bitcoin idealist helping bring cryptography wizardry where its needed (₿) | @allocinitxyz coo @aloharockgym founder/owner, prev @fabriccrypto @blockchain @citi
Hawaii, USA
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If you're in NYC, come learn about Shielded Bitcoin tonight! @ClaraShik, head of protocol research and author of Shielded Bitcoin, will present on our paper published today.
Hot! 🔥 Tonight at BitDevs, @ClaraShik will present the amazing work AllocInit has just published (today!) about private bitcoin transfers without consensus changes.
RSVP on meetup or luma:
meetup.com/bitdevsnyc/events…
luma.com/4l4jywq0
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Scott Odell retweeted
JUST IN: Researchers propose framework for private transfers on Bitcoin without a need for a soft fork 👀
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The world can have both with different trade-offs.
We designed Shielded Bitcoin for maximum privacy and alignment with Bitcoin L1.
It's architecture diverges from existing privacy protocols in various ways. We've optimized for *not* relying on trusted operators, soft forks, separate consensus, and client-side validation.
We're doing this with non-interactive conditional spending vaults via PIPES to supersede traditional bridge models that inherit operators and multi-sig.
But this comes at the expense of higher computation costs due to complex cryptography. Our research and implementation team is working on improving that. I've updated our blog post on PIPEs v2 to give the latest on ciphertext size reductions!
Here:
app.notion.com/p/allocinit/B…
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Thanks for having us on @isabelfoxenduke!
Enjoy this conversation with @isabelfoxenduke, @nemothenoone, and @ClaraShik discussing Shielded Bitcoin and PIPEs v2. Thanks for having us on, Isabel.
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cryptography, not committees
RESEARCHERS PROPOSE “SHIELDED BITCOIN” FOR PRIVATE TRANSFERS DIRECTLY ON BITCOIN L1
The proposed metaprotocol by @allocinitxyz would hide transaction amounts and counterparties without a soft fork, new blockchain, trusted operators or bridges.
Value is represented through encrypted “notes,” with transfers published to Bitcoin alongside zero-knowledge proofs verifying their validity.
Bitcoin itself only stores and orders the encrypted data, while separate software verifies the proofs and independently derives the Shielded Bitcoin state.
A companion paper will detail how bitcoin can enter and exit the shielded system using L1 security vaults via PIPEs.
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Scott Odell retweeted
No soft forks, no bridges, no operators, just Bitcoin.
We’ve put a lot of work into thinking carefully about the security of Shielded Bitcoin and about what information the protocol reveals. And this is just the beginning!
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We've been cooking on this for quite a while. Excited to contribute this to the conversion about making Bitcoin private, without changing Bitcoin.
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Prob no place more fitting to discuss economics and Bitcoin
Where Austrian economists argued for decades in favor of sound money, separating state from money, and voluntary participation over coercion
Vienna 🇦🇹🔥
🙌 @btcplusplus @niftynei
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Scott Odell retweeted
In case you missed it in Vegas, here is our full preso including slides from @TheBitcoinConf.
We discuss what PIPEs are all about and how witness encryption can be used to enforce arbitrary logic on Bitcoin.
This means: trustless vaults, covenants, and non-interactive ZKPs on Bitcoin without protocol changes or trusted parties.
Also, we discuss getting rid of multi-sigs using PIPEs.
piped.video/watch?v=jPTa3gZL…
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Scott Odell retweeted
Today we announce: AADP WE Open Challenges.
Recently we proposed a new witness encryption scheme based on Arithmetic Affine Determinant Programs which we intend to use in Bitcoin PIPEs v2, unlocking a wide range of applications and eliminating the need for trusted parties.
Now we invite anyone to break small instances of our new scheme or to discover structural properties that were unknown before.
Details here:
allocinit.notion.site/challe…
Special thanks to @zeroknowledgefm @zkproof @IACReurocrypt for organizing the conference week in Rome that we're announcing these at in person.
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Scott Odell retweeted
If you’re in Rome for @IACReurocrypt, come learn about Bitcoin PIPEs v2 and AADP Witness Encryption this Saturday, May 9!
Head of Cryptography Research, Handan Kilinc Alper (@HandanKAlper) from our team will present PIPEs v2 at CTB ’26 this Saturday.
4:50 pm | CTB 2026 (ctb-workshop.org)
→ Sapienza University of Rome | Aula II (Classroom II). Enter via Scienze Statistiche Entrance of building CU002. University map: eurocrypt.iacr.org/2026/file…
Come learn and ask questions. See you there!
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It's been over a year and half of seeing these teammates (and many others who couldn't make this trip) working so absurdly hard, creatively, ambitiously together
Stoke level of getting together IRL finally: 💯💯💯
We made it to Rome!
