Wasabi and Samourai Wallets - Reading Assignment

[Dimitar_Stefanov]

1. They are both an extention on the initial platform ZeroLink.
2. Sybil attacks are when a lot of the coinjoin participants(addresses belonging to the same person or group of people) are trying to reduce the anonymity of the rest in the joined transaction.
3. Not a central solution.
4. A solution that makes it expensive for malicious actors to participate.

[AlexanderG]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
They started out with creating the same dapp called ZeroLink. After finding some differences on how they wanted to do things they decided to split with a hard fork and go their own way.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
When someone has made a large amount of different identities which makes up for the larger populus of the crowd. This way it’s easier for them to find identities since the real anonymity set is much smaller

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
It’s not centralised and require less trust in the “owners”. It hides the transactions in a crowd to make it hard for people to find the transactions and identities (and then to combine them both)

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?
Their system makes it more expensive to uncover someones identity. Less possiblity of Sybil attacks.

[Daniel_Fuchs]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
	a. both use the implementation tech CoinJoin called ZeroLink
2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
	a. a person or organisation pretends to be several individuals with the aim of infiltrating the network
3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
	a. do not rely on centralized server backend Server to process extended public keys (XPUB)
	b. try to hide UTXOs in a large crowd of peers
4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?
	a. it is more expensive to malicious actors to break the anonymity of other users throuch a Sybil attack

[legoboy85]

@Grant_Hawkins

Read the article about the latest PR battle between Wasabi and Samourai. Answer the questions and post your answers below:

CoinDesk – 6 Aug 19

A Battle Between Bitcoin Wallets Has Big Implications for Privacy - CoinDesk

Bitcoin privacy wallet Samourai announced last Thursday that its primary competitor, Wasabi Wallet, is the target of an ongoing network attack.

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?

1. At one point in time, Samourai and Wasabi were the same application. They worked together on building an implementation of long-standing bitcoin privacy tech CoinJoin called ZeroLink. They just had a difference in implementation desire. So they split. They forked the project and just implemented it the way they wanted to implement it.”
2. The Sybil attack in computer security is an attack wherein a reputation system is subverted by creating multiple identities. A reputation system’s vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated (Wikipedia).
3. Wasabi wallet’s main advantage they are decentralized (we dont need to trust them).
4. Samurai wallet’s main advantage is it makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

[cme]

@Grant_Hawkins

• How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
• What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
• According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
• According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?

1. they come from the same codebase and same dev team
2. in a ‘Sybil attack’ the majority of elements that you think are unique but in fact they are belonging to one attacker as an organized ‘group’ to distort and lie about the perception of ‘consensus’ around/surrounding ‘you’ (node, or in this case ‘wallet’ conjoin ‘anonymity set’)
3. Wasabi coinjoin does not use centralized server, Wasabi mixing is up to 100 peers.
4. Samourai coinjoin uses higher fees so they think this would discourage ‘Sybil attack’

[Goosie]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
   They share the same protocol CoinJoin

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
   When a hacker creates and use a lot of fake accounts which will lead to less anonimity.

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
   Cheaper and needs no centralized server.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?
   More expensive for malicious actors.

[begood]

1. They both use ZeroLink, Softwork of CoinJoin.
2. An attack where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be a much larger in number.
3. Wasabi does not relay on a central server to process TX
4. It´s more expensive for hackers to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

[rickyd]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

Wasabi and Samourai were the same project at one point, then they forked due to a difference of opinion. Both are based on ZeroLink.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

A single user or group falsifies addresses and clogs the mixing transaction with false transactions, reducing the anonymity set of everyone else.

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?

Wasabi mixes your transaction with around 100 others, giving you a sufficiently large anonymity set.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?

Cost- whirlpool makes attacks more costly for the attacker.

[andrewfleming]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
Wasabi and Samourai wallets are related by their respective founders both initially worked together on ZeroLink and both wallets use an implementation of CoinJoin.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
A Sybil attack consists of users creating multiple identities in order to appear more numerous than they are.

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
Wasabi wallet’s main advantage consists of not relying on a centralized backend server.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?
Samourai’s main advantage is that their pricing mechanism makes it more expensive for malicious actors to perform a Sybil attack.

[mayjer]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

They are forks of the common project, Zero Link, started by the founders of Wasabi and Samourai wallets. The projects split after a disagreement on implementation direction.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

Where a large number of false identities are created to achieve some kind of agenda- i.e propaganda, making something look more popular than it really is, or exploiting some benefit that is “limited” to new accounts.

