Wasabi and Samourai Wallets - Reading Assignment

Privacy Coins - Ultimate Course
#63

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#64
  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

They used to be the same code base called Whirlpool that in a certain moment forked, splitting into two separate project.

  1. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

An attack where a small number of users creates many false address to appear more numerous then he really is.

  1. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

It do not rely on centralized backend server to process public keys.

  1. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?

They make it more expensive to run this type of attack.

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#65

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    Both are privacy wallets implementing ZeroLink/Coinjoin

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
    An attack that happens when a group of users create new accounts by using fake IDs thereby surrounding normal valid users by fake accounts which leads to a loss of anonymity.

  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    Creating an extended public key giving Samourai unique access. - along with the coin mixing technology hides UTXOs creating pools of peers.

  4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
    The technology makes it very expensive for bad actors attacks against privacy due to pricing mechanism higher than Wasabi.

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#66
  1. They share the same core protocol.
  2. An attack where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number.
    1. The idea is to hide an individual transaction among a number of at least 100 other transactions.
  4. It is more expensive to hack the identity of a user by using ZeroLink.
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#67
  1. Samourai and Wasabi were the same application.
    The devs were working on a project together called Zerolink. They both had differences in implementation so they forked the project.
  2. Sybil attack is where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number.
  3. Samourai makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.
  4. Samourai relies on a centralized, backend server to process users’ extended public keys. Wasabi is critical because you send Samourai all of your public keys in the form of an extended public key (XPUB) that let’s Samourai have unique access to all of your current and future addresses. Users have to trust that Samourai isn’t trying to sell their public key data to third parties.”
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#68

1: The core is The same in both Prijects before split. The origin was Zerolink

2: À Sybil attack is when a small number Of people create large Numbers Of fake adresses to make it look like The Group is larger than it actually is.

3: By mixing coins from individuals in a large group of individuals therefore making it very difficult to identify The source Of The coins. It is decentrelized

4: by making it more expensive for attackers to break the code

#69

  1. They both share the same protocol, an implementation of CoinJoin. They use to be the same application before the project was forked.

  2. When a small number of malicious users falsifies a lot of new identities and pretend to be bigger than they are, thus the anonymity set is not as large as was suggested.

  3. They hide an individual transaction by mixing it among a 100 other transactions and this makes it more expensive for the malicious users in the system to break the anonymity by a Sybil attack.

  4. Samourai made it more difficult and expensive for the malicious users to break down the anonymity of the users through a Sybil attack.

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#70

How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

At one point in time, both wasabi and Samourai were the same projects, with devs on the team splitting up to implement their own strategies.

What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

Sybil attack is where a small number of users create many accounts to try and hide in the crowd when doing a transaction, they create their own digital crowd to hide in.

How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

From what i’ve gathered, samourai usue xpub address that they have access to. the xpub address are derived from private keys, i’m assuming they control the private keys to those xpub wallets since your sending them the money.

What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?

From my understanding, Samourai usage revolves around them being a centralized service where the issue is trust. Do we as counsumers trust Samourai to do right by us? are they selling our information? being negligent with or data? it seems Wasabi has valid criticisms.

#71
  1. Both are privacy wallets which shared the same protocol - coin join.
  2. A Sybil attack Is were a small number of people falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number.
  3. Samurai protects against Sybil attacks by implementation of zero link (called whirlpool) Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.
  4. “When you use the wallet, you send Samourai all of your public keys in the form of an extended public key (XPUB) that let’s Samourai have unique access to all of your current and future addresses,” said Aviv Milner, the community technical support lead for the startup behind Wasabi
#72

Wasabi and samourai are related in that at one time they were the same application, however they forked the project.
A Sybil attack is when a small number of users falsify identities and pretend to be a larger number.
Samourai protects against Sybil attacks by having a higher user price, making it more expensive to malicious people in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.
Samourai makes a trade off by using a backend server which Wasabi critics as being not very private or safe.

