Wasabi Wallet review: coinjoin privacy with a coordinator you choose

Wasabi is an open-source, non-custodial, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet for Windows, Linux, and Mac, released under the MIT license. Every part of the project, including the coordinator server code, is published under that license. There is no mobile version.

Its history matters. Ádám Ficsor unveiled Wasabi 1.0 in 2018, version 2.0 shipped on June 15, 2022, and the zkSNACKs coordinator shut down on June 1, 2024. The wallet kept going as an open-source project. Releases are still signed with the zkSNACKs PGP key, and the Windows installer is signed by maintainer Lucas Ontivero.

The current version is v2.8.5, released October 27, 2026. It ships for Windows, macOS on Intel and Apple silicon, and Linux, including ARM64 builds.

Pick Wasabi if you want to break the on-chain link between where your coins came from and where they go, and you are comfortable keeping the coins being mixed in a hot wallet on your computer. It also suits anyone who wants a plain wallet that does everything over Tor by default.

Pick something else if your savings sit on a hardware wallet and you want one app for everything; my Sparrow review covers that. Wasabi has no multisig, so look elsewhere if you need it. Read the legal section below before you coinjoin at all. My best Bitcoin privacy wallets list compares the other options.

Wasabi's installation guide has the commands for each system. The outline:

Wasabi routes all of its traffic through Tor, and its docs say each coinjoin input registers under a fresh Tor identity. To find your transactions it uses compact block filters: it downloads small summaries of each block, checks them locally, and fetches only the blocks it needs from random peers. Since v2.8.0, Wasabi downloads those filters from the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network, which removed the central server the project used to run for them.

You can connect Wasabi to your own full node over RPC. It then uses your node for block filters, blocks, fee estimates, and broadcasting, and falls back to the defaults if something fails. My guide to running a Bitcoin node and my node rankings cover the hardware.

Wasabi can send to silent payment addresses, and its site lists receiving as coming soon. Its coin control and labels show which outside parties know about each payment. My Bitcoin privacy basics guide explains how these pieces fit together.

Wasabi's coinjoin uses the WabiSabi protocol, in which a coordinator builds one transaction from many users' inputs. Wasabi's docs say the coordinator can neither steal your coins nor work out which outputs belong to which inputs. They also list what a malicious coordinator can still do: set high mining fees within your limit, run small rounds that buy little privacy, refuse certain coins, or fill a round with its own coins so yours mixes with almost no one.

A coordinator must be configured before your first coinjoin. Wasabi's FAQ suggests finding one through Wasabi Nostr, which reads coordinator announcements posted on Nostr relays, or running one in your local community; you then paste its address into the Coordinator tab in settings. Choosing a coordinator with real volume is now your job, and it decides how much privacy a round buys.

The wallet is free. In coinjoins, Wasabi pays only the mining fee for the block space it uses, and it refuses rounds where the coordinator charges a coordination fee. Small leftover amounts, at most 10,000 sats per coinjoin, go to the coordinator when making an extra output would cost more than it is worth.

Your defaults cap the mining fee rate at 50 sat/vByte and require at least 21 inputs per round, which guards against expensive or tiny rounds. Mixing a small balance still costs more as a share of the amount, and the docs say reaching full privacy can take from a few hours to several days or more.

Wasabi talks to hardware wallets through HWI, and its site names Trezor, Ledger, Blockstream Jade, and BitBox02 among them. Of the Bitcoin-only devices I review, that means the Jade and the BitBox02. Version 2.8.2 made HWI run natively on Apple silicon Macs.

The limit is large: you cannot coinjoin with keys held on a hardware wallet. Wasabi's docs describe running two wallets, a hot one that coinjoins and a hardware wallet one for storage, and sending mixed coins from the first to the second. The storage wallet will mark those coins non-private, because only the hot wallet knows they were mixed, so label them when they arrive. The fee-bump and cancel tools also do not work with a hardware wallet. For the cold side, my guide to moving bitcoin to a hardware wallet applies.

Wasabi has no published advisories on its GitHub security page, and my incident tracker has no Wasabi entries. Recent releases have added protection against hostile coordinators and servers: v2.8.2 verifies other participants' inputs before signing a coinjoin, and v2.8.5 updated dependencies with disclosed vulnerabilities, added stricter transaction checks against malicious servers, and removed payjoin sending to shrink the attack surface.

Coinjoin has legal history you should know. My Bitcoin privacy basics guide covers the 2024 prosecution of the Samourai Wallet founders and notes that zkSNACKs announced the end of its coordinator about a week after those charges. Using any privacy tool to move the proceeds of a crime is money laundering. If you are unsure how your local law treats coinjoin, ask a lawyer first.

Against Sparrow, Wasabi wins on default privacy (Tor everywhere, coinjoin built in) and loses on hardware wallet support and multisig. Against Specter Desktop and Electrum, it is the only one of the four with coinjoin. My best desktop Bitcoin wallets list ranks all four, and my software wallets page has the full field.

Wasabi is the desktop wallet to look at for coinjoin, and its move to peer-to-peer block filters removed the server the project once ran for syncing. Its weak point is the coordinator: privacy now depends on one you find and trust to run busy, honest rounds. Use it as a hot mixing wallet, send the results to a hardware wallet, and keep Sparrow or your hardware wallet's own app for long-term storage.