The company behind the development of the privacy-focused wallet announces the cessation of the CoinJoin coordinator service starting from June 1st: the consequences for the sector.
On May 2nd, through a statement on its blog, the company zkSNACKs announced the discontinuation of the CoinJoin transaction coordinator service on Wasabi Wallet starting from June 1st. Despite the company no longer fulfilling the default coordinator role for CoinJoin rounds, the wallet will continue to function as a regular Bitcoin wallet with some advanced privacy features.
The company clarified that Wasabi Wallet is free and open-source software and will continue to be maintained. Anyone can contribute, open new issues, submit pull requests, or fork the project. ZkSNACKs will finance the ongoing maintenance of Wasabi Wallet’s core features.
The company’s move comes in response to ongoing attacks by the United States Department of Justice and other American authorities.
On April 27th, the company had announced the prohibition of the use of its software for US citizens and residents. The company had blocked access to the website for them, thus allegedly preventing them from downloading and using Wasabi Wallet and all related products and services, including APIs and RPC interfaces.
The consequences for the sector
This decision by zkSNACKs also affects wallets that connect to the default coordinator of Wasabi for CoinJoin transactions, such as Trezor and BTCPayServer.
In a tweet, the hardware wallet manufacturer stated:
The reactions from the community
Following the announcement, the Bitcoin community has understood the company’s decision.
John Carvalho, CEO of Synonym, commented:
L0la L33tz, an independent journalist operating under a pseudonym, stated:
