zkSNACKs, the developers behind Wasabi Wallet, has announced that they will be discontinuing their coinjoin coordination service effective from June 1st, 2024. Wasabi Wallet, however, will continue to operate as a standard bitcoin wallet.

zkSNACKs CEO Max Hillebrand expressed his sentiments regarding the closure of the service, stating, "It was an honor and a privilege." This announcement comes on the heels of the company's decision last week to prohibit U.S. citizens and residents from accessing its websites, downloading, and using Wasabi Wallet, along with any associated products and services, including APIs and RPC interfaces.

In the official statement released by the company, they elaborated on the wallet's remaining features: "Wasabi Wallet will continue to function as a regular bitcoin wallet, users can generate private keys to receive and send bitcoin. Even without coinjoins, Wasabi's client-side filtering architecture, Tor integration and custom coin selection make it the most private light wallet available." The company also committed to funding the continuous maintenance of Wasabi Wallet’s basic features.

The discontinuation of the coinjoin service will also impact users of other wallet clients that connect to the zkSNACKs coordinator, such as Trezor Suite and BTCPayServer.

In a blog post, zkSNACKs touched on the history and achievements of Wasabi Wallet since its inception: "When Wasabi Wallet was launched back in 2018, privacy on bitcoin was only an idea, a dream of cypherpunks. After years of research, trial and error, we proved that bitcoin can be used as anonymous money in a fully sovereign way." They also highlighted the community's role in the development of the wallet, stating that Wasabi Wallet is open-source software that will continue to be maintained, with the community encouraged to contribute.

As of now, it remains to be seen what the long-term implications of this move will be for zkSNACKs, Wasabi Wallet, and the broader landscape of Bitcoin privacy.

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