Bitcoin going Shielded Bitcoin in 2026, is like Zcash going Shielded Zcash in 2016. 👀
zcash:native
The "Shielded Bitcoin" paper is a great step forward. More privacy on Bitcoin is good for everyone.
Fun fact: Zerocoin, the paper behind Zcash, was first proposed for Bitcoin in 2013. The Bitcoin community passed on it, as zero-knowledge proofs were still immature.
But the solution the paper presents is not competition for Zcash:
- It uses a trusted setup
- There's no consensus enforcement
- No trustless light clients
- Its bridge, usually the most hacked part of these designs, isn't specified yet
- Bitcoin L1 transaction fees
- It doesn't have a >$7B shielded pool with millions of transactions to hide in
- It's a paper. Zcash has ~10 years in production, pioneered ZK proofs in production, and has the wallets, audits, and hardware support.
More broadly: privacy works best when built into the base layer. Not requiring Bitcoin changing is this design's biggest selling point, and also its biggest drawback.
We're rooting for more privacy on Bitcoin. Financial privacy isn't zero-sum.