Researchers publish Shielded Bitcoin design specification enabling private transfers by hiding senders, receivers, and amounts.
Tech & Launches ·
Researchers at a Bitcoin cryptography developer published a specification for Shielded Bitcoin, a protocol enabling private transfers on Bitcoin's base layer by hiding senders, receivers, and amounts using encrypted notes and zero-knowledge proofs without requiring changes to Bitcoin's consensus rules. The 56-page design, published September 24, 2026 by Clara Shikhelman, Mikhail Komarov, and Aleksei Moskvin, records transfers as data on Bitcoin while separate software verifies proofs and rebuilds the shielded state. The specification does not cover how Bitcoin enters and exits the shielded system, with those mechanisms deferred to a separate paper based on earlier research called Bitcoin PIPEs v2.