Whirlpool decentralized

The single point of failure idiom is a commonly known one. Bitcoin has solved for this challenge in its problem domain through its consensus mechanism and the fundamental idea that being a part of it is voluntary.

Every wallet implementation adds to this idea of decentralization so that through many, the ending of a single one will not have a significant impact on the whole. But there was once at the start of Bitcoin's existence, the moment where only a first wallet implementation that existed; a precarious moment in time where the many would still have to manifest. While over time privacy has been made possible by applications built on top of Bitcoin, there is a similar risk to this privacy ecosphere subsection of Bitcoin.

The only coinjoin protocol to this day, that delinks inputs from outputs 100% is ZeroLink, and the only implementation of it still is Samourai Wallet's Whirlpool. Some other wallets have added it to their software (Sparrow, Keeper), though they too depend on the singular coordinator that serves all Whirlpool mixes. There is a reason for the fact there's only one static Whirlpool coordinator active thus far: a single liquidity pool has the effect of allowing the largest anonymity set possible. Now, the moment is here where we users of Bitcoin are no longer reliant on a single server to continue to maintain our on-chain privacy.

With a decentralized communication protocol over Soroban for the Whirlpool coordinator, the decentralization architecture for Bitcoin privacy has reached the "Whack-A-Mole" stage. Instead of you connecting to a specific onion URL, the updated Whirlpool client in every RoninDojo will connect to the decentralized network (Soroban) along with all mixing peers. Mixing coordination takes place only over Soroban, and at any given time, should one coordinator be struck down, the next one is lined up to pick up the job in automated fashion.

SamouraiWallet's endeavor has brought us to a new point in time, where the option of having privacy in Bitcoin can no longer be taken away with a single attack by any opposing entity.

With RoninDojo v2.1.3, we've added dojo's update of the Whirlpool CLI client to v1.0.1 which connects to the decentralized network of Whirlpool.

Source: https://blog.samourai.is/decentralized-whirlpool-stage-1/

Changelog

RoninDojo v2.1.3

  • Updated RoninDojo's Dojo fork to v2.1.3 (based off upstream Dojo v1.24.1)
  • Introduces Whirlpool CLI client capable of connecting to decentralized Whirlpool coordinator
  • Updates to dojo containers: Whirlpool, Tor, Fulcrum
  • Bug fix: bitcoind now regenerates onion url on dojo restart regardless of initiator source (affected: UI)
  • Credits: DojoCoder, BrotherRabbit, dammkewl, BTCxZelko, Diverter
  • Special thanks to the entire Samourai Wallet team for this incredible pivotal moment in history.
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