Aztec Labs acquires ZKPassport maker Obsidion as age verification pressure mounts
Blockchain privacy company Aztec Labs Ltd. announced today that it has acquired Obsidion Labs Ltd., the British startup behind zero-knowledge identity protocol ZKPassport.
The deal comes as governments in the U.K., Australia and parts of the U.S. move to force online platforms to verify user ages without giving them a workable way to do it. Terms were not disclosed.
ZKPassport lets a user prove a single attribute, age, nationality or sanctions status, by reading the near-field communication chip inside their passport or national ID card. Nothing leaves the phone. The platform receiving the proof learns only what it asked, not the underlying document data and the protocol covers IDs from more than 130 countries.
The model cuts against how most identity verification works today, which is to ship a scan of someone’s passport to a third-party vendor and hope it stays there. It usually doesn’t. The Identity Theft Resource Center counted 780 data compromises in the first quarter of 2026 alone, exposing personal information belonging to almost 140 million people.
