Alloc Init

Shielded Bitcoin | PIPEs

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Shielded Bitcoin: Private Transfers on Bitcoin L1

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Thanks for having us in Amsterdam, @bitcoinconfams team!

[Scott Odell @nevernotrunout]

Packed house at Bitcoin Amsterdam for @nemothenoone presenting our @allocinitxyz team’s latest work on Shielded Bitcoin & PIPEs!

We believe privacy will play a huge role in Bitcoin adoption and the security and resilience of its users.

It’s needed now more than ever. The risk surface is expanding, compounding with every new onchain tx staying public forever at a point in time where AI powered surveillance and attacks are becoming wildly more powerful. Add custody exploits and user data breaches — theft, coercion, and physical violence. Even in trading markets, adversarial behavior from unintended info leakage is costly and painful.

Luckily, everyone on our team loves math and solving puzzles. So we’ll be working hard on the cryptography to make Shielded Bitcoin a reality.

Huge thanks to the organizers and programming teams @bitcoinconfams @TheBitcoinConf for putting together such a killer conference!

Loved meeting everyone

Some highlights from Misha’s talk 👇

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Come learn about Shielded Bitcoin at Bitcoin Amsterdam @bitcoinconfams this Friday! 3:30p | Main stage

Misha Komarov @nemothenoone, Founder, CEO, and co-author of Shielded Bitcoin & PIPEs, will unpack how fully private transfers can be made possible on Bitcoin L1 without soft forks or trusted operators.

We’ll cover:
- Why privacy matters
- How cryptography fits in
- Zcash-style privacy on Bitcoin L1

📍 Friday, Nov 6 at 3:30 PM
📍 Main stage (Treasury stage)

Come find us around:
• @nemothenoone
• @nevernotrunout

[Matthew Vuk 🛳️ @matthewvuk2]

“The concept of witness encryption has been around for over ten years now. Why haven’t we done this before?”
- @mschofnegger @btcplusplus

Past schemes have been very inefficient. The breakthroughs by @allocinitxyz brought it down to ~1TB, and they believe it can go lower.

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

We’re excited about it, too!

Witness encryption is a powerful primitive that’s worth all the effort.

Over a dozen researchers on our team have been working relentlessly on this for a while now. We’re building upon years of existing WE research and leveraging the biggest advancements in ZK proof systems — which, similarly, were once thought impractical before becoming nearly ubiquitous. We believe WE can follow a similar path.

Follow along for our updated scheme and open challenges — attack the scheme and win some BTC bounties. Help us harden it.

Thanks @btcplusplus @niftynei @matthewvuk2 and their team for hosting bitcoin++ Privacy Edition in Seoul, Korea today! Find Markus @mschofnegger there.

[nifty, ideas guy @niftynei]

This is such an insane result from the @allocinitxyz team! 1TB for their PIPES ciphertexts is 👌

this is a huge improvement over their prior 333TB result

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Learn all about PIPEs, Shielded Bitcoin, and financial privacy on Bitcoin in this conversation with @_DannyKnowles!

[Danny Knowles @_DannyKnowles]

“We’re bringing Zcash-style privacy to Bitcoin without changing Bitcoin itself. No coordinators, no operators it���s all self-custodial.”

@nemothenoone & @ClaraShik join me to talk Shielded Bitcoin, their plan to make Bitcoin private.

We get into:
- How Bitcoin PIPEs & witness encryption work
- Why governments & institutions need privacy
- Building privacy tools after Samourai

Watch it here: https://t.co/fx4PXHx1SG

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Financial privacy on Bitcoin has long been limited, creating real trade-offs and challenges around what gets revealed — from multisig signers and counterparties to OTC activity and strategic intentions.

We’ll discuss why privacy matters, various solutions across the custody spectrum, and how they fit into corporate security and risk management.

Nov 4 @BitcoinForCorps in Amsterdam. The next day, we’ll present on Shielded Bitcoin @bitcoinconfams.

Find us there —
• @nemothenoone
• @nevernotrunout

[Bitcoin For Corporations @BitcoinForCorps]

📣 We’re hosting a panel about Privacy, Custody, Risk, and Securing Corporate Bitcoin at the BFC Symposium. 🟠

Catch everyone on November 4 at Pakhuis de Zwijger during Bitcoin Amsterdam 🇳🇱

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Shielded Bitcoin explained @btcplusplus in Berlin!

[bitcoin++ @ seoul, nov 5-6 🇰🇷 @btcplusplus]

Zcash-Style Private Payments on Bitcoin L1 https://t.co/bxsRbZF7Xl

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

We'll be in Amsterdam this coming week, kicking things off at Bitcoin Research Day '26 and sharing our latest work on Shielded Bitcoin, PIPEs, and Witness Encryption.

If you're attending, come meet the [[alloc] init] team to discuss the research, open questions, and what's next:

👉 Misha Komarov @nemothenoone — Founder [[alloc] init], co-author of Shielded Bitcoin & Bitcoin PIPEs

👉 Michel Abdalla @michelabdalla — Senior Cryptography Researcher, prev IACR President

👉 Clara Shikhelman @ClaraShik — Head of Protocol Research, co-author of Shielded Bitcoin, prev Head of Research at Chaincode Labs

👉 Patrick Towa @towa_patrick — Cryptography Researcher, formerly Head of Cryptography Research at Aztec

👉 Aleksei Moskvin @alalmoskvin — Protocol Engineer, co-author of Shielded Bitcoin

👉 Scott Odell @nevernotrunout — COO

Many thanks to hosts @2140_dev @ChaincodeLabs and everyone putting this event together!

See you there.

[Sergi Delgado ⚡ @sr_gi]

Curious about what Shielded Bitcoin is? You're lucky! The three authors of the paper will be at the Bitcoin Research Day in Amsterdam, Oct 27th.

