One of the most popular Bitcoin wallets, Samourai Wallet, has introduced a new privacy feature that will allow users to be protected against coin tracking services. In some cases, users’ funds can be blocked by other platforms and exchanges.
Samourai wallet has always been working in order to provide new privacy features to Bitcoin and crypto users. Using military-grade AES-256 encryption, the wallet gave users an enhanced security experience without necessarily sacrificing efficiency. There is always a trade-off between efficiency and privacy because new features make different functionalities slower or less compatible with other services.
There are several companies in the space that can block or blacklist funds that could be related to illegal activities or hacks. Firms tend to have an actualized list of accounts and transactions that are associated with attacks and hacks.
With the new feature called Ricochet, the wallet is able to add hops and steps to every single Bitcoin transaction processed. In general, blockchain softwares take a look at the last five hops. This spying software will have to look even deeper to achieve the same level of security that now they have now. Nevertheless, taking a look at ten transactions is almost impossible for applications because of the expensive costs associated with it.
Ricochet transactions were updated back in May 2018, to use Samourai’s native SegWit bech32 addresses. The company has also introduced a new algorithm that reduces fingerprint of the Ricochet transaction on the network.
Samourai wallet is one of the few free and open-source crypto wallets available on the market. Because of this, Samourai has been criticized since they do not have monetization options. The main question that individuals were making was related to how the company remained profitable.
With this new premium feature, the company was able to monetize the wallet and keep the wallet far from KYC requirements and exposing users’ data to third parties.
