Key Highlights

  • Aztec Labs acquired Obsidion, the team behind ZKPassport, a zero-knowledge identity protocol that uses NFC chips in government-issued passports from over 130 countries to verify attributes like age and nationality without exposing any underlying personal data.

  • ZKPassport co-founders Michael Elliot and Theo Madzou join Aztec Labs, which committed to keeping both the protocol and its iOS mobile app fully open-source while building new integration tooling for external developers.

  • More than 17,000 participants used ZKPassport during Aztec's community token sale to verify nationality and sanctions compliance, marking one of the largest real-world deployments of ZK-based identity verification to date.

Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion, the company behind ZKPassport, a privacy-preserving identity protocol that lets users prove personal attributes without revealing the underlying data stored in their government documents. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Obsidion co-founders Michael Elliot and Theo Madzou will join Aztec Labs to continue ZKPassport development and contribute to additional products within Aztec's privacy-focused stack.

ZKPassport works by scanning the NFC chips embedded in passports and government-issued IDs from over 130 countries, using the same chip-reading technology deployed at airport eGates. Rather than transmitting raw personal information, the application generates a zero-knowledge proof directly on the user's device that cryptographically confirms specific attributes, such as age, nationality, or proof of humanity, while keeping all biometric and documentary data stored locally. Only the resulting proof ever leaves the device.

The protocol has already seen meaningful traction. During Aztec's community token sale, over 17,000 participants used ZKPassport to satisfy nationality and sanctions compliance requirements, one of the largest production deployments of ZK-based identity verification on record. The tool has also processed identity verification for ticket holders at the Devconnect developer conference.

Aztec has committed to keeping both the ZKPassport protocol and its iOS mobile app open-source and plans to build additional tooling to reduce integration friction for developers. The acquisition comes as regulatory pressure around age and identity verification intensifies across multiple jurisdictions, positioning Aztec to offer a privacy-native compliance layer for applications requiring verified user attributes without constructing centralized data stores.