The Code Lives On | THE UNBOUNDED SERIES: Dojo Coder

Welcome back. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. I hope you got to spend lots of time with friends and family. Some of you might have realized recently that the Unbounded podcast has closed down.

This means they're no longer paying for hosting, and this means, unfortunately, that the great audio that was recorded would be lost. All of the five guests that appeared on that podcast are considered by all of us at Ungovernable Misfits to be part of the family.

Q, Diverter, Seth, Pavel, and Colonial, all privacy advocates, all people we have a lot of respect for. And TBD, who ran the podcast, did a really great job of running through some of these important topics.

So rather than it being lost forever and that audio fading into nonexistence, we decided we would host it here. I'm gonna be releasing one a week, probably. We'll start with Q, then Diverter, then Seth, Pavel, and end with Colonial.

Thank you to TBD for putting in the effort to make these podcasts. Thank you to all the guests. And we're very happy that we can host this audio so that anyone in the future looking into privacy, security, freedom, has some more great audio to listen to. I hope you enjoy these, and stay ungovernable.

Welcome to the Unbounded Podcast, where we explore the intersection of technology, human rights, and freedom. Today's guest is one of the quiet builders behind some of the most important privacy tools. Pavel the coder or Pavel or Dojo Coder isn't just a developer.

He's been on the front lines of the fight for Bitcoin privacy for a decade, helping shape projects like Samurai Wallet and Ronan Dojo. In this episode, he shares his personal journey, the cypherpunk values that drive him,

and the real risk developers now face as governments crack down on privacy tech. He also gives us an important update on Ronin Dojo, where the project stands today, and what's next. But more than anything, this is a story of resilience and refusing to back down when walking away could have been safer.

If you believe in the fight to build freely and in Bitcoin as more than just an investment, this one's for you. Let's get into it. Pavel, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Super

excited to have you. Been really looking forward to the show. I've been following your work for quite a while now. So really excited to have you. Thank you for joining. Let's just jump right into this. You've been on the front lines of building privacy tools. I think you go back to 2017, contributed

to some of the most important bit coin focused privacy projects out there from Samurai Wallet, Dojo, Ronin Dojo. What first pulled you into the world of cyberpunk tools, privacy, and building for digital freedom?

Well, I got I got introduced to Bitcoin in 2015, I think, I guess, ten ten years ago, when I started going into this place in Prague, which was called Paral Polis, which basically means Parallel Society, and in this place there was a cafe, and they only accepted Bitcoin.

No no cash, no credit card started, they they were only accepting Bitcoin. Of course, if you wanted something, they they had Bitcoin ATM, so you could exchange your cash money for for Bitcoins, but you had to, you know, download some Bitcoin wallet or get a paper wallet at the time, and then you had to pay with it.

And so I got immediately when I started using Bitcoin. It was like everyday use. I didn't know anything, almost nothing about Bitcoin at the time, but I was already a software developer. So this thing seemed amazing to me. And I was already like libertarian.

I've seen this as a as a great tool for freedom, for anyone that wants to get rid of the shackles of the state and use something that's not controlled by the state. I I wasn't particularly interested in Bitcoin as a investment, so for me it never was about getting more rich

and pumping bags, for me it was always about this interesting digital money technology. And from that, since I was already a programmer, I began to be interested in maybe building something around Bitcoin.

So the the two projects that you've been intimately involved with is Samurai Wallet and Ronen Dojo over the years. Can you tell us a little bit about those projects? Right. So this this goes back to starting, I guess, it was 2019.

It goes mostly back to when Whirlpool was released by Samurai Wallet. By that time Samurai Wallet has already existed for years, but it was still in, I guess, kind of early development, because at that time you wouldn't be able to connect Samurai Wallet to your own Bitcoin node. And when Samurai Wallet introduced ProPool, one prerequisite

for doing that was that people need to be able to connect to their own Bitcoin full node, so they can still have privacy and not rely on the central Samurai database and server. So that's why they released Dojo as open source,

so people could connect Dojo to their Bitcoin core and connect their Samurai Wallet to their own Dojo and not rely on any third party, basically. Right. What originally inspired you to contribute to these two projects?

