Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion, the team behind ZKPassport, a zero-knowledge identity verification protocol that proves age and nationality without storing personal data on centralized servers.
Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion, the team behind ZKPassport, a privacy-preserving identity verification protocol built on zero-knowledge cryptography, according to a press release published Wednesday.
Obsidion co-founders Michael Elliot and Theo Madzou join Aztec Labs along with their team. The acquisition brings ZKPassport’s production-ready identity verification system into Aztec’s ecosystem as the protocol expands across consumer and enterprise use cases.
ZKPassport enables users to prove age, nationality, and proof of humanity without uploading personal data to any central server.
The protocol reads NFC chips embedded in passports and government IDs from over 130 countries—using the same technology as airport eGates—to verify document authenticity.
Only cryptographic proofs leave a user’s device; the underlying personal data remains stored locally. Users disclose only the information required for a given service, eliminating the data honeypots that centralized verification systems create.
ZKPassport Scale
The protocol is already deployed at scale. During the Aztec Network token sale, more than 17,000 participants used ZKPassport to verify nationalities and compliance with sanctions restrictions. Hundreds of attendees across 11 Latin American countries used ZKPassport at Devconnect to claim discounted tickets.
Aztec Labs plans to keep both the ZKPassport protocol and iOS app open source. ZKPassport proofs can be generated in-browser and on mobile devices, and verified server-side for non-blockchain use cases or on-chain on the Aztec Network, Ethereum, and any EVM-compatible chain.
The acquisition grants Aztec Labs the infrastructure and product resources to scale ZKPassport from an open-source project into default infrastructure for online identity verification.
Data breaches exposed the personal information of nearly 140 million people in Q1 2026 alone, according to the announcement. ZKPassport provides platforms a verification mechanism that complies with government mandates without building surveillance infrastructure or creating centralized targets for exploitation
