Key Points
- Edward Snowden reminds Bitcoin developers that privacy has to be provided for at the protocol level.
- This comes following the announcement regarding the shutdown of Wasabi Wallet’s developer zkSNACKs’ service.
Edward Snowden has recently shared a post on his X account, telling Bitcoin developers that he’s been warning them for ten years about the fact that privacy has to be provided for at the protocol level. He says that the clock is ticking and this is his final warning.
I've been warning Bitcoin developers for ten years that privacy needs to be provided for at the protocol level. This is the final warning. The clock is ticking. https://t.co/r7w7gdrHRp
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 2, 2024
He reposted the message shared by Wasabi Wallet in which the team behind the project notes that after years of relentless dedication to improving Bitcoin’s privacy, zkSNACKs, the company that pioneered the development of Wasabi Wallet, is shutting down its coinjoin coordination service.
This is reportedly effective June 1st, 2024.
In the official announcement, Wasabi Wallet notes that the decision has been made after careful consideration and “with a heavy heart.”
The team notes that they have always made efforts to operate legally and under legal clarity. The notes reveal that Wasabi Wallet will still function as a regular Bitcoin wallet and users will be able to generate private keys to receive and send the coin.
Even without coinjoins, Wasabi’s client-side filtering architecture, Tor integration, and custom coin selection make it the most private light wallet available, they note.
But, due to the nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, users are prevented from obtaining complete privacy without coinjoins.
The move will also reportedly affect users of other wallet clients that connect to the zkSNACKs coordinator, such as Trezor Suite and BTCPayServer.
Launched back in 2018, Wasabi Wallet is a free and open-source software, and it will continue to be maintained. Also, zkSNACKs will fund the continuous maintenance of Wasabi Wallet’s basic features.
Snowden told the team via X that the move is “genuinely sad,” also suggesting that the project could shim in a decentralized replacement coordinator before pulling the plug.
This is genuinely sad. Surely the project can shim in a (decentralized?) replacement coordinator or something before pulling the plug, no? Or "insert coordination configuration here" field? Certainly no less (theoretical) liability than already incurred under the DOJ's willfully…
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 2, 2024
Snowden highlights the importance of privacy
Not too long ago, Snowden raised awareness about the importance of user privacy via his X account.
He posted about the recent DOJ move, saying that the authority has once again criminalized the developers of an application that restores financial privacy, referencing Samourai Wallet.
He highlighted that the way to fix this is to make money private by default. Snowden said that privacy must never be exceptional, because it will be made criminal.
Recently, he also addressed how the NSA is just a few days from “taking over the Internet,” but no mainstream media talks about the issue.
Speaking of integrating enhanced privacy at Bitcoin’s protocol level, this is something that the Runes Protocol promises to achieve.
The Runes Protocol was recently launched on the same day at Bitcoin’s halving, on April 20.
The protocol enhances Bitcoin’s transactional capacity by introducing symbolic representations of data within Bitcoin transactions.
This abstraction layer is able to boost privacy and security, and it also enables the encoding of more complex data structures within the Bitcoin blockchain.