And how did you end up becoming a key contributor? Yeah, since since I was so obsessed with Bitcoin and building around it, I started using Samurai. I wanted to contribute in some way because I loved the software and the ethos, but the whole software stack of Samurai Wallet was written in Java,

and I'm not really proficient in that programming language, so there was no way for me to contribute anything meaningful. But when they released Dojo, that's written in JavaScript, and even though the names are similar, it's a completely different language. But I am a JavaScript programmer, so that allowed me to make

great new features and some fixes, and as an open source software it goes to offer help. So that's how I got into into getting myself into working with Dojo. And for Ronin Dojo, the guys from Ronin Dojo were doing really amazing work.

And when it started, it was really great project. And they wanted to take it a step further and offer a proper, like, web based UI so that you could just, in your web browser, open a page and manage everything you needed with a few simple clicks. So that's how I got connected with Rundojo, guys.

And the rest is history, Pablo. Yeah. The rest of the rest is history. Well, it's been an amazing journey for you. You once said that the samurai founders or the team are quote, unquote true cypherpunks.

What did you mean by that? And and why did that hit home for you? I mean, don't you don't have to go far, but only only read the cypherpunk manifesto, which which could use as cyberpunks write code, and they write code that defends privacy.

They don't care if someone doesn't like their code, and they know that their software can't be destroyed. I mean, that's what Samurai fellas did. They wrote code that people didn't like, and it was open source, so people could take their code, update their code, do anything with it.

And as we now see, even though they've faced prosecution, their code still exists and works, and other people have taken their code, and it's still living. Right. And it takes a lot of balls to write this software and put it out to the world knowing that you could be targeted by the state. And in fact, they were.

But I know that you played a major role in building the Ronan Dojo user interface, and and this helped to make the tool more usable to everyday people. If it wasn't for that, I don't think I would have been able to to onboard to Rona Dojo as being a nontechnical person.

It was definitely a game changer in in many, many ways. Where does Rona Dojo stand as a project today? Where is it at today? What does the future look like, do you think? Yeah. So for people that do think that Ron Dujo, like, is inactive and gone, like, no, we are not not gone. There have been,

let's say, some setbacks for for the whole team, And it wasn't just that the samurai got arrested, it was a was a couple of things at the same time. It was a lot of personal stuff to several people at our team at this almost at the same moment. So I won't get into specifics,

but, yeah, there there were some setbacks, but we are still still here, still doing some stuff, and we have still plans. So although it might not seem like we are, like, pushing a lot of new things right now, we are still working on new features.

And hopefully, those those new those new things will see soon see the light of day. Well, Pawel, that's great news. Do you have time frame of when some some more updates might be announced?

Well, not sure about some long stuff stuff that we have been, like, long term working on, but I can definitely say that I'm finishing Ronin UI update. That will bring some changes. One of them is, if you remember, kycp.org.

What what is that? Tell me about that. Kycp.org was a website, know your coin privacy, which was based around OXT, Block Explorer or analytics tool, and that was by Samurai and OXT team. If you input, it doesn't work anymore of course, that has been ceased.

But how it worked was that if you input your transaction ID, it will look up your transaction and show show you graph of inputs, outputs, and it will compute the linkability of inputs and outputs and basically show you, like, statistical analysis of privacy of your transaction.

So for nontechnical people, it basically tells you how good your privacy is? Yes. Yes. Sometimes you don't know if you if you messed up or you can you can you wanna take a look at some transactions and see, because otherwise these tools are completely

in the hands of private companies, like chain chain analysis companies, and normally these tools, normal people don't have. Next next update in the Ronin UI, you will be able to input your transaction ID and see the transaction a privacy of your transaction in Ronin UI.

This has been missing since the Samurai arrest, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a pretty big deal because I don't think there's any other node package out there that has anything like that. Is that right?

