Motivation

We believe that the most urgent problem for mankind is fixing the money, that Bitcoin is the best option for doing this and that privacy is its biggest problem.

Wasabi Wallet was created to help Bitcoin maintain its cypherpunk roots on its path to a global reserve currency and to mitigate the inherent privacy issues of its public ledger. This is why Wasabi Wallet is an open-source, non-custodial, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet for desktop that implements trustless coinjoin magic.

After years of doing privacy research and development, we’ve concluded that having good tools is not enough - They need to be easy to use, otherwise they will only be utilized by the minority, making users stand out from the crowd. To increase the adoption of these tools, Wasabi is designed to be user friendly and to provide privacy automatically by default.

The history of Wasabi Wallet

• 2015 - YEARS OF RESEARCH

  Ádám Ficsór, aka nopara73, and Lucas Ontivero conducted extensive research on Joinmarket, Zerolink, Tor and Bitcoin Programming in their quest to create a privacy-oriented bitcoin wallet of their own.

• 2017 - Hidden Wallet

  Ádám was experimenting with the concept of a chaumian coinjoin implementation in Hidden Wallet. It already had a rudimentary Tor and block filter integration. The UI was simple, yet comprehensive, exposing a lot of coordination details to the user.

• 2018 - Wasabi Wallet IS FORMED

  Ádám collaborated with Gergely Hajdú and Bálint Harmat to create zkSNACKs, a for-profit organization that sponsors the development of Wasabi Wallet, previously called Hidden Wallet.

  The name derives from a wordplay that originated in the Block Digest podcast, on the zkSNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) and zkSTARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Transparent Argument of Knowledge) cryptographic concepts.

  ZK also stands for zero-knowledge: Wasabi Wallet does not and cannot store any personally identifiable information.

• 2018 - BUILDING ON BITCOIN CONFERENCE

  Lisbon, Portugal

  Nopara73 made a presentation titled “Anonymous Bitcoin” and announced that Wasabi Wallet, a solution for using bitcoin in a fully anonymous way, would be launched on the 10 year anniversary of the Satoshi Whitepaper.

• 2018 - WASABI WALLET IS RELEASED

  Wasabi v1.0: Stable Release was launched on the 31st of October, 2018. The software was described as an “open-source, non-custodial, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet for desktop that implements trustless coinjoin.

• 2019 - MIT BITCOIN EXPO

  David Molnár, CTO and Developer, introduces Wasabi Wallet in a presentation titled “Wasabi Wallet: Unfairly Private” where he highlighted Wasabi Wallet’s innovative coinjoin feature.

• 2019 - RECOGNITION FROM BITCOIN.ORG

  Wasabi Wallet is listed on https://bitcoin.org as a wallet available for Linux, Apple and Windows desktop operating systems.

• 2019 - 10 BTC BOUNTY

  Wasabi awarded a 10 BTC bounty for the coinjoin privacy implementation by building a more end-user accessible solution and larger adoption. The bounty was distributed by Bitcoin core developers Gregory Maxwell, Pieter Wuille and bitcointalk.org owner, Theymos.

• 2020 - HRF DONATION

  1 BTC IS DONATED to the HRF's Bitcoin Development Fund to protect Bitcoin users' right to privacy.

• 2020 - WASABI WALLET 2.0 ANNOUNCED

  On November 5th, 2020, nopara73 announced that the construction of Wasabi Wallet 2.0, a "next-generation Bitcoin privacy Wallet," has begun.

• 2021 - JOIN THE WASABIKAS PODCAST

  Longstanding Wasabi Contributor and Bitcoin maximalist, Max Hillebrand, launched “Join the Wasabikas”. A podcast exploring bitcoin privacy with many famous guests from the Bitcoin ecosystem.

• 2021 - BITCOIN KNOTS DONATION

  Wasabi Wallet and Bull Bitcoin donate 0.86 BTC towards the development of Bitcoin Knots.

• 2021 - 1.11 BTC GRANT

  Wasabi Wallet Launches the 1.11 BTC Lightning Network Privacy Research Grant in cooperation with MAGIC Grants.

• 2022 - NEW LOGO

  The Wasabi Wallet Logo was transformed from the original green and orange shield to a sleek, modern design.

• 2022 - WASABI WALLET 2.0

  After two years of development, 2.0 is launched on June 15th initiating a new era for Bitcoin privacy.

• 2024 - zkSNACKs is shutting down it's coordinator.

  After six years of operation, the company that supported the development of Wasabi Wallet is shutting down.

• 2024 - Wasabi development

  Wasabi development becomes managed by open source maintainers.