Wasabi and Samourai Wallets - Reading Assignment

Privacy Coins - Ultimate Course
#143

Wasabi and Samourai Wallets - Reading Assignment

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    They are both privacy wallets and used to be the same application, that was then forked to these two application.
    Their lead developers also worked together on building implementation of long-standing bitcoin privacy tech ConJoin called ZeroLink.

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
    Where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number.
    It makes the anonymity not as great as the wallet would suggest.

  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    Samourai’s implementation of ZeroLink (called Whirlpool) has a different pricing mechanism than Wasabi. 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.

  4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
    Samourai Wallet relies on a centralized, backend server to process users’ extended public keys.
    Wasabi are critical of this because it require users to trust SW, that they will not sell public key data to third parties.

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#144

[quote=“Grant_Hawkins, post:1, topic:13035”]

  • How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    They share the same core protocol.

  • What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
    Somebody falsifies a big number of new identities, pretending to represent a considerable number of participants

  • How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    Samourai has a different pricing mechanism than Wasabi, as SW maintains that Whirlpool drives up the price for malicious system anonymity through a Sybil attack

  • What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
    Whirlpool anonymity Samourai can be broken as it relies on a centralized, backend server to process users’ extended public keys addresses.

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#145
  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
  4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?

1- They use the same protocol and they are related, they forked from a common project.

2- Its when many addresses belong to the same individual or group, allowing this individual or group to have more access to data and/or influence in decisions.

3- To hide transactions in a large number of transactions.

4- The user must trust the devs as a central party.

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#146
  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
    They are both forks of ZeroLink.
  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
    A small number of users fake new identities to reduce the size of the anonymity set.
  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
    It has a different pricing method thus making it more expensive to carry out Sybil attacks.
  4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
    They use a centralized backend server to process users extended public keys.
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#147

Wasabi and Samurai Wallets - Reading

  1. The Wasabi and Samurai wallets were both working together to improve privacy for their users but split to different directions on how to implement it.

  2. A Sybil attack is when an attacker subvert the reputation of a network service by creating a large number pseudonymous identities and use them to disproportionately have a large influence.

  3. Samurai protect against Sybil attack by making it very expensive for the attacker to do a Sybil attack

  4. The " trade-off " that Samura made in order to achieve #3 was to have a centralized backend server, which Wasabi criticized Samuri as not being trustless.

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#148
  1. Both use the same coinjoin application called zerolink.
  2. A Sybil attack is where a small number of users falsify new identities to make it seem like a much larger # of users. This would mean that the anonymity set is not as large as the wallet suggests and the privacy of all users in the same mixing pool is decreased.
  3. Samourai protects against Sybil attacks by implementing zerolink whirlpool which according to Samourai, makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break anonymity of users with a Sybil attack.
  4. The trade off for achieving #3 is relying on a backend server which requires trust that Samourai won’t sell user public key data to interested parties. Is this correct?
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#149

Yes and Wasabi is critical about that. :slight_smile:

#150

  1. The core design of Wasabi and Samourai wallets is the same as they were originally forked from the project called ZeroLink. Due to differences in the implementation of the pricing mechanism and some other features, the lead developers of Wasabi and Samourai decided to split the ZeroLink project.

  2. A Sybil attack is an attempt to gain influence over the network by creating large pseudonymous identities. In the case of blockchain, the attackers can run multiple nodes, and gain influence over the network’s consensus, allowing them to add invalid transactions to the blockchain.

  3. The pricing mechanism of Samourai’s Whirlpool makes it very expensive for attackers to conduct a Sybil attack.

  4. Samourai relies on a centralized, backend server to process users’ extended public keys.

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#151
  1. They were forked from the same base code after a dispute between the developers.
  2. It is when users create false identities to increase the appearance of more users or nodes so that they can fool the network or outsiders. This can sometimes give control of a network depending on a consensus mechanism.
  3. It implements its whirlpool protocol in a way that an attacker would need to pay more upfront to preform a sybil attack.
  4. It uses a backend centralized server to hold all extended private keys. This means users have to give up access to all current and future address which could be dangerous to the user.
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#152
  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

The two developers worked together on an implementation of CoinJoin called Zero link but wanted it implemented in different ways so they forked the project implementing it each others way.

  1. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

A Sybil attack is where a small number of identities fake being larger in size reducing the anonymity set.

