallets, coins and open markets as “major threats” in the report on Internet crime
Typically, the coordinator of a CoinJoin also has a view of a user’s information, which could allow them to link inputs to a user.
WabiSabi, which will launch with Wasabi Wallet 2.0, works to address some of these limitations by allowing users to enter different amounts of BTC, regardless of what other participants enter – which, let’s be honest, is the way most people spends money. The coordinator role will still exist.
How this helps the average user
Ficsor said that for average users the only inconvenient thing they might experience with Wasabi Wallet 2.0 is that it may take a while for CoinJoins to happen. This means that if users receive coins on their wallets, they will automatically be merged in the background and this may take some time. If users are in a hurry and want to spend their money before it is coinjoined, they should use the manual coin check card and figure it out, as spending non-coinjoined coins without coin control is “privacy suicide,” according to Ficsor.
“That said, I think 99% of the time there will always be coinjoined coins to spend on, so this wouldn’t really happen that often.”
