Misha Komarov explains Shielded Bitcoin—a proposed ZK privacy protocol using Bitcoin PIPEs to hide transactions with no soft fork needed. This post Bitcoin Privacy Breakthrough a Zcash Killer? | Misha Komorov, Alloc Innit first a
Researchers have proposed a way to make Bitcoin private without changing Bitcoin itself. Misha Komarov, co-founder of alloc/init, explains Shielded Bitcoin: zero-knowledge proofs that hide the sender, receiver, and amount of a Bitcoin transfer, with no soft fork, no custodians, and no bridges. He covers how Bitcoin PIPEs make it possible and what the proposal still needs. It is a research proposal, not a finished product.
Chapters: 0:00 Shielded Bitcoin: Private Bitcoin Transactions With Zero-Knowledge Proofs 0:38 How Bitcoin PIPEs Make Privacy Possible Without a Soft Fork 1:42 Do Indexers and ZK Rollups Require Trust? 3:16 Shielded Bitcoin vs. Monero and Zcash 4:21 What Privacy Shielded Bitcoin Protects 5:59 How Private Are Early Users? The Small Privacy Set Problem 7:37 Is Shielded Bitcoin an Altcoin Killer? 9:12 Fees, Block Space, and Larger Shielded Transactions 10:50 Who Needs Private Bitcoin? Wrench Attacks and Corporate Treasuries 12:20 Dark Pools, Governments, and the Next Wave of Bitcoin Buyers