Bitcoin researchers target privacy coins with Zcash-style shielded transfers

Bitcoin researchers have proposed a system for private transfers directly on the network without requiring a soft fork or changes to its consensus rules. The Sept. 24 paper from [[alloc] init] researchers Clara Shikhelman, Mikhail Komarov, and Aleksei Moskvin introduces Shielded Bitcoin, a metaprotocol designed to conceal transaction amounts, senders, recipients, and links between transfers while…