No, no, no. I don't think so. And at this time, it's very simple. It's not doing much. But as it was with OXT, I think we can improve that and maybe in the future show more statistics about the transactional privacy.

Right, right. Exciting. So before we move on, Pavel, is there anything else that you would like to say about Ronodoja? I don't want to push you too hard on that, but is there anything else that might be worth mentioning?

Nothing concrete, but we're still here and we'll see around. Okay. So we got an update on Ronan Dojo. That's fantastic. I can't wait to see the updates. So keep it coming, Pavel. Keep it coming. Oh, sure.

Changing topics a little bit here. So what are the risks from your perspective? Somebody that's building these privacy tools. Is this something that worries you personally? Or how do you think about that? I guess I guess it for everyone, it it depends if if they're trying, like, to stay as anonymous as possible.

Me me personally, I I haven't ever tried to be, like, super anonymous. Like, if people want to, they they could look up my full name, and they they would know how I look like. And, you know, I never never,

like, was super secretive about any of that. So and it I guess it depends who who do you expect your adversary to be, because if it's some third person, I guess staying anonymous as possible might be a good thing, So you avoid being harassed or swatted in some cases, like, that type of thing.

Have you have you been swatted? Are you No. No. Are you worried about that? Like, I I would imagine you you've seen what's happened with samurai, people that you have worked with. How do you protect yourself from that?

I guess it's always in the back of I'm building these tools. Fuck you. Well, the well, that that's the thing. It's it's always in the back of my head because, like, in the first few days when when guys were arrested, I didn't know if they're gonna knock on my door as well.

And, of course, before then and especially after that, it's always, like, in the back of my head because I don't know if someone, police or whatever, is gonna knock at my door. Yeah. Fuck it. Because I can't be bogged down by thinking about this all the time. Because if they if they wanna come, they they will do it, like, for any reason.

You know? They would they will just make up a reason if they want to. So I'm I just write open source code that isn't even handling handling private keys, and the code itself, like, of course, isn't doing anything illegal.

So, of course, that doesn't doesn't mean the of course, the samurai guys were arrested anyway and inducted. So and they they, of course, didn't expect it to to come this way as well. There wasn't any cease and desist. There wasn't any give us us your information.

They they just arrested them suddenly. It escalated. Yeah. Yeah. I've talked I've talked to some other people. They thought maybe maybe the first move might be to remove you from the Apple Store or the Google Store. Yeah.

You know? So from the Play Store, that would maybe be the first thing. And then next step might be a cease and desist or something like that. But it went straight to where they're at today. And yeah, it's pretty hardcore. I mean, was a reign of terror during the Biden administration and and unfortunately, that reign of terror continues.

But what what have human cost for you mentally, emotionally? It's it does sound like there's mental tax on some level at the back of your mind. Or do do you not really think about it that much?

Well, I mean, I could I could, you know when when this when this all happened, I could could have just said, oh well, it's over, fuck it, I will just find some normal job and whatever,

and I won't care anymore about this, but no, there's tons of users that still use our software, still use Dojo, Ronin Dojo, Samurai Wallet and now Ashigaru. I myself use all of this and I guess

I just couldn't walk away from this. Of course, sometimes, especially when I hear and read all the stuff that's coming out about the tornado cache and samurai cases and what the pros prosecution says and how how they are lying through their teeth and how the judges don't allow certain defense

I mean, feels like it's almost no defense. It's it is it disgusts me. And, yeah, sometimes sometimes I feel, like, almost black billed, like like, really dark thoughts, and I'm like, man, like, fuck all of this.

But then, you know, I just sit down and, I guess, I just wanna continue because I don't wanna stop, and I don't wanna abandon all of this, especially older people. So who are you building for, would you say? Like, what's your mission in life as it relates to Bitcoin privacy?

Yeah. That's an interesting question. I guess, well, just try to try to make a difference. I mean, do even even the smallest thing can sometimes still make a difference. So for me, that's, like, still pushing updates and knowing

that people will appreciate some new features and will use them, and it will help them in doing transactions more private and or or talking about the the case with Samurai and bringing more attention to this and more people talking about this issue about government going after people for writing software.