But it gets better: one of the talks is precisely about this. Don't miss it, come hang with us (link in the next tweet).

[Bitcoin Dev Project @Bitcoin_Devs]

Shielded Bitcoin explained simply

1/3

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Listen to @mschofnegger talking to @btcinsider__ about the upcoming AADP WE paper update for PIPEs v2 and Shielded Bitcoin!

[bitcoin++ Insider Edition @btcinsider__]

Markus (@mschofnegger) explains the cryptography behind @allocinitxyz’s Shielded Bitcoin in five minutes: PIPEs, witness encryption, and MinRank.

He also previews two upcoming papers covering the vault’s peg-in/peg-out design and an updated witness encryption construction.

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Earlier this week, @bitcoinoptech spoke with Clara Shikhelman @ClaraShik for a technical walkthrough of Shielded Bitcoin & PIPEs.

The discussion covered protocol design, underlying cryptography, trust assumptions, and ongoing research.

Topics & timestamps:
1:57 – Introduction to Shielded Bitcoin
4:03 – Private transaction flow
6:00 – Nullifiers & double-spend prevention
6:46 – Verifications & indexers
8:49 – Designed for Bitcoin, not Zcash
9:41 – No new consensus, federations, operators
10:25 – Trust assumptions
11:00 – One-time setup
11:45 – Zcash's trusted setup
12:53 – Bitcoin PIPEs & real BTC
13:30 – PIPE vaulting: peg-in/out
14:12 – Spending actual BTC on L1
15:38 – PIPEs & witness encryption
16:46 – Cryptanalysis efforts
18:08 – Community response & feedback
19:46 – Come contribute, attack the scheme
20:35 – Using with other systems

[Bitcoin Optech @bitcoinoptech]

Clara Shikhelman (@ClaraShik) and Elias Rohrer (@_tnull) joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #426:

News
● Dynamic one-byte message type IDs for BIP324 (45:02)
● Discussion of conventions for tagged hash tags in BIPs (49:04)
● Proposal for onchain, private bitcoin transfers with no consensus changes (1:15)

Releases and release candidates
● Bitcoin Core 32.0rc3 (53:34)

● Core Lightning 26.06.9 (54:38)
● LDK v0.3-rc3 (23:38)
● LDK v0.2.7 (24:33)
● BTCPay Server 2.4.5 (56:55)

Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #36277 (59:51)
● Bitcoin Core #36365 (1:05:09)
● Bitcoin Core #36338 (1:07:53)
● Bitcoin Core #32895 (1:10:38)
● Core Lightning #9582 (1:12:38)
● Eclair #3390 (1:18:03)
● LDK #5057 (33:00)
● LDK #5042 (35:55)
● LDK #5046 (38:25)
● LDK #5028 (41:43)
● LND #11290 (1:20:41)

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

In Lugano for @LuganoPlanB next week? Come say hello at Bitcoin Research After Hours on Oct 25!

Join us after BitDevs for a relaxed evening of conversation, food, and drinks with fellow Bitcoin developers, researchers, cryptographers, and builders.

We'll also be at BitDevs from 5pm, sharing more about Shielded Bitcoin and PIPEs. Come find us there.

Register: https://t.co/ESE4OYz9fU

Hosted by @allocinitxyz & @MARAFoundation_ ���

[Bitcoin Optech @bitcoinoptech]

Misha Komarov (@nemothenoone) posted to Delving Bitcoin about a proposal for a new metaprotocol built on top of Bitcoin, called Shielded Bitcoin, that would enable private transfers while requiring no changes in consensus...
https://t.co/Z043wvzyLx

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Live Q&A ongoing. Come listen and chime into the ongoing conversation with @peterktodd @zkchesterton @nemothenoone @ClaraShik @isabelfoxenduke and many more.

[bitcoin++ Insider Edition @btcinsider__]

LIVE NOW: Q+A with the @allocinitxyz team about Shielded Bitcoin and PIPESv2

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Today at 2p ET — come listen, learn, and ask questions. Our cryptography research + protocol design teams will share the latest on Witness Encryption, Bitcoin PIPEs, and Shielded Bitcoin.

[Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ @isabelfoxenduke]

The team at @allocinitxyz is working on some of the most ambitious cryptography in the world — with potentially game-changing implications for Bitcoin bridging, vaults and covenant-emulation.

I'll be diving deep into their Shielded Bitcoin and PIPEs research on X space with @MARAFoundation_ and a panel of incredible Bitcoin voices TODAY at 2pm ET.

Don't miss X space here 👉 https://t.co/RsURKsxkxy

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Tune in!

[MARA Foundation @MARAFoundation_]

TODAY at 2pm ET

MARA Foundation is co-hosting a discussion with @allocinitxyz, the team behind the new Shielded Bitcoin protocol & PIPEs.

We'll unpack their recent announcement, gauge progress on PIPEs, and address key questions from the community on its viability for both covenants and privacy — without a soft fork.

https://t.co/6SpqR74Php

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Come talk, listen and ask questions about Bitcoin PIPEs v2, AADP WE and Shielded Bitcoin this Tuesday!

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Enjoy this Q&A with @btcinsider__ asking the biggest questions about Shielded Bitcoin & PIPEs. We address those questions here:

https://t.co/wPw4S4TuNw

[bitcoin++ Insider Edition @btcinsider__]

Can witness encryption really get us private bitcoin? We sat down with @clarashik, to clarify where @allocinitxyz research's stands today, and what still needs to be demonstrated https://t.co/10rsEVB3Lr

[Alloc Init @allocinitxyz]

Shielded Bitcoin: Private Transfers on Bitcoin L1