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?

Wasabi strives to mix the transaction with 100 peers in a decentralized way.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?

Smourai uses it’s fee structure to make it more expensive for bad actors to launch a Sybil attack (but uses a centralized back end server to process the transactions! ).

[Samm]

1. They came from the same project before differences of opinion caused a split.

2. Where entities masquerade as other entities to make it appear there are more involved.

3. Larger peer group

4. higher fees, making it more expensive to perform Sybil attacks.

[jopo]

They stem from the same project. At one point the lead developers could not agree on some technical issue and then they split.

It is an attack where some users fake their identities. This results in fewer people being involved in the coin mixing than what it looks like.

Wasabi does not rely on a centralized backend server for processing users extended public keys.

Samourai’s implementation of CoinJoin (called Whirlpool) makes it more expensive to break the anonymity of users.

[thenjose]

1- They were the same project once, they started as an implementation of Coinjoin called ZeroLink. They were a team of two developers and they had differences and they forked the project for implementation.

2- Is a malicious attack in wich a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretend to be much larger in number, dropping the anonymity set abruptly.

3- The samurai system does not send data to centralized servers.

4- Samourai pricing mechanism makes malicious attacks too expensive.

[andrea01]

1. They used to be part of the same project, hence sharing the same protocol;
2. Sybil attack is when an individual generates a large number of addresses. This creates consequences as now the number of available addresses results bigger that what actually is;
3. Hiding your UTXO among a large number of users;
4. Higher pricing mechanism, making any potential attack financially more compromising.

[paschkka86]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
   Both of them have the same core design, because time ago they were the same application.
   They split, because they had different ideas, how to solve the problem.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
   It’s an attack, where bad user create many fake accounts and all pretend to be independent. This way a new user feels save by thinking there are a lot of independent accounts.

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
   It’s more cost effective and it doesn’t has a backend server, which user have to trust.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?
   Whirlpool makes it more expensive for hackers to break the anonymity.

[kato]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

• Both based on CoinJoin

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

• Make up of fake headcount to mislead the system that there is enough users in order to make everyone anonymous.

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?

• No need to give away all your public key to the centralized server.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?

• The cost of creating a attack is higher in SW.

[CryptoInMyMind]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

• They are built on top of the same base project and share the same protocol.

2. What is a “Sybil attack”?

• A Sybil attack is when an attacker exploits an anonymous peer-to-peer network/system by pretending to be multiple agents within it. In the case of ZeroLink, the attacker can reduce the anonymity set by flooding the CoinJoin transaction with his own sock-puppet identities.

3.According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?

• Your public keys are never sent to a central server.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?

• Samourai wallet’s main advantage is its implementation of ZeroLink har different pricing mechanism, which makes it more expensive to conduct sybil attacks.

[Adam_Smith]

1. They used to share core developers before each forked off to build further on their own.
2. Different addresses in a coinjoin actually belong to 1 attacker, that can then reduce the anonymity set of the remaining participants in the coinjoin.
3. According to the developer, Samourai’s pricing mechanism makes Sybil attacks more expensive and therefore less likely to occur.
4. Wasabi is more trustless, no need to trust the coordinator.

[qh.w]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
   Both are based on tech CoinJoin, called ZeroLink, and basically they are using same principle.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
   small users generate multiple fake identities and pretend amount of users to break anonymity that need larger users involved.

3. According to the article, what is Wasabi wallet’s main advantage?
   There is no a central server for uses’ public key, probable more anonymity.

4. According to the article, what is Samourai wallet’s main advantage?
   it’s costly for attack, special Sybil attack.

[SparkPath]

1. The lead developers of each worked together on ZeroLink, an implementations of CoinJoin, in the past. The lead devs wanted to implement it differently and split, one creating Wasabi and the other Samourai.

2. A Sybil attack is when a single entity pretends to be multiple identities on a network.

3. The advantage of Wasabi is that the Wasabi coordinator does not gain access to the users’ xpubs and so cannot see the user’s entire history of both present and future transactions. This is not the case in Samourai. The Samourai user must put a certain level of trust in the central server, such trust not being necessary in Wasabi. Also, cost of CoinJoining in Wasabi is kept to a minimum.

4. The main advantage of Samourai is that there is a fee per transaction which makes Sybil attacks less likely, unlike in Wasabi, which keeps fees very low.