So I guess just trying trying at least the small things, because I I know I won't make a big difference. I won't make anything huge, but I hope at least to do something small that will help somebody.

Just the fact that there's so few people working on it, even your small contributions are are massive. And I really think that you're you're an unsung hero. I know you don't see yourself that way.

No. I don't. I know you don't. But I do think if you care about financial sovereignty, if you really care about Bitcoin and what that means for humanity, it's just huge. So so few people see it that way. But what would you say for others who are building privacy

tools today? What would you say to them? You've been in the game for a long time. I'm sure you have some some wisdom for us that might get a little spooked by what's going on today. I mean, I guess one one lesson from the Samurai case is that don't let your enemy know your plans.

Because Samurai had great plans for the future, and they were openly describing those plans, mainly decentralization of whirlpool. It was meant to be decentralized in such a way that it would be basically unstoppable, because instead of a central server, central coordinator server,

there was supposed to be a network, p to p network of them. So it wouldn't be possible for the FBI or anyone to take take down the whole whirlpool at once like they did. And that's that's why I think that they have to move really quickly and why it all happened so suddenly, because

we were just maybe months away from achieving that. And so they they did have to move very quickly. And looking back at that, I think, like, announcing your plans, like, it is what allowed FBI and prosecutors to move so quickly and suddenly, Because they they they knew if they if they didn't take Samurai down right away,

then they would have no chance later to take Roppo down. The the yeah. Clearly. Clearly. They were on the FBI's radar at that time, and that was coming out. And they probably had the tornado cache, so they had the tornado cache fresh in their minds and what that case was about.

There were several things. There was the Bitcoin, tornado cache. Then there was the Bitcoin fog, which was Mixer, but that was also a case where the judge didn't allow defense to, you know, argue. To to to yeah. Right. Yeah. To question the analytics.

Yeah. Yeah. They, of course, for prosecution, they gave some testimonies and so on. But they are using a black box software that nobody knows how it works because it's closed source. And our guys were trying to help the defense with open source tools and open source analytics, and so the judge didn't allow it.

It is one of the big lessons that code is is speech. I I don't think they believe that anymore. I think that's that's very much in question. I think that they never believed it. Not And so this is the risk. You can be a developer developing privacy tools, and you can think that you're well within the lines

of fence and guidance and what's legal. It's just shocking. But let me ask you. So so how do you define the movement that you're a part of? I call it the Bitcoin privacy movement for lack of a better word, but how do you define it?

Of course, it's it's about sovereignty because Bitcoin itself, if you use it non custodially, it's about sovereignty. It's about having your own keys and using, like, freedom money. Like, the privacy movement to be honest with you, I don't I don't know if there's any movement.

I think what is missing is right now since since Samurai is gone, I don't see any, like, clear direction to improve privacy on Bitcoin. Like, a lot of people have moved to Monero, and a lot of people has has just gave up. Of course, we have right now, there's Ashigaru,

which is a fork of Samurai Wallet, and I think that that project is, like, really great because it it apparently continues the work of Samurai. So take a step back. So tell us a little bit about Ashiguro.

It's a fork of Samurai Wallet. It's been released, I think it was, I don't know, ten months ago or so. What is Ashigaru, and what's special about it, and why should we care? We should care, like,

from from some some point of view, because Ashigaru perfectly shows us that the open source software just simply cannot be stopped just because you arrest some people. Ashigaru is fork of Samurai Wallet, which means the original code of Samurai is still there, and people behind Ashigaru

seem like they wanna take it still take it further and build on top of what Samurai, had built. And, especially now, it's been couple of weeks since they released RoPool, like, relaunched their version of RoPool, which, in my opinion, is great because it also shows that just RoPool just simply cannot be taken down and anyone

can just run it again. I mean, just to stop there. So Whirlpool, this this is one of the most defiant acts for sovereignty on Bitcoin that I've ever seen. Think it it in light of I mean, I put it up there with the original crypto wars, the cypherpunks, and maybe pretty good privacy and what they did to get that out into the world.

