Kaspa Privacy Initiative — Development Update Following my conversation with @michaelsuttonil, we set out to test whether Kaspa's Based Apps and KIP-21 could provide the foundation for a shielded native KAS protocol. The feasibility PoC on TN10 is now complete! Across PRs #31–33, we've demonstrated: ✅ Real Kaspa L1 lane ordering ✅ Execution with cryptographic ZK proofs ✅ Proof-based settlement accepted by Kaspa ✅ Rejection of deliberately omitted operations ✅ State reconstruction and successful native KAS withdrawal after executor downtime This is a significant step forward. Rather than building our own transaction-ordering infrastructure, we can potentially build on capabilities already available in Kaspa. We've also added a new design principle in PR #34: future protocol upgrades should preserve users' access to their funds and aim to enable privacy-preserving migration between versions. Now comes the part we've been working towards: actual financial privacy. Our next milestone is a shielded payment cycle: Alice deposits native test-KAS, privately pays Bob, and Bob withdraws native test-KAS. We'll begin by designing the private notes, commitments, nullifiers and ZK proof rules needed to make that possible. The Based App PoC demonstrates technical feasibility within its tested scope. It is not yet a privacy protocol, an independently audited system or a final architecture decision. But we're moving from proving the infrastructure to building the privacy layer itself. All research remains open source. Technical feedback and contributions are welcome! github.com/olafweller/kaspa-…