Bitcoin Wallet Provider Samourai Wallet Accuses Mining Pool Ocean of Censorship

Bitcoin (BTC) wallet provider Samourai Wallet has accused BTC mining pool Ocean of censoring Whirlpool CoinJoin transactions and BIP47 notification transactions. The accusations were made on December 7, with Samourai Wallet claiming that Ocean had enacted a policy to censor certain Bitcoin transactions.

In response, the top executive at Ocean denied the claims, instead suggesting that Samourai Wallet fix a bug in their software. The accusations also extended to Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of X (formerly Twitter) and Block, who is an investor in Ocean. Samourai Wallet referred to Dorsey’s involvement as a “hostile action.”

Samourai Wallet further accused Luke Dashjr, the Bitcoin Core developer and Ocean founder, of censoring transactions in the past and deploying blacklists for transactions. They also claimed that Dashjr imposed a 46-byte limit to the OP_RETURN function instead of the 80 bytes specified in Bitcoin Core version 0.12.

Ocean’s response to the accusations was that it was a bug in Samourai Wallet’s software, not an intentional policy on their end. Dashjr asked Samourai Wallet to fix the bug on their end and expressed uncertainty about the concerns raised by the wallet provider.

The crypto community had mixed reactions to the accusations and the ensuing conversation. Some supported Samourai Wallet, emphasizing the importance of the 80-byte limit. Others advised the wallet provider to fix the bug in their software. One community member believed that the censorship policy was unintentional.

Brad Mills from Nostr Wallet also chimed in, stating that there is no policy to censor Whirlpool or privacy-preserving transactions and that Ocean’s block template scheme and coinbase payouts are actually designed to preserve privacy.

Despite Ocean’s denial, Samourai Wallet continues to accuse Dashjr of lying and deceiving community members, urging the community not to let them get away with it.