The project repository will have no further updates.
Unlike Samourai, JoinMarket did not close due to legal pressure but rather due to lack of active development.
The JoinMarket project released its version 0.9.12 as the final version on April 22. Its GitHub repository will be archived indefinitely: the code will remain available for download, but the team will not make any further updates and cannot guarantee that the software is safe to use without an independent audit.
The announcement was made by AdamISZ, one of its main developers, in the release notes themselves. The closure did not come due to a court order or direct regulatory pressure. The project is archived due to exhaustion: It had been a while without active development and the team made the decision not to continue.
JoinMarket is an implementation of CoinJoin for Bitcoin that operates without a central coordinator. Unlike other similar tools, it works like a market: makerswhich offer liquidity; and the takersthat They pay small commissions to mix transactions and make them difficult to trace on the chain. This decentralized architecture differentiated it from the rest of the privacy solutions available until now.
The final version includes a relevant security fix: a DoS attack vector in the verification of commitments that allowed its continuous reuse and exposed UTXO information of the makers against a persistent attacker. Also adds support for Bitcoin Core 30.0.
The team mentions in the final release notes that joinmarket-ng now exists as an alternative reimplementation under active developmentbut expressly clarifies that this is not a recommendation and that the use of any similar software is the user’s responsibility.
JoinMarket goes through the door that Samourai and Wasabi did not use
JoinMarket exit has an important difference Regarding previous closures in the privacy ecosystem Bitcoin, since it is not related to regulatory actions or judicial sanctions.
In May 2024, Wasabi suspended its CoinJoin service alleging lack of legal certainty in the United Stateswhile Samourai was directly intervened by the US government, whose agents arrested its founders accusing them of allowing money laundering through their Whirlpool mixing service. Trezor also disabled its CoinJoin feature in that same wave to avoid legal sanctions.
The FBI even warned users about possible consequences if they operated with Bitcoin platforms that did not apply KYC protocolsin the context of a broader regulatory crusade against privacy tools. Although JoinMarket survived that moment, what it did not resist now was the passage of time.
The JoinMarket file thus formalizes the end of its development and maintenance, with a final version that introduces security and compatibility fixes, but without planned continuity. The repository will remain available in its current state. With this, the non-custodial CoinJoin tool space without a central coordinator is, for now, reduced to that project and a few other minor implementations.