Whirlpool is massive. The risk to put that out in the world, I mean it's right up there. I don't know, I don't wanna get too carried away on this, but it's right up there with Satoshi in my mind. Obviously, not that high up the list, but it's it's so radical that they would put Whirlpool

out into the world after everything with the arrest. I mean, they're they're putting themselves at real risk. Risk. But tell us about that. What what is the significance of Whirlpool, and what do you think of this as kind of just an act of defiance?

Oh, yeah. That's I wanted to say exactly. It's an open act of defiance against, like, the whole thing. Like, you tried it's basically they're they're saying, like, you tried to take this away from us.

That just won't work. We we will just start it again, and we will continue because we want privacy. We are not criminals. We just want privacy, and we will we will do anything. That that's at least partly what I think the message might be. Like, you you cannot you cannot stop this. Code. Yes.

We put it out into the world, and it will never disappear. Yes. Exactly. It's such it's such a massive radical act. So Whirlpool got released, what, like a month and a half ago? Six, seven weeks ago? And what is your initial take? Like, how well is it doing? Is it working perfectly?

Think I might have saw an article somewhere out there said that there might have been an issue with anonymity or something like that. What do you think? So far so good? Just to address the issue, they they basically took the original code of Samurai and they made some changes, because there were some things in the original implementation

of Propel that were criticized. They were, as far as I understand it, they were trying to address these issues and they made some changes. For some people they reviewed those changes and are now saying that okay, you did that, but it's still not good enough, because if the coordinator is malicious it can de anonymize the users.

So that that's basically the the thing that people criticize. I I wanted to ask you. Can can you say that can you recommend Ashiguro? And to what extent? It's been out in the wild for not quite a year. Whirlpool just got released.

Should we just be experimenting with it with with small amounts? Can we go all in? What are your thoughts on that? Well, it's a bit difficult, especially because we don't really know who's behind Ashigaru and they don't have any like social media, any group.

You basically, if you want to communicate with these people, you have to shoot them an email. That's the only communication channel they have. So we don't they can be completely honest, or this could be some, you know, long game.

But from so I don't wanna give out recommendations. I want to I want people to take a look at what people do and how they speak and compare between those two if if their actions, like, correlate with with their talk.

And that means if the project is honest or seems honest, I think it might be safe to use. Mhmm. What are you looking for? What to see from them whether this is a project that we can trust?

Well, especially since they are not really that much public, they have to be more transparent about the issues that that might exist in the software. So it it looks like when they released their Veruple implementation and fixed

or made changes that were supposed to fix some issues, it looks like they were really honest about how and why they were making these changes and what they were trying to fix. So that's I I think that we can see the honesty there. And also in if they're if you read their blog posts, I don't think they are trying to be secretive about,

like, why they make certain changes. I think they're trying to be transparent, and I see that as a good thing to establish trust. So back on the Whirlpool is so it just got released. Is it successful

in your mind? Are you still just kinda waiting to see how this goes over the next few months? Right. I mean, success. So the fact that it is running and people are mixing or doing conjoins with Ripple, I already see that as a success. So I think that that's great. But there is still

a lot of a lot of space where to go with ProPool. Right now, I'm personally not a big fan of the Ashugaru terminal. The the is that? For for those who don't know, what is what is Ashigarh terminal?

For those that don't know, Ashigarh terminal is a desktop application. It's a fork of Sparrow CLI or Sparrow terminal for desktop, and that allows you to use Ashigarh whirlpool. But that that that basically means you have to run it on your desktop.

There is currently no mixing in Ashigaru Wallet itself, so you you cannot initiate mixing or mix from the Ashigaru like it was in Samurai. And there's also not an updated version of Verbal CLI, which is the binary that we use that we implemented inside Dojo and thrown in Dojo so so that people could get remixes

all the time without without having the application open on their phone or their PC. Got it. Okay. So is there any parting thoughts? Anything behind the scenes that maybe deserves a little more attention?

