zkSNACKs has blocked U.S. residents and citizens from using its Wasabi Wallet and associated services in response to undisclosed U.S. regulatory directives.
zkSNACKs, the company behind Wasabi Wallet's default coinjoin coordinator, has announced restrictions for U.S. citizens and residents. The company declared that effective immediately, U.S. users will be unable to access its websites or use any products and services, including the popular Wasabi Wallet and its features.
The announcement, made on Saturday, April 27th, 2024, states that "Effective immediately and until further notice, zkSNACKs is now blocking U.S. citizens and residents from visiting its websites, downloading and using Wasabi Wallet and any related products and services, including APIs and RPC interfaces."
This decision follows "recent announcements by U.S. authorities," which have not been specified in the company's statements. To enforce these restrictions, zkSNACKs has instituted an IP address block that will prevent U.S. residents from accessing wasabiwallet.io, api.wasabiwallet.io, and zksnacks.com.
The scope of the restriction is broad, encompassing "United States Citizen[s] or United States Resident[s]," which includes individuals with permanent residency or those holding a U.S. passport. The details of this policy were elaborated in a blog post by the company, which clarified the extent of the access limitations.
zkSNACKs has been actively filtering certain Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) from registering to coinjoins, a privacy feature in Bitcoin, in partnership with a chain surveillance partner since March 2022. This latest development appears to be a continuation of the company's efforts to comply with regulatory demands, although the specific U.S. authority announcements prompting this action have not been disclosed.
The current state of this event is one of implementation, as the IP address blocking is already in effect. The potential future implications for U.S. users of Wasabi Wallet and the broader Bitcoin community remain to be seen, as does the response from U.S. regulatory bodies.
As of now, zkSNACKs has not provided a timeline for lifting the restrictions, nor has it offered any alternative solutions for affected users. The Bitcoin community is awaiting further details and potential reactions from both the company and U.S. authorities.
