- Trezor has been accused of sidelining concerns over its newly implemented Coinjoin protocol
- The wallet maker added the Bitcoin transaction privacy enhancer to its Trezor Suite this week
- It began hiding replies to its promotional tweet which criticized Coinjoin’s historical ties with Chainalysis
Trezor has been accused of hiding concerns over the privacy of the Coinjoin protocol after it implemented it into its Trezor Suite this week. The crypto wallet maker posted about the development on Wednesday, saying that Trezor Model T owners can use the protocol to further protect their identity with Bitcoin transactions, but was then called out for hiding replies to its promotional tweet that addressed concerns over how Coinjoin works. These concerns date back to 2019 and have seemingly not been satisfactorily addressed.
Trezor Trying to Increase User Privacy with Coinjoin
The Coinjoin obfuscation method involves generating a substantial combined transaction that involves hundreds of individual users’ transactions and blending them together. This transaction serves as an endpoint for anyone attempting to track the flow of funds on the blockchain since there could be multiple potential senders and receivers for every bitcoin that is ‘coinjoined’.
In Trezor Suite, the application of Coinjoin is obscured by leveraging the Tor network to route connections and employing filters to obstruct the sharing of addresses. This way, Trezor says, the identities of participants are not disclosed, preserving their privacy. The service isn’t free, however, with a coordination fee of 0.3% of the coinjoined amount levied on each transaction.
Company Hides Critical Tweets
While the advent of increased security may seem like a boon, not everyone was convinced, with multiple respondents to Trezor’s tweet pointing out a perceived lack of privacy thanks to Wasabi’s sending of transaction data through Chainalysis. What made things look more suspicious was the fact that Trezor hid these replies, which didn’t go unnoticed:
Whatever you do, don’t check the hidden replies 💀💀https://t.co/Rg6Ut3IYNY pic.twitter.com/j9LVW1hJkf
— Samourai Wallet (@SamouraiWallet) April 19, 2023
These concerns are not new, as they were being raised as far back as 2019 when Samourai Wallet claimed that Wasabi is in fact de-anonymized and that all Wasabi transactions can be traced with a bit of effort.
