Aztec Labs, the team building Ethereum’s programmable privacy Layer 2, has acquired Obsidion and committed to maintaining the ZKPassport protocol and its iOS application as open-source software.
ZKPassport lets users verify their identity using government-issued IDs without actually exposing the sensitive data on those documents. The protocol accomplishes this through zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic technique that lets one party prove a statement is true without revealing the underlying information.
What ZKPassport actually does, and why Aztec wants it
In the blockchain world, one of the most persistent headaches is Sybil attacks, where a single person creates thousands of fake accounts to game airdrops, governance votes, or token sales. ZKPassport offers a privacy-preserving solution to this problem. It can verify that a user is a real, unique human without collecting or storing their personal data.
ZKPassport was integrated into the Aztec ecosystem starting around June 2025, serving as the human verification layer on the project’s testnet. The goal was straightforward: make sure each participant was a genuine person, not a bot farm operator running scripts from a data center.
