Samourai vs Wasabi

A comparison of 2 most popular anonymous Bitcoin wallets.

While we have previously already analyzed the best Bitcoin wallets, we have not gone into the differences too much. On the contrary, we have just briefly brushed over some of the most important anonymous and privacy-providing Bitcoin wallets out there.

This article will thus provide a bit more depth into two of the most renowned Bitcoin anonymous wallets - Samourai wallet and Wasabi wallet. And while we will not go into technicalities, this article will mainly look at different stances these wallets have taken in the relatively recent past and how this can affect its users and privacy of their Bitcoin transactions.

Wasabi vs Samourai – does it matter?

Wasabi wallet and Samourai wallet have been for long believed to be the safest and most anonymous Bitcoin wallets out there. This stands true still, with communities of each trying to prove how the wallet they are supporting is better than the competitor.

This is something that is sadly very common for the whole world of cryptocurrencies, not only for Bitcoin. Comparing what is best, what is fastest or cheapest has become a second nature to countless projects. This behavior, however, pushes people further from the main goal, which in this case is financial privacy.

Both of these wallets provide the best financial privacy that one can get in the Bitcoin world. Thanks to their Bitcoin mixing features enabled by CoinJoins and their different stance on how CoinJoins should work, people all around the world now have at least two interesting wallets to use for Bitcoin mixing directly in their main features. However, if the users do not want to open a new wallet, they can use Whir to send bitcoin privately, which is something that we will explain later.

For the most part, the process of how each of these wallets mixers work, what services they deliver or how anonymous they really are, are not as important, since they are very similar. 

Difference in approaches

With all that being said, there is one crucial difference that has risen into the light in the past few months. And that is the approach of the companies behind the wallets when it comes to regulatory pressures that they are both facing. Let’s look at how each of them handled the situation.

The team behind Samourai Wallet argued in response to UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), that there is a need for CoinJoins that are open-source software algorithms used within that wallet. Samourai Wallet argues that there is a need for these types of services since public blockchains such as that of Bitcoin are transparent and some people might want to have their financial privacy while sending Bitcoin.

The team behind the wallet also claimed that the vast majority of users of these services are simply law-abiding citizens who just want to use CoinJoin to increase their financial privacy. They also added that since CoinJoins are free and open-source software, they are impossible to be regulated. Yet, Samourai wallet has also pointed out that centralized bitcoin mixers that take possession and custody of funds should be scrutinized.

On the contrary, the reaction of zkSNACKs, the company that is behind the development of Wasabi wallet, was significantly different. In March of this year the company announced that Wasabi would ban certain transactions from the CoinJoin service that they offer.

This blacklisting of some addresses to CoinJoins may have very negative effects overall on the privacy of Bitcoin. It also sets a rather unhealthy precedent, since it allows for wallets or custodians to choose which transactions they will approve and which they will not approve.  

“We are trying to protect the company and the project by minimizing the amount of these hackers and scammers using the coordinator and getting us in trouble. This should be in the rights of the company to do but believe me, none of us are happy about this.”

That was the reaction of Rafe, Twitter user who seems to be one of the members of the Wasabi developer team. It appears like this step has not yet been made, but some believe that it might not have been in the right direction. Especially Samourai wallet supporters highlight that, while the team behind Samourai stated that the radical encroachment of the state into the lives of ordinary law-abiding citizens is on an concerning upward trajectory.

Some even proposed to fork Wasabi’s code. The proposed fork might potentially be named Wasabi BTC and can remove all corporate/state censorship and make CoinJoin possible for anyone. It also proposes to have CoinJoins decentralized, fully open-source so that no attack vector from nation-states is possible.

Too complicated? Just use Whir!

Whether you believe that the choice of Wasabi wallet was right or wrong, or whether you like or not the statements of Samourai wallet, is completely up to you. We are not here to judge what the teams behind these wallets are trying to do and what they are building.

We are here just to offer an alternative, if you want to try one. And that alternative is Whir. With Whir, you do not need to set up any new wallet, just like you have to with Samourai wallet or Wasabi wallet. You just use this non-custodial service online and make a transaction in a more private and anonymous way.

Are you concerned about your anonymity even more? Well, not a problem with us since we offer an option of using Tor during all of this (whirtorrgetftvz4g466sjqkegtyi35bjl4bvotfkfossunf5my4x6ad.onion), so that you do not have to worry at all about the privacy of your transaction.

This should clearly show to all our users as well as potential users that Whir is simply here to provide the most convenient and private Bitcoin transaction service out there. All of that without any need for wallet creation or setup.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrency space can often become too edgy on many things. This is especially the case when there are two parties or communities that have the best intentions in their mind, just do not know how to communicate or deliver upon them. And while Samourai wallet and Wasabi wallet have definitely delivered on the quality of their privacy options and services, not everyone might be completely happy with what each offers.

And for those, just like for anyone else, there is Whir — a super simple Bitcoin mixer app for spending Bitcoin privately.

Disclaimer: This article does not serve as a piece of financial advice or encouragement and inducement for the usage of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Its primary role is informative, explanatory, and educational. The readers have to decide themselves whether to use or not to use these types of services.