#73

  1. They share the same core protocol. They used to be basically the same project which forked in a certain moment.

  2. Sybil attack is the one where hackers create a lot of pseudonymous identities and use them to gain a disproportionately large influence

  3. Don’t give the data of the TXs to the developers. Does not rely on a central server to process TX.

  4. Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack. It is more expensive for attackers to perform a Sybil attack

#74

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    *lead developers worked together and then forked the project into the two wallets. Both projects use Zero Link (Coinjoin)

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

  • a small # of users who falsify new identities and pretends to be much larger in number. This reduces anonymity set.

  1. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    *SW makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity through a Sybil attack.

  2. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?

  • SW uses a backend server and wasabi criticizes over the fact that it is centralized and public addresses can be viewable on the server by SW. Trust in SW is needed by its customers.
#75
  1. The Wasabi and Samourai wallets are related as the two lead developers started out working together but had different ideas on how to impliment the Coin Join functionality in their projects.
  2. A Sybil Attack is where a bad actor makes many small transactions in an attempt to look like many different individuals. So if you think you are mixing your transaction with 100 different people it might turn out to be you and one other making 99 small tranactions which reduces the anonymity set.
  3. Samourai protects against Sybil attacks by Samourai’s implementation of ZeroLink (called Whirlpool) has a different pricing mechanism than Wasabi, though this is not the only difference between the two wallet applications. Whirlpool is designed to make it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.
  4. Samourai makes the trade off that the anonymity using Whirlpool can always be broken given that Samourai relies on a centralized, backend server to process users’ extended public keys. Users have to trust that Samourai will not be hacked or sell their data such as all the future public keys.
#76
  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

They both shared originally the the protocol: CoinJoin.

  1. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

An attack where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be a much larger in number.

  1. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

by implementation of zero link (called whirlpool) Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

  1. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?

It is more expensive to hack the identity of a user by using ZeroLink.

#77

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    they are both privacy wallets

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
    where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number.

  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    pricing, therefore making such a attack more expensive

  4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
    Having a server with all the public keys on it

#78
  1. They have the same origin but forked at some point. They both use a form of CoinJoin.
  2. When a small number of users create multiple identities.
  3. Using zerolink, which makes these kind of attacks more expensive.
  4. It uses a central server to achieve this.
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#79

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number

  1. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    Samourai’s implementation of ZeroLink (called Whirlpool) has a different pricing mechanism than Wasabi, though this is not the only difference between the two wallet applications. As a result, SW maintains that Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

  2. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?

Samourai’s implementation of ZeroLink (called Whirlpool) has a different pricing mechanism than Wasabi, though this is not the only difference between the two wallet applications. As a result, SW maintains that Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

#80
  • They share the same protocol. At one point they were the same application and both share zerolink.
  • An attacker creates many false addresses to reduce the anonymity set.
  • Mixing UTXO’s among a large pool of peers.
  • More expensive for a hacker to perform a sybil attack.
#81

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    Both essentially achieve the same thing, they are just different implementations of a project (ZeroLink) that was worked on by the creators of both wallets until they disagreed on implementation and forked away to create Wasabi and Samourai.

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
    A Sybil attack is the instance of an attacker creating a large number of false identities in order to gain a disproportionately large influence over a network.

  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    Samourai protects against Sybil attacks through their pricing structure. Samourai makes it more expensive to create identities, for a Sybil attack to be effective, the cost of generating pseudonymous identities needs to be cheap. The other way is that Samourai requires the wallet’s extended public key, which has access to all of the wallet’s public keys and therefore prevents a bad actor from using multiple addresses from that wallet.

  4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
    The trade off Samourai makes is by having a backend server process the extended public key. Wasabi is critical of this as it is centralised and requires trust in the owner of the backend server to not be dishonest and not get hacked.

#82

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    they share the same core protocol

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
    a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number makes the bitcoin user belive that anonymity set of being a part of a crowd is bigger than it actually is.

  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    Samourai’s implementation Whirlpoo has a different pricing mechanism than Wasabi. Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

  4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
    Having a backend server process the extended public key. Its not safe for the users in terms of privacy if, someday, Samurai decides to just sell all the information.