Walletwasabi: What wording to use in the mixing UI?

[nopara73]

Privacy in Bitcoin is poised with criminal terminology, but privacy should not only be the privilege of criminals. Thus we should avoid choosing words with negative connotations, instead we should choose words those are appealing, or at the very least not unappealing even to a 78 years old, statist American congressman.

Wordings Currently In Use

| | | |
|------------|--------------|-------------|
| mixer | to mix | mixing |
| tumbler | to tumble | tumbling |
| anonymizer | to anonymize | anonymizing |
| laundry | to launder | laundering |
| blender | to blend | blending |
| | to shuffle | shuffling |
| | to coinjoin | |

Initial Brainstorming Ideas

• to obfuscate, to obscure, to confuse, to make private, to erase coin history, to unlink, reclaim privacy

[nopara73]

A play with words:

| | | |
|------------|--------------|-------------|
| coinfuser | to coinfuse | coinfusing |

[BitcoinErrorLog]

Just thinking out loud, here are some concepts and words for general privacy topics:
Diable/Enable History
Disable/Enable Tracking
Public/Private Mode
Disable/Enable Data Collection
Stealth Mode
Fuzz Data
Confidential
Pool Coins
Disassociate
Protect Amount, Protect Source, Protect Destination

I know not all of these work for mixing, maybe more for anonymity features, but there you go!

[nopara73]

@BitcoinErrorLog

I know not all of these work for mixing, maybe more for anonymity features, but there you go!

This kind of brainstorming is exactly what we are looking for, since it is not yet clear what's going to be the context, we cannot marry anything just yet and the best we can do is to brainstorm.

@mikewallace_oz's brainstorm on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikewallace_oz/status/992666037224062976

brainstorming mode on:

Personalised.
Secret.
Hypersecure.
Cryptic.
Veiled.
Shrouded.
Enigmatised/enigmatic

[urza]

I like something with "confidential" or "unlink". Normal person will perceive them as desirable qualities (preserving personal privacy, confidentiality). Other words so far mentioned are more associated with something suspicious.

Also "fungibility" (for people who understand the meaning) has positive connotation.

[BitcoinErrorLog]

I do not support using the term "fungibility". The word is already used incorrectly too often.

[nopara73]

While I'll start designing the GUI exactly one month from now, right now I have this in mind:

1. The user should not be able to send money like it sends in other wallets, rather coin control should be its only option. Meaning: it must mark the coins it wants to spend from with an x. To be fair, it's just minor extension as right now, if you think about it, every wallet just assumes by default that all the coins in the wallet is marked by the x.

2. Why this is important, because I think I will have the mixing page on the same page as the sending page. One part of it could be the sending related stuff, the other part of it could be the mixing related stuff, where the users would select coins to queue for mixing.

While one part of this UI page could be called "Send" the other part could be called "Funbility" or "CoinFuser".
So the action could be something like "Queue coin to coinfuse its history," "Queue coin to erase its history," "Queue coin to unlink?," "Queue coin to reclaim its privacy?"

On the word confidential. While I like the word, I'm not sure it's a good word to use, because of Confidential Transactions it may end up to be confusing.

[harding]

Perhaps conflate and its conjugations:

It's not a commonly used word, but I don't think it's entirely unfamiliar either. It is often used negatively, as in "you're wrong because you conflated X with Y", but I don't think even the most serious pedant automatically associates it with criminal or immoral activity. Finally, it actually technically describes the desired effect of Coinjoin and other mixing techniques on coin history, e.g. @nopara73's example "Queue coin to conflate its history" is technically correct and not promising more than may be possible to deliver (unlike perhaps "erase its history" or "reclaim its privacy [in the case that all your peers are colluding]").

I do like "coinfuse". Another avenue of possible terms would be by extending the coin analogy to cover the way older coins are converted to newer coins. For example, terms related to smelting and minting. Example: "Queue coin for re-mint with other coins, conflating their history" (though that's a mouthful). Though to nitpick myself, re-minting is probably best analogized to mining transaction fees.

[nopara73]

If conflate is paired with good visual explanation, its rareness shouldn't be a problem. Or we could even take another step and make it coinflate:)

User right clicks: "Queue coin to coinflate its history" seems technically accurate, the same play in words like with coinfuse and it sounds to me less of a "suspicious" word.

Using the word re-mint may cause confusion with mining or ends up giving the impression of overpromising. On the other hand the rareness of conflate may ends up giving the impression of underpromising.

[harding]

I like the idea of "coinflate" too, but if you say it aloud or read it after reading an economics textbook or the gzip man page, it seems like something to do with either economic inflation or file decompression.

[nopara73]

Hmm, and if you google it, the first result is "Coinflate - The cryptocurrency inflator"

[urza]

Conflate is interesting, however as you point out is will probably evoke something with inflation for normal users.

How about something with the "unlink" / "make unlinkable" / "de-link".. that is what I understand the result is about.. creating transactions such that 3rd party analysing blockchain can't follow links of my transactions from one to another, because they become un-linked (to some degree of probability)

In this sense the con-flate as "putting together" brings us again into more suspicious behaviour (fuse together with others, mix, hide), whereas the unlinkability is something I as individual should have right to do (similarly as clearing/deleting history, which is something even old senators now understand is desirable for users (facebook, gdpr...)).

[nopara73]

@urza de-link or clear is interesting. Queue coins to de-link from its history or Queue coins to clear its history. I didn't wanted to go with "cleaning", because then I associate with laundering, but if from clearing, I don't.

[hgergoil]

“Queue coins to enable privacy” or simply “Enable privacy” ?

[lontivero]

IMO we should find one or more terms that help us to describe the whole process. _Mixer_ is a bad name not just because it could have negative connotations but because it doesn't help to describe what the real process does. What we do is destroy coins and create new ones again and again in a chain of steps.

The first step destroys the participants' coins and creates new (smaller) coins. Also, in this process we loose some money as fee. This step of transformation (destruction and genesis) with loose of energy sounds a lot like nuclear fission.

My proposal is replace the word mixer by the more scientific-like coins reactor or similar.

[nopara73]

What we do is destroy coins and create new ones again and again in a chain of steps.

@lontivero I don't see how that'd be the case. What we do in a technical level is "mixing" and "joining" coins.

IMO @harding 's conflate is the most accurate description. Maybe we could just go with the most accurate technical term though: "coinjoin."
Call the section: "Privacy" or "Fungibility" and the action: "Queue coin for CoinJoin" or "Que coin for joint transaction with others."

[lontivero]

Yes but you've been taking about mixing coins of different amounts, what requires to split them first. Also, joining a coins is also a multi-step process in which coins are destroyed and created. Coinjoin is the technique name, very concrete, and is defined in wirkipedia as:

CoinJoin is an anonymization method for bitcoin transactions proposed by Gregory Maxwell.

So, coinjoin is a proxy word for anonymization and i thing we don't want that. I would prefer a new, unused and clean of technical/legal/moral meaning.

[nopara73]

Design plans: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/issues/277