I guess I guess latest update of SunRideOjo, I think that that's been released like a month or almost two two months ago, didn't get much attention, but it will get more attention once this update is also brought to Ronin Dojo, which hopefully will be soon. Most interesting thing about this update is that it includes Soroban,

which is a peer to peer communication network, and Soroban will allow people enter their Dojo nodes communicate peer to peer. When you send a transaction from your Ashigaru or Samurai Wallet through your Samurai Dojo with Soroban enabled, it will not be sent directly to the Bitcoin network,

but it will be sent to some random node on the Soroba network, and that one will push it to to Bitcoin network. So that which basically means it further obfuscates the origin of the transaction. Okay.

Good. More privacy. Give me more privacy. Yes. More privacy. That's all I wanna hear, man. Give me more privacy. More privacy. This is good. This is good. Things are moving forward. I mean, it's it's pretty bleak right now, I think. But there there is there there are things rising from the ashes here quietly,

but surely. And definitely hope to try to just get the word out, man. You know? But let's wrap it up. How can people support Samurai Wallet? Where should they go for that? Yeah. If people wanna support Samurai Wallet, go to ptoprights.org,

and then there you can donate either with fiat or with Bitcoin to the defense of our Samurai Wallet guys. If you wanna learn more about the case, great source on Twitter would be Frank Corva from Bitcoin Magazine, who is following the case very closely.

Definitely give follow to Econo Alchemist on Twitter, give a follow to Max Stannahill and Diverter and the rest of the guys in the Samurai community, but these these three are giving away accurate information always.

They're fantastic. Yeah. Those are the people that I follow and try to learn from. Pavel, thank you. I can't wait for the updates for Ronan Dojo. Can't wait for them to come public again. You know?

Take care. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much. Hey guys, that was Pavel. Honestly, I'm still processing a lot of what he just said. But before we wrap this up, I want to take a moment to reflect

on what it means to keep building these privacy tools when the costs are so extremely high right now. When the Samurai Wallet devs got arrested, Pavel talked about how for several days after that arrest, he said, I didn't know if the authorities were going to knock on my door next.

That is what it's like to be a privacy builder right now. They're risking their freedom to protect everyone's freedom. He keeps building Dojo, the engine for Samurai Wallet, and now for Ashigaru.

He keeps updating Ronin Dojo. The reason we keep talking about these projects, Samurai Wallet, Ronin Dojo, and now Ashigaru, is very simple. It's because for years, this ecosystem almost single handedly has been the only real path to full financial sovereignty on Bitcoin. No middleman, no KYC, no compromises.

We want privacy. We will continue. You can't stop this. That's not a quote. That's a stance. If you've never looked at Running Dojo, now's the time to learn about it. Take a look at it. While the project's not selling any hardware nodes at the moment,

the project is still alive. Updates are coming, and the tools continue to function. It's just a fantastic project to follow. And if you wanna try something today, check out Ashigaru, a Forca Samurai wallet that recently relaunched Whirlpool, the gold standard of Bitcoin privacy.

So start reading, follow the updates, because when the time comes to take a step, whatever that might be for you, you'll be ready. The people building this tech aren't waiting for permission, and neither should we. The code still lives, and so does the mission.

If this conversation resonated with you, share it, talk about it, because in the world where privacy is being criminalized, silence helps no one. As Pavel mentioned at the end, the developers behind Samurai Wallet are facing real legal threats for nothing more than writing code that protects privacy.

If you want to support them, head over to p2prights.org. You can donate with Bitcoin or Fiat to the Legal Defense Fund. And to stay informed about this case and the broader fight for privacy and Bitcoin privacy in particular.

As Pavel recommended, follow Frank Corva of Bitcoin Magazine, Econo Alchemist, Diverter, and Max Tannehill. These are the people keeping the signal alive. Until next time, stay sovereign, stay curious, and stay unbounded.