High CoinJoin Fees

[olandare]

I left my computer hibernated with the wasabi wallet with automatic coinjoin, I didn't know it worked with the computer hibernated, I left it for 24 hours with Wasabi's default configuration for Coinjoin.

To my surprise, today I enter my wallet with several coinjoin transactions and fees that reach 30% of my balance, how is this possible? I immediately deactivated Coinjoin from my account, and would like to recover my lost balance.

[Kruwed]

The default configuration prevents this sort of disproportionate fee expense from occurring. By default, automatic coinjoin only runs while the wallet balance is above 0.01 BTC, and the "Minimize costs" and "Maximize Speed" user profiles generally reach 100% privacy after 1-2 coinjoin transactions.

If you decreased the auto-start coinjoin threshold below 0.01 or increased your anonymity score target in the settings, this would be the reason the fees cost a lot relative to your total balance.

[olandare]

I didn't change the Wasabi settings, my bitcoins were 0.255 and now they are 0.18, I took a lot of BTC from my assets, COinjoin shouldn't be automatic, not even with the huberado vmputador.

[Kruwed]

That seems like an unusual amount to have paid since mining fees are not considerably high at the moment... Perhaps your wallet is out of sync and does not recognize outputs you received from one of your coinjoins? Try resyncing your wallet by setting its "Height" and "Turbosyncheight" to 0 - https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/FAQ/FAQ-UseWasabi.html#how-do-i-resync-rescan-my-wallet

[olandare]

I did all the steps and none of the BTC that was charged as a fee was restored, as you can see in the image, they charged more than $274 in fees, absurd.

[Kruwed]

You can see from the screenshot that you participated in 47 coinjoin transactions. As I mentioned before, the default settings reach 100% privacy after 1-2 coinjoin transactions.

The settings control that adjusts how many coinjoins you participate in is your "Anonymity Score Target". When you increased your anonymity score target from the default (5) to a higher number, this instructed your wallet to continuously remix.

Given that the average output anonset of a coinjoin is ~6.5, it seems like you raised your anonymity score target to the absolute maximum (47 transactions * 6.5 anon score gain per tx = 305.5 anon score total).

Remixing 47 times gives you overkill privacy compared to the total cost, I would recommend remixing only once or twice for most users. Try setting your anonymity score target to 15-20.

[turbolay]

What is your version of Wasabi please? You can find it by searching for About Wasabi in the search bar.

I can see that the software made you participate in many transactions. We only had 88 coinjoin rounds in this interval so it would mean that you participated in more than half of them. Considering that the rounds need time to confirm, It seems not plausible that you started with only one UTXO. I believe what happened is that your balance was made up of many small UTXOs. Therefore, you have to consider that spending those coins was going to de facto be expansive, whether it was in a coinjoin round or not.

Additionaly, on-chain anonymity has unfortunately a cost, and the lower the funds the higher the percentage of fee will be taken by miners. The way amounts are decomposed by the Wasabi client is always trying to reduce the amount of fee you are going to pay. Note that we are working hard to reduce the blockspace footprint of WabiSabi, therefore the cost of on-chain privacy, especially for lower denominations.

High fee environment is something still relatively new, and solutions based on the Bitcoin network are taking time to adjust to it. WabiSabi stays the cheapest way currently to achieve on-chain privacy, especially for larger amounts.