Why MWEBscan?
MWEB is Litecoin's privacy layer. But the way coins enter and leave it is public, and public data can be correlated. MWEBscan shows you exactly how, so you can stay private.
The short version
The MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB) hides amounts and addresses inside it. What it can't hide is the doorway: every peg-in (coins moving into MWEB) and peg-out (coins coming back out) happens on the normal Litecoin blockchain, in the clear: amount, address, block and time all visible.
That means a peg-out can sometimes be tied back to an earlier peg-in by matching amounts, timing, reused addresses, and known entities. A surveillance firm can do this quietly. MWEBscan does it in the open.
One engine, two faces
The same analysis points two directions:
- The privacy face (for you): "is this amount easy to single out? how big is my anonymity set? how do I blend in?" Check an amount, get a privacy score and live recommendations.
- The forensic face (the thing to defend against): linkable peg-outs, entity attribution, risk scores: the deanonymisation a Chainalysis-style firm would run, published so it isn't a secret weapon.
Publishing the surveillance is the privacy tool. You can't defend against an attack you can't see.
Who it's for
- Privacy-conscious users: pick amounts and timing that keep your anonymity set large before you peg in or out.
- Wallets & developers: integrate a client-side "is this peg safe?" check so users get nudged toward privacy (see the API).
- Researchers & journalists: an open, transparent view of how MWEB actually gets used.
- The simply curious: watch MWEB supply, flows and activity over time.
What it does (and doesn't) do
MWEBscan analyses only public Litecoin blockchain data. It cannot see anything inside MWEB; nobody can. Every link, attribution and score is a heuristic inference, never proof: a confidence estimate from public-side signals. Treat results as leads, not facts. See the methodology for exactly how each signal works and its limits.
Open by design
The code is open-source (AGPL-3.0). The point isn't to sell surveillance; it's to make the leak surface visible so the community can shrink it. The more people who use common amounts, mix inside MWEB, wait before pegging out, and avoid address reuse, the weaker every one of these heuristics becomes.