Users can now safely and intuitively strengthen their bitcoin privacy within the Trezor environment
Trezor, the original bitcoin hardware wallet company, today rolled out the coinjoin feature for its devices allowing users to more easily enhance privacy and security on bitcoin transactions. Coinjoin is a process where users send their bitcoin as part of a large collaborative transaction and receive the same amount back, but with the transaction history obscured. Users’ balances and transaction history are then hard to track on the otherwise fully-transparent bitcoin blockchain. The feature is possible thanks to Trezor’s collaboration with Wasabi Wallet, the privacy-focused bitcoin wallet that specializes in coinjoin.
Trezor is the first and only hardware wallet to enable coinjoin transactions within a hardware wallet environment. The function is now live on Trezor Model T and Trezor plans to enable coinjoin for Model One in the near future. Coinjoin is the latest addition to a host of features found on Trezor devices for enhancing security and privacy, such as Tor, coin control, and Shamir backup.
Matěj Žák, CEO of Trezor, explained: “Trezor values privacy as an individual’s most important asset. Consequently, we’re delighted that we’ve found a way for our community to keep their bitcoin history private. Our coinjoin solution in Trezor Suite is intuitive and safe, making bitcoin privacy more accessible to the general public.”
Real use-cases
The coinjoin approach tackles a number of glaring privacy issues resulting from the inherent transparency of the bitcoin blockchain. For example, when people use exchanges, it’s easy to draw a link between their real-world identity and their bitcoin addresses. Exchanges can track user transactions even after they withdraw and can share this data with third parties. Through obscuring transaction histories, coinjoin prevents such surveillance.
Secondly, coinjoin offers welcome additional protection when using bitcoin for purchases. Ordinarily, merchants receiving bitcoin payments can see the total balance of an address from which the payment was sent, which some people consider an unacceptable breach of privacy. With coinjoin, users can safely break up their bitcoin balance into small amounts with no transaction history so as to obscure their total balance, like swapping a large dollar note for smaller denominations.
A third coinjoin benefit is in safeguarding privacy for donations made using bitcoin. By default, all bitcoin transactions can be analyzed and in some cases, real-world identities can be linked. This can put non-governmental organizations and their donors in great danger, especially under authoritarian regimes. Coinjoin protects the transactions of donors and recipients, and therefore, improves the safety of organizations and their supporters.
Matěj Žák further elaborated: “People who want to make private transactions can use cash without leaving any digital footprint, and without the need for the counterparty to store our identity. No one gets to see how much money they have left in their wallet or bank accounts. Trezor with coinjoin brings a similar level of privacy to bitcoin, with one click. The security of the process and ease of use help deliver privacy to a wider audience, which is one of the core values of the bitcoin community.”
“Making bitcoin privacy tools easy to use and secure is essential, as this is what drives people to use products, which increases the privacy for everyone. That’s why we see Trezor’s integration of coinjoin as such a major milestone. A coinjoin is inherently non-custodial and now for the first time, coinjoin transactions can be signed with the keys on a hardware wallet. This is a major security improvement,” says Max Hillebrand, contributor to Wasabi Wallet and CEO of zkSNACKs (the company sponsoring the development of Wasabi Wallet and operates the coinjoin coordinator).
How does it work?
With the Model T, Trezor users can now see a new coinjoin account type in their Trezor Suite and simply click on the “anonymize” button. Users then choose the number of coinjoin rounds — with every round increasing the level of privacy — confirm their choices on the Trezor device and then leave the Trezor connected with the Trezor Suite running. The rest of the coinjoin process is automated and requires no active user participation. The time needed to complete the coinjoin depends on the number of rounds – one round takes approximately 10 minutes. After completing the procedure, users will receive a confirmation dialogue with the transaction details. The fees for the transaction consist of the coordinator fee of 0.3% of the coinjoined amount and a network mining fee. The coordinator fee is paid just once, and for further remixes users pay only the mining fee.
For more information about coinjoin, please visit: https://trezor.io/learn/a/coinjoin-in-trezor-suite
About Trezor
Trezor is the independent Czech company behind the world’s first Bitcoin hardware wallet, the Trezor One in 2014. Its flagship product, the Trezor Model T comes with a full-color touchscreen and many advanced features. Both wallets are open-source and enhanced by the free Trezor Suite app which increases privacy and makes crypto more intuitive.
About Wasabi Wallet
Reclaim your privacy with Wasabi Wallet, a free and open-source bitcoin wallet with built-in coinjoin. Coinjoins are collaborative bitcoin transactions to enable cash-like privacy features for bitcoin.
