Wasabi and Samourai Wallets - Reading Assignment

[Bull75rm]

1. They share the same core protocol.
2. A Sybil attack happens when a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be a much larger in number.
3. Hiding an individual transaction among a large number of transactions.
4. Samurai implementation of zerolink makes it more expensive to hack than the one used by Wasabi.

[Aiisnotbad]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

It started out as the same application from the same team. Then the app and the team forked du to design choices.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

It is a situation where a pool of supposedly unique users is made of fake identities linking to unique users. The goal of this attack is to dilute the anonymity set.

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

By managing incoming public keys in a centralized server.

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

This approach is like having a watchdog that keeps the costs down, while implementing the mixing feature. The problem is that it revolves around a centralized server, which goes against the crypto mentra.

[JamesA]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
   they both fail to give bitcoin fungibility.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
   one user pretends to be more users

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
   they “protect” with centralization. rip
   "This matter of Samourai’s reliance on a backend server is one that SW admits does require the trust of users “that Samourai isn’t trying to sell their public key data to third parties.” LOL ok.

4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
   Anonymity and decentralization are sacrified, which i thought would be the whole point of the service…

[xiaomae]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

• At one point, Samourai and Wasabi were the same application: an implementation of CoinJoin called ZeroLink. The two lead developers decided to split the project due to differences in implementation methods.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

• A Sybil attack is one in which a few users falsify new identities, creating the impression that there are more users than there are in reality. This means that the anonymity set is smaller than it actually is.

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

• Due to its pricing mechanism, Samourai claims that it’s implementation of ZeroLink, called Whirlpool, is too expensive for malicious actors to attempt a Sybil attack.

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

• Samourai relies on a centralized, backend server to process users’ extended public keys. Wasabi is critical of this reliance because it requires that Samourai users trust that Samourai isn’t trying to sell their public key data. They point out that anonymity using Whirlpool can be broken given that user addresses are sent to a backend server.

[Daf72]

1. The core design is quite identical

2. A small number of user trying to be to be a large number

3. They made it more expensive

4. The use of a backend

[Alko89]

@JamesA

they both fail to give bitcoin fungibility.

Why would that be the case? Technically they were both the same projects that forked at one point.

[mattsf]

1. Both part of the same initial product(ZeroLink) that split due to implementation differences.
2. user falsifies new identities and pretends to represent a large number of participants, when in reality, there are much fewer particiipants.
3. Hide unspent txs among a large number.
4. Whirlpool increases the cost for bad actors to break the anonymity of other users through a Sybil attack.

[LukeS]

1. Both worked together on building the implementation of ZeroLink
2. Where a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretend to be uch larger in number.
3. By using Whirlpool it makes it more expensive for malicious acts
4. Samourai relies on a centralized backend server to process this which can always be hacked.

[Bhujanga]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

Both run on the same protocol.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

When there are a lot of fake accounts on a platform in order to give the impression of a big and active community, real users then are kind of exposed.

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

Wasabi does hide your UTXOs in a large pool, so tracking becomes difficult.

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

The ZeroLink “Whirlpool” is more costly for attackers to land a Sybil attack.

[mervxxgotti]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related? — competitors but were once the same application which later forked due to implementation opinion differences
2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’? — when an attacker or group of attackers creates a larger number of digital identities to conduct the attack
3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks? Mixing transactions by shuffling UTXOs into a pool to make tracking harder
4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this? Samurai is more centralized as it requires senders to send their public keys and Wasabi believes it will sell this data.

[Nicksta]

1. They both hide your [unspent transaction outputs] in a ‘sufficiently’ large crowd

2. A person or group of people pretending to be a larger group of identities through the use of false identities

3. When you use the wallet, you send Samourai all of your public keys in the form of an extended public key (XPUB) that lets Samourai have unique access to all of your current and future addresses. Samourai mixes all these addresses and stores them at their back end server.

