The Wasabi wallet is the go-to wallet when it comes to Bitcoin Coinjoins. Wasabi focuses fully on Bitcoin privacy. They do so by making it possible to do Coinjoins and having Tor built in. This process can help mix coins and make your Bitcoin activity safer and more secure.
How to set up Wasabi Wallet
Setting up Wasabi wallet is super easy. You simply download and run the software from their website on your computer. This will bring you to the screen seen in the picture. Here you can choose a few options. Depending on what you want, you can either create a new wallet, connect to a hardware wallet, import an existing one, or recover one. If it's your first time using the wallet, you might want to create a new wallet. After this, you will be presented with your 12 words key phrase that you need to save. So after this, the wallet will ask you to present 3 of the words again to check if you wrote them down. You need to do this because these words are the backup code that you need in case you would lose access to your wallet.
Design
By design, Wasabi wallet was made for Bitcoiners that like privacy. That's why the wallet also took a design matching this. From the start, the wallet will be in dark mode. However, you can change this if you would like to light mode if that is more your style. The rest of the wallet is quite simple as it is made for Bitcoin only and does not have any unnecessary bells and crypto whistles inside.
The wallet simply has 1 wallet screen and a few buttons for the wallet settings. Here you can adjust things like the network, fee, or Coinjoin adjustments. This is especially important as Coinjoins can become a bit expensive when the Bitcoin blockchain is in a stage of high network fees.
Features
Wasabi Wallet does not come with a lot of integrated features. The wallet itself is actually quite basic. However, where Wasabi differentiates itself, is through the built-in CoinJoins. Not many other wallets have Coinjoins built in. This leads many people to Wasabi Wallet if they care at all about their Bitcoin privacy. But besides Coinjoin Wasabi functions just like any other normal BTC wallet that can send and receive noncustodial Bitcoin.
What is Coinjoin?
Coinjoin is a privacy-improving technique used to make Bitcoin transactions more private. Coinjoins were invented by Gregory Maxwell in 2013 and made it possible to have Bitcoin transactions less traceable. Coinjoins do this by allowing multiple users to combine their transactions into a single large transaction, making it harder to trace where each transaction came from.
With more and more tools on the market that help anyone traces all transactions on the blockchain, Coinjoins become more important to keep the privacy of those who need it. Especially in places where Bitcoin is made illegal. Coinjoin can help by making it harder to track back a direct identity to one address.
Fee for using Wasabi wallet?
ZkSNACKs Ltd. is the entity responsible for facilitating Coinjoin transactions within the Wasabi Wallet ecosystem. For this, they charge a fee, which is then used to support the developers working on the Wasabi wallet project.
The fee structure is as follows:
Transactions lower than 0.01 BTC only have to pay for the miner fee. But for Coinjoins above 0.01 BTC, there is a coordinator fee of 0.3% in addition to the mining fees.
This can make Coinjoins a bit more expensive because of the percentage you will have to pay if it is more than 0.01 BTC, or because of the transaction fee that you will have to pay for each Coinjoin transaction.
Improvements
Each and every wallet can always be improved. Wasabi, like any other wallet, also could become better. For now, the Wasabi wallet is an essential wallet in the Bitcoin ecosystem because it is one of the few interfaces for Coinjoins. But nonetheless, Wasabi could make the design a bit more user-friendly and easy to use for new users. So they would understand right away how everything works. Besides that, Wasabi could have a way to do more with Bitcoin built-in. Like an option for self-custody lightning integration or any other Bitcoin layer 2, and provide swapping options between layers.
Conclusion
Wasabi is a great wallet and something we need now and will need in the future to keep our Bitcoin ecosystem healthy. I hope that Wasabi keeps on developing its product to its best abilities and keeps on defending Bitcoin privacy. That said, we rate Wasabi a 4.3 out of 5 stars. Recognizing Wasabi as a great wallet that supports Bitcoins ecosystem.
.webp)