SECURITY

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.

“The Obsidion team has built something rare: a privacy product that meets real-world verification requirements without exposing user data,” said Aztec Labs Chief Executive Joe Andrews. “Proving attributes without revealing personal data is what verification infrastructure should look like everywhere, especially with the growing desire from governments to implement age verification standards online.”

Obsidion co-founders Michael Elliot and Theo Madzou will join Aztec Labs along with the rest of the team. They will continue developing ZKPassport while leading new consumer product initiatives within the studio.

“Every identity verification system built today requires users to surrender personal data to a centralized service and trust that it will never be misused or breached,” Elliot said. “That model has failed repeatedly and regulatory frameworks are forcing the industry to find a better answer. ZKPassport solves this by letting users prove only what’s required, without exposing the underlying personal data.”

Aztec Labs said it will continue to maintain the ZKPassport protocol and iOS mobile app as open-source projects and will build additional tools to make integration easier for outside developers. ZKPassport proofs can be verified in-browser and server-side for non-blockchain use cases or on the Aztec Network, Ethereum or any Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chain.

The company, which was spun out of the team that built the Aztec Network, a Layer 2 blockchain on Ethereum that handles transactions privately, has raised $125 million. That included a $100 million Series B round in December 2022 that was led by a16z crypto and Paradigm.

Image: ZKPassport