Find us at zkSummit14, ZKProof, and Eurocrypt from May 7-14 sharing our latest research on Witness Encryption and Bitcoin PIPEs.
Come say hi if you see us around; @nevernotrunout, @HandanKAlper, @michelabdalla, @levs57, @towa_patrick, @mschofnegger, and others are here for the conferences and our cryptography research team offsite.
And if you see Michel (@michelabdalla) please wish him a big congrats — he just received the RSAC Test of Time Award. We'll definitely be celebrating this!
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Made it to Rome for zkSummit14!
You’ll find our team from @alloc_init_ around the event and @levs57 presenting on AADP Witness Encryption at 11a.
Yeeeeewwww! grazie grazie @zeroknowledgefm @AnnaRRose
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Clara and I already found out we have a few things in common, one of them being that we think too much.
I mean but actually, is that really an issue? We're psyched on cryptography, PIPEs, and thinking through what we can build. It's going to be a fun journey.
Grateful to have you on the team @ClaraShik!! 💯💯💯
We're incredibly thrilled to welcome Clara Shikhelman (@ClaraShik) to our team at [[alloc] init]!
Clara joins as Head of Protocol Research, where she'll lead our efforts to design novel Bitcoin protocols using PIPEs. Driven by a shared conviction that cryptography and PIPEs-based protocols will expand Bitcoin's capabilities, she is excited to introduce new possibilities for builders and deliver real value for users.
Previously Head of Research at @ChaincodeLabs, she led research across Bitcoin and the Lightning Network — including foundational work on jamming attack mitigations, quantum computing risks to Bitcoin, and bridging academic research with open source development. Her background includes a PhD in Mathematics from Tel Aviv University, underpinning a research approach that combines rigorous theory with practical systems design.
Her research and publications can be found at: clarashk.github.io
Her work has been featured in @BitcoinMagazine, @PresidioBitcoin, @CoinDesk, and elsewhere.
Welcome, Clara — we're excited to build with you.
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Find me and @levs57 sippin espresso, eating pizza, and talking ZK x WE mythical creatures at zkSummit14 🤝
Excited to sponsor this event after having sponged @zeroknowledgefm for a number of years now, thanks y’all!
What might practical Witness Encryption actually look like? Come find out this Thursday at zkSummit14 in Rome.
At 11:00 AM, @levs57 from [[alloc] init] will present our latest research covering the first plausibly implementable WE scheme in his talk:
“Towards Practical Witness Encryption from Arithmetic Affine Determinant Programs”
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Scott Odell retweeted
Vegas folks! We’ll be presenting the latest on Bitcoin PIPEs v2 at @btcplusplus, Hoover Dam edition.
We’ll cover PIPEs and how we’re using them to bypass governance paralysis.
We’ll be explaining how to cryptographically emulate missing opcodes on Bitcoin L1 — eg OP_CSFS, OP_VAULT and others — enabling covenants, non-interactive ZKPs, and advanced functionality without protocol changes.
Come hang out and ask questions.
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lotta Bitcoin brainpower buzzin at @OPNEXT2026 today
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Scott Odell retweeted
Ready to talk about Bitcoin’s governance paralysis problem at @OPNEXT?
We’ll be there to talk about bypassing it, cryptographically.
Presenting PIPEs v2:
• witness encryption made practical
• emulating missing opcodes
• enabling covenants and ZKPs
• advanced functionality on L1
Fully compatible with existing consensus rules. No soft forks. No multi-sigs.
But still a lot of hard work to do — and we’ll talk about that. See you there!
T-15 hours until Bitcoin takes over NYC.
Join @nemothenoone and dozens of other BTC developers tomorrow on our livestream!
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Scott Odell retweeted
Misha Komarov (@nemothenoone), Erik De Smedt (@erikdesmedt), and @arbedout joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #393:
News
● Recent OP_RETURN output statistics (45:54)
● Bitcoin PIPEs v2 (1:33)
Changes to services and client software
● Second releases hArk-based Ark software (20:21)
● Amboss announces RailsX (55:35)
● Nunchuk adds silent payment support (56:11)
● Electrum adds submarine swap features (58:08)
● Sigbash v2 announced (33:56)
Releases and release candidates
● BTCPay Server 2.3.5 (1:00:11)
● LND 0.20.1-beta (1:01:43)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #33965 (1:02:55)
● Eclair #3248 (1:05:55)
● Eclair #3246 (1:07:08)
● LDK #4335 (1:08:52)
● LDK #4318 (1:14:32)
● LND #10542 (1:15:55)
● BIPs #1670 (1:17:02)
● BOLTs #1236 (1:27:50)
● BOLTs #1289 (1:29:10)
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Probably overexplained it, but here’s our technical overview of PIPEs v2 on Delving Bitcoin.
Core idea: enforce arbitrary conditions off-chain and let Bitcoin simply verify a signature on-chain.
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