  1. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

By making it to expensive for an attacker to try to break the anonymity set

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

They rely on user trust as they hold the users extended public key which gives them access to all current and future public addresses.

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#153

  1. Both Wasabi and Samourai have a common history, and rely on CoinJoin protocol. The founders had different ideas on ho to implement the project, thus they split.

  2. A ‘Sybil attack’ is an attach in which few people give the impression that the group is larger, thus the Anonymous Set is not as big as the average user might think.

  3. Wasabi wallet’s main advantage is that it’s not centralized. Thus, users don’t have to rely on a party.

  4. Samourai wallet’s main advantage is that it’s more expensive to uncover someone’s identity.

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#154

  1. Both Samourai and Wasabi wallets use ZeroLink. They just differ in their implementations of the protocol.

  2. A sybil attack is when the anonymity set is inflated to make it seem like there are more users in the set than you think. So in a pool of 100 users, for example, an attacker could pose as 20 of those users, meaning the pool of users is only 81 (80 users + the attacker posing as “20”). Then the privacy of the other 80 users would be compromised slightly against the attacker.

  3. Samourai protects against Sybil attacks by relying on Whirlpool, an implementation of ZeroLink.

“Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.”

  1. The trade-off that Samourai makes is it uses a “centralized, backend server to process users’ extended public keys”. Wasabi are critical of this implementation because it 'does require the trust of users “that Samourai isn’t trying to sell their public key data to third parties.” ’
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#155

  1. They both use the CoinJoin protocol.

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

  3. The coordinator must not be trusted and everybody knows what the coordinator knows.
    With Samourai, you send all of your public keys in the form of an extended public key (XPUB) that lets Samourai have unique access to all your current and future addresses.

  4. Samourai’s implementation of Whirlpool has a different pricing mechanism and makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

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#156

  1. they are competitors

  2. it is an attack where a small number of users falsify new identities and pretend to be much larger in numbers. this would mean that anonimity set in which a user can hide their btc tx is not as big as wasabi sudgests.

  3. samurai has backend servers and the user has to trust them to keep the keys private

  4. it has a different pricing system, SW maintains that Whirlpool makes it more expensive for malicious actors in the system to try and break anonimity.

why does it happen so many times that you see some questions in the top post and poeple answering completly different ones? :smiley:

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#157

What happened to the final question? :smiley:

#158

phahaha thanks for reply now i can fill in …don’t know what happened, guess i had enough and just posted xD

#159

1.)Wasabi and Samoirai wallets are related because they are both spawned from zero link. Then decided to go their own way producing slightly different end products.

2.) A sybil attack is when a group of users falsify pretending to be a larger group. Making the others users of the mixing less safe in regards to anonymity.

3.)Samouria protects against sybil attacks by using a centralized server.

4.)The trade off Samourai makes using a centralized server is the same reason Wasabi is critical of them, in that it is able to allow for malicious attacks. However Samourai refutes these claims by saying the attacks would be to expensive to produce, so I suppose that this is their reason for assuming it might not happen.

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#160

  1. They both are wallets that the CoinJoin process to keep identity of wallets user anonymous.

  2. A Sybill attack is where a small group of user create new multiple identities to falsify the anonymity set.

  3. Samourai has a different pricing mechanism that makes attacking the anonymity of the network very expensive.

  4. Total anonymity, and decentralization are given up to achieve 3. Wasbi was critical because he believe it violated the core principle of the project of decentralization and total anonymity.

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#161
  1. they both are forks of an original project.
  2. a small number of users fakes new identities pretending to be a larger group.
  3. Samourai has centralized servers, relying on trust on the servers to keep PrivKeys safe
  4. Anonimity is a big trade off!
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#162

  1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

    • Both projects started as ZeroLink which is an implementation of CoinJoin method. After disagreement on the implementation philosophy Wasabi and Samourai forked from the ZeroLink basis.

  2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

    • When a user pretends to be more than one entity, reducing thereby the anonymity set.

  3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

    • SW identifying their users through a centralized server. According to SW the pricing mechanism makes it more difficult to perform a Sybil attack.

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

    • Users have to send their extended public key (XPUB) to the SW server. With the XPUB one can recreate the current and future public keys of a wallet. Users of SW have to trust that Samourai ist not using or selling this information.
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