Bitcoin wallet provider Samourai Wallet has alleged that BTC mining pool Ocean has been censoring Whirlpool CoinJoin transactions and BIP47 notification transactions since December 6. However, Ocean executives have denied these allegations and have urged the wallet provider to fix the bug in its software.
On December 7, Samourai Wallet claimed that a new policy implemented by the Ocean mining pool was censoring specific Bitcoin transactions. Additionally, the wallet provider accused Jack Dorsey (formerly of Twitter) and Block co-founder (who invests in Ocean) of displaying "hostile behavior."
The post from Samourai Wallet further accuses Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin Core developer and founder of Ocean, of past censorship and employing blacklists for transactions, implying a longstanding interest in such actions.
The recent allegation from Samourai Wallet accuses Dashjr of enforcing a 46-byte limit on the OP_RETURN function, contrary to the 80-byte limit in Bitcoin Core version 0.12. Consequently, Samourai Wallet alleges that Ocean excluded privacy-enhancing transactions and advised miners to consider redirecting their computing power to another mining pool. Dashjr rebuffed Samourai Wallet’s claims against Ocean, stating that it was a bug in the wallet provider's software, not an intentional policy from Ocean.
Moreover, Dashjr expressed uncertainty about the concerns raised by Samourai Wallet, seeking more technical details and asserting that they should resolve the issue themselves. The discussion has divided the cryptocurrency community, with varying opinions: some support the wallet provider, emphasizing the importance of the 80-byte limit, while others suggest fixing the bug. Meanwhile, some community members believe that any censorship enforcement is unintentional, pointing to the new policy.
Adding to the discourse, Brad Mills from Nostr Wallet indicated that there is no policy to assess Whirlpool or safeguard private transactions. In response, Samourai Wallet accused Dashjr of dishonesty and misleading community members, urging the community to not allow such actions to prevail.
