Software Engineer Launches Heiswap: An Ethereum Mixer Endorsed by Vitalik Buterin

Despite Ethereum’s growing popularity, users have long been asking for improved privacy features to anonymize their identities. This was even recently acknowledged by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin himself. Currently, transactions on the Ethereum ecosystem take place in such a way that users can be linked to each other with some rather straightforward blockchain analysis. According to Buterin, a simple mixer will go a long way towards solving this problem. https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1146629103648305154 Kendrick Tan designed Heiswap with Buterin’s minimal mixer specifications in mind, which was titled “A simple mixer for sending fixed quantities of ETH.” The mixer is currently available for use on Ethereum’s Ropsten Testnet at heiswap.exchange. In response to Kendrick’s announcement post on Twitter, Buterin said that Heiswap is a “cool project” created by a “random genius”.

A Vitalik-Approved Ethereum Mixer

In a blog post, Kendrick introduced Heiswap as an

“Ethereum mixer that allows users to wash their ETH in a confidential manner”.

In this system, a user deposits a fixed denomination of tokens into the Heiswap smart contract, which is then “matched with another user’s similarly denominated sum in order to hide a transaction’s true source”. This mixer will collect Ethereum from different senders and assimilate all the collected tokens until a sufficient number of participants join the pool. Once the minimum number of participants is reached, each user can choose to withdraw their Ethereum tokens. This step ensures complete privacy as Heiswap hides the details of the person to whom the tokens are sent, making it akin to a cash-based transaction.

How Heiswap Enables Nameless Transactions

The Heiswap interface consists of three main sections — Deposit, Withdrawal, and Status. To deposit tokens into the mixer, the sender has to enter a withdrawal address and select the specific denomination of ETH to be deposited. However, the user needs to pay extra ETH for network fees. To withdraw tokens from the mixer, the receiver must wait for a minimum of five total participants in the pool. However, Heiswap gives receivers the option of waiting for more users to enter the pool in order to guarantee a higher degree of privacy. Once satisfied with the number of participants, they can choose to withdraw their Ethereum to a third party account. The “Status” tab is used to check whether there are enough participants in the pool to process a withdrawal or not. It allows the user to understand the level of privacy the mixer can provide at that given point in time. With Heiswap paving the way for increased privacy within the Ethereum ecosystem, do you see yourself using the mixer anytime soon to keep yourself anonymous? Let us know in the comments below.