Aztec Labs has revived zk.money three years after shutting the product down, relaunching the self-custodial wallet on Tuesday for private stablecoin transfers on Ethereum. The wallet lets users send and receive funds without publicly exposing balances, payment amounts, or recipients.
According to Aztec’s posts on X, users can claim a tag such as bob.zk.money. That tag resolves to a deposit address through the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS.
Aztec Labs CEO Joe Andrews said in a statement, "Onchain transactions between two individuals shouldn't mean publishing your financial history to the world."
Built on Aztec Network
The wallet runs on Aztec Network, which the company’s developer documentation describes as a privacy-first Ethereum layer-2. It operates as a separate network that ultimately settles back to Ethereum.
Its private functions run on the user’s own device, where zero-knowledge proofs are generated. Those proofs act as cryptographic receipts that confirm a transaction is valid without disclosing the underlying details.
What stays private and what does not
Aztec said private payments through zk.money come with clear limits. Deposits entering from Ethereum remain public, while payments made inside zk.money stay hidden.
Users can send USDC, USDT, or DAI from an exchange or an Ethereum wallet. Early caps also apply: transactions are limited to $2,500 each, and all users share a $50,000 daily deposit ceiling.
Because the wallet is self-custodial, Aztec said it cannot spend or freeze user funds. The company also said no privileged administrator controls the wallet.
zk.money’s earlier run and Aztec’s 2021 expansion
Aztec said the original zk.money launched in 2021 and attracted more than 75,000 wallets, with $100 million in volume. The team later shelved the product to focus on building its own network.
Also in 2021, Aztec raised $17 million in a funding round led by Paradigm. The company later expanded zk.money with Aztec Connect, a toolkit designed to plug its privacy technology into DeFi protocols.
Privacy is moving higher on Ethereum’s agenda
The relaunch comes as privacy takes a larger place in Ethereum development discussions. Developers are weighing proposals for next year’s Hegotá upgrade that would allow privacy pools to pay their own transaction fees without intermediaries.
In a post over the weekend, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said special-purpose apps could achieve "very strong privacy" through zero-knowledge proofs as part of his vision for a "cryptographic world computer."