I never really got involved in the Samourai vs Wasabi disagreement. I've used both coinjoin implementations and feel like they were both pretty good tools. In that light, I found this post mortem by nopara (who is the originator of Wasabi Wallet, I believe) and, whichever side you come down on, it is an interesting read.
I didn't know about some of this history here. For instance, nopara says:
I created ZeroLink. The repository makes the chronology clear. I opened it on July 28, 2017. Before Samourai made a single commit, I had made 19 and written a 184-line, 2,883-word document containing the framework’s core architecture.
The article is not what I'd call an unbiased assessment, but at the same time nopara raises some good points. On the case of Samourai's mixing volume:
Samourai’s Twitter presence made the rivalry look symmetrical despite the large difference in usage. Dumplings—my reproducible CoinJoin scanner—separated fresh bitcoin entering a mixer from coins merely being remixed and called fresh bitcoin the best on-chain proxy for adoption. From Whirlpool’s first detected month in April 2019 through the dataset’s end in August 2022, it identified 247,675 fresh BTC entering Wasabi and 30,228 entering Whirlpool. Wasabi led in every one of those forty-one months. This is a measure of bitcoin, not a user headcount, but it is the opposite of adoption parity.21
All in all, it's worth the read if you want to try to get a better understanding of the Wasabi vs Samourai yelling match. I'd be curious to hear a pushback from the Samourai side.
Wasabi has always been much larger than Samourai. Anyone can verify this directly from blockchain data.
This paper https://crysp.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0061.pdf shows that (see Table 3):
If we use the number of fresh inputs as a proxy for popularity, you can see that during the zkSNACKs period, Wasabi usage outperformed Samourai by a wide margin. Wasabi’s fresh inputs totaled 297,238.5 BTC, while Samourai’s were only 47,309 BTC.
Kruw’s coordinator processed, in less than two years, more than Samourai did in its entire history. By November 2025—after 18 months of operation—Kruw’s coordinator had already reached 46,309 BTC in fresh inputs.
A thread of this was also post on r/bitcoin by nopara
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1utroht/postmortem_what_happened_between_samourai_wallet/
What many people still do not WANT to understand is that Scamourai was a honeypot from the day 1.
I will repeat this over and over: remember the ANOM case... few really pay attention.
It might have functioned as a honeypot, but it turned out to not be one since they got to jail. Greg Maxwell admitting his mistake here is especially well put:
"I would have taken and lost a sizable bet that the Samourai wallet people were covertly working to collect data because their actions were so consistent with it. It turns out though that they were just profoundly greedy and stupid."
"going to jail" for pleading guilty for something they didn't do it... if that is not the clear signal that is all a cover up operation... then I think people nowadays are fucking stupid.
You use CC shitcoins because your NSA handler prohibits you from using Bitcoin as a MoE.
You are an NSA agent stooge.
Sent here to infiltrate and study the community.
Nobody on SNs knows who you are except your sock puppets.
Coinos remains my favourite LN MoE wallet.
Easy to use, trusted, incredibly low fees and free of hype and bluster.