A new CoinJoin protocol has been proposed by Max Hillebrand for review. Users can process private transactions simultaneously with the same value.
The Bitcoin community is now exploring a new level of anonymity between the sender and the recipient of a payment. Developer and entrepreneur Max Hillebrand recently proposed a new CoinJoin method that could further increase the privacy of transactions.
The proposal will allow users to process transactions without either party spying on the other. The method manages to provide this degree of anonymity since neither the sender nor the receiver of payment has access to the other’s Bitcoin address.
The members will not know if one of the parties is also using the CoinJoin method to mix their transactions. The tool does not leave records on the network indicating that it is a private transaction, as do other CoinJoin methods.
It is worth mentioning that it is an interactive protocol with several rounds of communication, so all parties must be online when processing the transaction. The payment outflows will be simultaneous and will be recorded with the same value to ensure anonymity.
Max Hillebrand notes in a string of e-mails with other Bitcoin developers that the proposal stems from a previous discussion about the CoinJoin design used by Wasabi Wallet. This exchange of ideas inspired him to make some minor changes to the original design, which he now presents for audit.
The developer wants some of his colleagues to comment on this new implementation, as well as to share their opinions on the project. In other words, it is a version that has not yet been approved and, if successful, will become operational shortly.
Many Other CoinJoin Versions
Although its concept makes the proposal unique, there are currently several CoinJoin implementations that are active in the market. CoinJoin is a tool that has been available to users for years, being created by Gregory Maxwell as an anonymization method for transactions in Bitcoin.
The idea behind CoinJoin is that of allowing a person that wishes to make an anonymous payment to find another user also interested in making a payment and mix both outputs. Both of them would be making a payment together where money outflows or inflows of money cannot be differentiated. In this way, it is difficult to track the origin of both transactions.
There are various protocols, companies and even wallets that offer these types of services to users. One of the oldest CoinJoin implementations is CoinShuffle, devised by researchers from the University of Saarland, Germany, in 2014. Another well-known protocol for mixing transactions is that of JoinMarket, which increases not only the privacy but also the fungibility of the transaction.
Wallets such as Wasabi and Samourai Wallet also have their CoinJoin methods as they are storage services focused on privacy. Also, proposals have been created to introduce the CoinJoin tool in the Lightning Network layer, which is one of the most recent projects of Adam Gibson, the creator also of JoinMarket.
By Alexander Salazar
