Today, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet Wasabi reports it has made significant progress toward the release of its Wasabi Wallet 2.0.
Founded almost three years ago, Wasabi Wallet pools multiple users’ unspent transactions (UTXOs) into a single Bitcoin transaction using CoinJoin. CoinJoin is a trustless process that makes it difficult for third-party observers, or even participants, to trace funds and it significantly lowers transaction fees. In order to protect the anonymity of its users, Wasabi traffic runs through the Tor network, an online network that focuses on censorship resistance and anonymity, by default.
Wasabi Wallet 2.0 aims to improve the user interface of the wallet as well as introduce a more efficient coinjoin framework, which developers call WabiSabi.
“One of the biggest challenges was developing the software for more than just cypherpunks and people very well versed in Bitcoin,” said CTO David Molnar.
“It was difficult to get the developers and contributors to see the bigger picture, that we can only win the privacy war if we expand our vision to include all future Bitcoin users and not just the privacy advocates and cypherpunks.”
While the new UI will allow users to access “pleb-friendly,” frictionless and secure payments via Tor, WabiSabi boasts its own set of upgrades:
- Users will no longer need to run coins through multiple coinjoins in order to gain privacy.
- There will no longer be a minimum (0.1 BTC) or maximum (7 BTC) denomination when using coinjoins;
- There will be improved block space efficiency, allowing more inputs into a single coinjoin transaction. This will lower fees for each user.
Wasabi Wallet 2.0 has no defined launch date; however, the company has committed to and published three milestones:
- Wasabi Wallet 2.0 Preview will contain only the most fundamental features and will be used only on the Bitcoin testnet. This will be released in around 6-14 weeks.
- Wasabi Wallet 2.0 Release Candidate will include all features and will be available to the public for reviewing and testing. The team will work on this version until ”the quality of the software is sufficient.”
- Wasabi Wallet 2.0 Final Release (Series) will be the first version of the 2.0 series and the default when new users download the wallet. With that being said, both versions will be available until “most users” migrate to 2.0.
