Wasabi Bitcoin Wallet Claims Solution to Tor Blockade While Iranians Ask For Help

Wasabi, a privacy focused bitcoin wallet, has announced a new release to address an on-going DDoS attack on the Tor network.

“The privacy network Tor has been under Distributed Denial of Service attack for the last few months,” the project said, adding:

“In light of the attack, this resulted in infrequent coinjoins for Wasabi Wallet users. As a countermeasure to address this reliability issue, the Wasabi client switched from connecting with the backend onion server to using Tor exit nodes and routing traffic to the clearnet domain of the coinjoin coordinator…

As this doesn’t directly address the Tor hidden identity registry DDoS attack but routes around it, zkSNACKs is also extending its fundraising support to help the Tor team fund developers to work towards resolving this ongoing issue.”

Prior to opening war on Ukraine, Russia opened war on the free internet, beginning with a decision by Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media, to block Tor in December.

The Tor team has worked hard for months to address the issue, but Tor access in Russia never recovered from a stable 300,000 users prior to December, to now 100,000 users.

In Iran however Tor access has spiked after the student protests erupted at the end of last month from 10,000 users to 200,000 at one point.

But that number has come down in part because Tor came under a DDoS attack this month with an update on Tuesday stating:

“We are seeing performance degredation from an overload of exit connections and onion service circuit handshakes, causing our relays to deny circuit creations.”

The protests so far have been watched from afar in part because the Western public has been quite busy with the war in Ukraine, inflation, some market turbulences and much else.

Also in part because Europe and USA was negotiating with Iran to try and start closing those chapters opened in the 70s, not least because there was some sense amongst some in the west that the Iranian public had changed, the culture had changed, as it has in Europe and America where the millennials generation tentatively think a lot of the tensions with Iran are a bit outdated.

Sure, they may be causing some trouble in the region, but not to Europe or US, the thinking may have gone.

The protest therefore presented a challenge, especially in light of vocal support not going very well in either Hong Kong or Belarus.

However, it is students that seem to be leading this protest, seen above at the Tehran University today. That makes it effectively the cream of their society, the pen.

The chief of the Revolutionary Guards has threatened to raise the gun against them, effectively to bring in the military, which would be an extremely dangerous decision as it risks splitting the army.

In this sort of situation instead you give some concessions. These are the students afterall in a country where about 5% make it to university, so you can not realistically blame them – like they are blaming – about the usual foreigners being behind all this.

A blame that has previously worked, and therefore they’re naturally trying it again, but the brutality of the morality police, and systematically so, is to blame and all Iranians know it because they’ve experienced it.

As such, they should have promised some sort of reform, including that the hijab won’t be mandatory henceforth, but the theocracy may think the hijab goes towards the whole point of the theocratic system, and therefore there’s a standoff.

It’s a standoff between generations first and foremost, symbolized by a new trend of sorts where generally young students tap the hat of generally old 70-80+ mullas – their version of the priests during the inquisition – with the funny hat falling to the ground so symbolizing their authority is down.

Its nature means that regardless of what happens here, the Iranian society has changed. The old naturally want to keep hold of a time that effectively has gone, while the young are clearly unwilling to go back with it difficult to see how they can be forced.

The army therefore, if they’re called, has to consider whether it is truly worth the risk of proper chaos considering just how resourceful students can be, rather than hear the students and allow for a move towards a government that is more reflective to society.

Not least because whoever is in charge now will probably largely still be in charge, just more responsive to the needs and desires of their own society.

Some of those needs do also include very bread and butter matters. In particular, many young men in Iran are unemployed and seek to leave.

Their betters therefore, the students, have seemingly decided that it is time to have those opportunities in Iran. That includes less hostility, less ultra-nationalism, here presented in the form of a theocracy.

Naturally, since this is a societal matter, it is also an internal matter. It is for the students to win the debate and the public.

The government there is trying to stop such debate by blocking the social internet, chat apps and the like, even though there have of course been revolutions prior to the internet.

Nonetheless, if the students need help with the internet they should be given all the necessary help. Smuggling starlink satellites could be one such way, and the theocracy can say whatever they want in that regards, it’s very fair game.

Another would be to unclog Tor. That goes beyond Iran, but it is currently particularly relevant in regards to Iran.

“Tor is a critically important project for privacy on bitcoin and the internet that millions of people rely upon on a daily basis. Wasabi Wallet is grateful that such a tool exists and will do as much as possible to support Tor by promoting it and helping with its fundraising.

Tor reliability is directly impacting the user experience of Wasabi Wallet users, so we care about this issue a lot,” said Max Hillebrand, Wasabi Contributor and CEO at zkSNACKs.

Coders for sometime now have kind of ignored Tor, yet in this autumn of hope in Iran we’re reminded just how vital this tool can be to provide equitability to society.

Now more than ever, the European and American public, as well as all over the world, can provide empowerment by simply running a Tor relay.

Because whatever the cause, and wherever it is, we’ll always support the students. It’s time for coders to come to their help.