Aztec Labs Acquires ZKPassport, Maintains Open Source Commitment

ChainCatcher report, according to The Block, Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion, the company behind the open-source privacy authentication tool ZKPassport. Its co-founders, Michael Elliot and Theo Madzou, along with their team, will join Aztec Labs to continue developing ZKPassport and related applications. Aztec Labs is building the Ethereum privacy Layer 2 network, Aztec Network, and raised approximately $60 million worth of ETH through its AZTEC token sale last year, in addition to securing around $125 million in venture capital funding. ZKPassport enables users to read passports or government-issued IDs via mobile NFC, generate cryptographic signatures locally, and verify attributes such as age, nationality, and “real person” identity without exposing full personal data. It has already been used for ticketing at Devconnect and compliance verification in Aztec community token sales. Aztec has stated that it will continue to keep the ZKPassport protocol and iOS app open source.