Aztec Labs has relaunched zk.money, a self-custodial wallet for sending crypto without publishing balances, amounts or counterparties on a public ledger. It went live on Tuesday on Aztec Network, the company’s Ethereum layer 2.
The original version ran from 2021 until 2023, when Aztec shut it down to concentrate on building the network. By then it had passed 75,000 unique wallets and more than $100 million in transaction volume, The Block reported. Chief executive Joe Andrews said the closure was about the limits of the old infrastructure, not a lack of demand. A payment between two people, he argued, should not mean publishing one’s financial history to the world.
The new wallet swaps long addresses for handles such as bob.zk.money, can be funded directly from Ethereum exchanges and runs on the web or locally. A mobile app and DeFi integrations are promised for the fourth quarter, without firm dates.
Aztec Labs says it cannot access, move or freeze user funds. That is the selling point, and it is also the feature regulators have objected to most in earlier privacy tools.
The company has raised $125 million, including a $100 million Series B from a16z crypto and Paradigm in 2022.
The timing puts the old argument back on the table. This week CoinDesk reported that attackers behind the Bitget hack had moved about $4 million into Zcash’s shielded pool to make the funds harder to trace.
Aztec has not set out publicly how zk.money would respond to that kind of flow, whether through deposit limits, screening or anything else. That answer, more than the handles, will decide how long this version lasts.
