It’s no secret that has issues when it comes to privacy. After all, it’s pretty difficult to implement privacy features in a system that puts the entire history of transactions on a public LEDGER for everyone to see.
That said, improvements to Bitcoin privacy have been slowly implemented over time. And the two wallets pushing the limits of privacy in Bitcoin more than anyone else these days are Samourai Wallet and Wasabi Wallet.
While these two wallets have similar goals, they use a variety of different methods to improve privacy for their users. And these differences have led to a rather nasty feud between the two projects.
Both wallets have their supporters, and Cryptonews.com reached out to developers from both projects to see what they’re working on in 2020.
Post-Mixing tools and increasing CoinJoin usage with Samourai
For the pseudonymous developer known as TDevD on Twitter, the focus for Samourai Wallet in 2020 will be on continuing to offer new enhancements in terms of on-chain transaction privacy.
“Privacy is moving to the forefront of considerations in the Bitcoin space and 2020 will see Samourai Wallet double down with regards to on-chain privacy,” said TDevD.
Samourai Wallet’s CoinJoin (a method for combining multiple Bitcoin payments into a single transaction) implementation, known as Whirlpool, has been available in desktop software since the second quarter of 2019. Currently, a mobile version of the privacy feature is available to a select group of Samourai Wallet users, and this functionality should be opened up to the general Samourai userbase in the coming weeks.
“Whirlpool mobile mixing will be rolled out to general release within the next few weeks allowing users to participate in rapid rounds of Chaumian CoinJoin on their Android device,” said TDevD. “The update will include full coin control and tools to mitigate the issues arising from the handling of toxic change outputs. Recent events in the Bitcoin space have shown how post-mix behavior can compromise mixing, damage privacy, and endanger users. Samourai post-mix tools will evolve to further reinforce segregation of mixed UTXOs [unspent transaction outputs] as well as act as safeguards against user faux-pas.”
