Aztec Labs relaunched its private stablecoin wallet zk.money three years after shelving it, running it on Aztec Network, a privacy-first Ethereum layer-2. Payments inside the wallet stay hidden behind zero-knowledge proofs, but early transaction and deposit caps limit how much users can move.
Aztec Labs brought zk.money back from the dead Tuesday, relaunching the self-custodial wallet on its privacy-first Ethereum layer-2 network, Aztec Network, three years after pulling the plug. The wallet lets users send and receive stablecoins without broadcasting balances, amounts, or recipients.
Private tags hide payments, not deposits
Users claim a tag such as bob.zk.money, which resolves through the Ethereum Name Service to a deposit address, according to Aztec's posts on X. Deposits from Ethereum remain public, Aztec noted, while payments made inside zk.money stay hidden. Users can send USDC, USDT or DAI from an exchange or Ethereum wallet.
Aztec Labs CEO Joe Andrews said "Onchain transactions between two individuals shouldn't mean publishing your financial history to the world" in a statement.
Built to run without an operator
Private functions run on the user's own device, which generates zero-knowledge proofs — cryptographic receipts that confirm a transaction is valid without revealing its details. Because the wallet is self-custodial, Aztec says it can't spend or freeze user funds, and no privileged administrator controls it.
Early caps, a bigger track record
Transactions are capped at $2,500 each during the early rollout, and all users share a $50,000 daily deposit ceiling. The original zk.money debuted in 2021 and drew more than 75,000 wallets and $100 million in volume, Aztec said, before the team shelved it to build its own network. Back in 2021, Aztec raised $17 million in a Paradigm-led round and expanded zk.money with Aztec Connect, a toolkit for plugging its privacy tech into DeFi protocols.
Privacy climbs Ethereum's agenda
The relaunch comes as privacy climbs Ethereum's agenda. Developers are weighing proposals for next year's Hegotá upgrade that would let privacy pools pay their own transaction fees without intermediaries. In a weekend post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said special-purpose apps could gain very strong privacy through zero-knowledge proofs, as part of his cryptographic world computer vision.
Source: Decrypt
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