Bitcoin privacy wallet says Jack Dorsey’s mining pool censored their transactions

Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, and Luke Dash Jr., a Bitcoin Core developer, created a new Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool called OCEAN. Its creation surged amid controversy in the community while openly filtering Ordinals and BRC-20 transactions.

On December 6, a privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet, Samourai Wallet, said that OCEAN is also censoring their transactions. According to Samourai Wallet, OCEAN has conclusively filtered their “Whirlpool coinjoin and BIP47 notification transactions.”

Notably, Luke Dash Jr. answered the post, claiming there is a bug on the wallet’s software and not on OCEAN’s side.

The screenshot provided by Samourai Wallet; unable to see Luke Dash Jr.’s post.

Is it a bug? Samourai Wallet vs Luke Dash Jr.

However, the wallet’s official account had already addressed the “bug” claims. In their words, the privacy solution has worked “without any issue” since its launch in 2018.

Whirlpool users have been creating, broadcasting, and relaying standard bitcoin transactions since we released Whirlpool in late 2018 without any issue. Miners have been relaying and mining these transactions in blocks without any issue.

Technically, OCEAN runs a node software that is different from the most popular Bitcoin Core. This software is Bitcoin Knots, developed by Luke Dash Jr, and has some unique properties.

In particular, Bitcoin Knots has a limited capacity of 42 bytes for ‘OP_RETURN,’ a transaction field used by Samourai’s solution. This same field has a limit of 80 bytes in the Core software since its 2016 version.

Essentially, the Bitcoin Knots sees transactions with an ‘OP_RETURN’ larger than 42 bytes as a bug because it was designed that way.

Interestingly, the use of mixers and conjoin solutions has been deemed criminal by authorities such as the United States OFAC. The legendary forum BitcoinTalk recently prohibited related discussions.

In this context, privacy enthusiasts have shown concerns about a possible regulatory capture. These concerns increase as the aforementioned supposed censorship now affects Samourai Wallet’s Whirlpool.