Stacks Founder: Bitcoin Privacy Can Come From Layers, Not the Base Chain

Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali says Bitcoin will not — and should not — gain privacy features directly at its base layer, proposing instead that confidential transactions be built on an execution layer sitting above the original blockchain. "We're not going to get privacy directly at the Bitcoin base layer, nor do I think we should, because Bitcoin supply should be auditable," Ali said.

The distinction matters for how the architecture would work in practice. On an execution layer above Bitcoin, selected transaction details could be hidden from public view while users retain the ability to verify the underlying monetary supply. "You should be able to audit that this is the total number of coins in circulation," Ali stated. "But you can absolutely have confidential transactions on the execution layer. Nothing is stopping you from doing it. So that's also on our roadmap."

What does the roadmap change for builders?

Stacks operates as a network on top of Bitcoin, designed to make BTC programmable, faster and cheaper to use. Ali framed privacy as one of three priority areas where the network intends to contribute. The other two are:

• Making Bitcoin productive through yield-generating applications.
• Preparing for the threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin's cryptography.

For developers, the privacy commitment signals that confidentiality features would arrive as application-layer tooling rather than through a base-layer soft fork — a materially different path, since base-layer changes require broad consensus among Bitcoin's stakeholders while execution-layer features do not.

A compressed quantum timeline

On quantum risk, Ali argued that advances in artificial intelligence could accelerate the threat schedule. He pointed to 2029 as a more appropriate target for preparedness than 2030 — the year earmarked by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

His reasoning is operational, not theoretical. Bitcoin, he said, will need at least a couple of years to ship any protocol upgrade. Disputes over the dormant coins held by pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto could make any migration contentious, adding governance friction on top of engineering time. Starting two years before the deadline leaves little margin.

Ali also called for strengthening Bitcoin's underlying software more broadly, arguing that open-source systems become more secure as more developers examine the code and hunt for vulnerabilities.

Lessons from the Binance incident

The interview also addressed the recent Binance hack, in which attackers stole $6.3 billion. Ali praised the exchange's handling of the crisis but warned that AI-assisted attacks could expose weaknesses in existing systems, making stronger AI-based defenses necessary — a defensive-offensive arms race rather than a one-time fix.

More than half of the stolen funds were frozen on-chain after the incident. The FBI attributed the attack to North Korean-linked actors. Officials in Pyongyang have denied involvement and accused the United States of attempting provocation.

An unproven combination at scale

The proposed approach would preserve Bitcoin's defining property — the ability to independently verify its 21-million-coin monetary supply — while allowing applications built above the network to offer greater transaction privacy. That separation is the core of the pitch: auditability at the base, confidentiality at the layer above.

Whether Stacks or comparable projects can deliver that combination at scale remains an open question. For now, confidential transactions sit on the roadmap with no announced ship date, and the 2029 quantum-preparedness target gives the ecosystem a fixed horizon against which progress — or its absence — will be measurable.