Wasabi Wallet White Paper
Usage of TOR protocol
Wasabi implements TOR, “The Onion Router,” a free and open-source
software that enables anonymous communication to allow online privacy.
TOR is a distributed overlay network designed to anonymize low-latency
TCP-based applications such as web browsing and instant messaging. Using
TOR, clients pick a network path and build a circuit, in which each node (or
“onion router”) knows its predecessor and successor, but no other nodes in
the circuit. The traffic flows in fixed-size cells, in order to mitigate network
analysis attacks, and is unwrapped by a symmetrical key at each node (like
the layers of an onion, from which the protocol name is derived) and passed downstream.
Within the Wasabi wallet, TOR browsing is used by default, in order to encrypt and anonymize users’
communications traffic, secure it from outside snooping and hide the users’ IP address.
The TOR daemon is embedded with Wasabi’s installation, and although it can be disabled by the user at any
time, the default installation leaves it on. If the user would turn it off in the settings while CoinJoin is in use, the
CoinJoin coordinator would be able to associate the user’s inputs and outputs based on the IP address, which
would otherwise be concealed if the TOR was activated.
Figure 4 - Wasabi's setting screen. TOR is enabled by default.
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