4. Trade-off is the centralization of all the information. Wasabi is critical of the reliance on a single backend server because the users has to trust Samourai for not selling off their data

[hexdotcompays40apy]

Wasabi and Samourai Wallets - Reading Assignment

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

A. They are both mixing services to be used with the Bitcoin blockchain, they both have a natural competition for the fees involved and incentivized to monopolize to increase their functioning anonymity set. Both projects started from the same root developers.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

A. A Sybil attack in this instance seems to have come from a party with unknown incentives to congest the anonymity set full of public keys which they had control over the privates. And so they could render the “mixed” transactions with data of send and receive address and their transaction history. According to Samourai is this the case.

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

A. Samourai Wallet protects against Sybil attacks with a fee model to disincentivize by making one to be more costly for attackers.

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

A. Samourai wallet gave up decentralization through use of a common backend server. They may have opposing principles.

[Zulu1]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related? They are the same application, but different implementation regarding its pricing mechanism.

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

How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks? Samourai uses a backend server to process users public keys.

What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this? The tradeoff is using a centralized server needing to rely on trust.

[vegas316]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
They are both forks of the same original codebase.
2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
Where multiple fake identities are created in a network to gain a disproportionally large influence. State actors use this approach in facebook a lot, to drive harmful narratives on different topics.
3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
Samourai’s whirlpool pricing algorithm is different, and according to them makes sybil attacks expensive.
4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
Samorai’s process is more expensive, and they use centralized servers for the mixing. Wasabi is critical because they view Samarai’s approach as a fundamentally inferior design, and are irritated Samourai are spinning the design decision as a benefit.

[Vikthor]

The have the same core protocol.

Sybil Attack = a small number of users falsifies new identities and pretends to be much larger in number.

Wasabi’s technique is to hide your UTX in a large crowd.

Samourai’s implementation of ZeroLink has an other pricing mechanism than Wasabi.

[ol_frank]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
   They are competitors but have been formed via a fork of the same protocol base.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?
   It is a method of creating a large number of pseudonymous identities and uses them to gain a disproportionately large influence on the network.

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
   What makes a Sybil attack more possible is the ease and cheapness at which someone can create new identities. According to Samourai they have a fee model to disincentevise attackers through increasing costs for potential attackers.

4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
   They made a trade off of decentralisation. Wasabi believes or is weary that Samourai will sell or misuse their data in the future.

[Toddness]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related? The were the same application but split to implement their privacy differently.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’? Where a single or small number of users creates many false or shell identities in order to make out that the anonymity set is large and diverse. But in essence their isn’t much privacy in a small “actual” set.

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks? Via pricing. Its more expensive to create an attack.

4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this? Centralized back end servers looking at extended public key data. Requires the trust of users as all of their future addresses are seen too.

[HemalT]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?

Both Wasabi and Samourai use the Zerolink protocol.

2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’?

A Sybil attack is one where an attacker pretends to be so many people at the same time. It is one of the biggest issues when connecting to a P2P network. It manipulates the network and controls the whole network by creating multiple fake identities. To a single view, these different identities look like regular users, but behind the scenes, a single entity is called an unknown attacker who controls all these fake entities at once. While the Eclipse attack is about eclipsing certain nodes whereas the Sybil attack targets the whole network.

3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?

Samouria protects against sybil attacks by using a centralized server.

4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
5. Centralized back end servers looking at extended public key data. Requires the trust of users as all of their future addresses are seen too.

[Samuel1]

1. Wasabi is a competitor to Samourai wallet and have similar designs.
   2.A Sybil attack falsifies identity and breadth of coins (makes larger) so that the anonymity set is not as large as Wasabi details.
   3.Samourai offered a mixing technique, where you hide your inputs in a “Sea of wallets”.
   4.Samourai uses a centralized backend and thus can be broken. The trade-off is decentralization, something Wasabi is critical of.

[maxs]

1. How are Wasabi and Samourai wallets related?
   Initially they were the same application but they split up as its developers had different implementation ideas.
2. What is a ‘Sybil attack’? When a small number of users creates fake accounts to make the anonymity set appear bigger, when it really isn’t.
3. How does Samourai protect against Sybil attacks?
   The pricing mechanism is different, which makes Sybil attacks in Samourai more expensive.
4. What ‘trade-off’ does Samourai make in order to achieve #3? Why is Wasabi critical of this?
   Samourai’s implementation relies on centralized servers. Wasabi is critical of this as it requires Samourai’s users to trust that their data will be kept secure.