Aztec Labs has relaunched zk.money on the Aztec Network, bringing back its private payment wallet after a three-year absence and offering users self-custody of their funds. Summary The original zk.money served more than 75,000 unique wallets and processed $100 million in volume before it was retired in 2023. Aztec Labs says the new wallet keeps balances, transfer amounts, and transaction parties off the public ledger. Users can request payments through links and receive funds through readable zk.money handles. The wallet runs on Aztec Network, the company’s privacy-focused Ethereum layer-2. In a Sep. 29 announcement shared with crypto.news, Aztec Labs said that users can access the relaunched wallet through the zk.money website or a frontend run on their own device. A mobile app is planned, while the website is available for users to claim a handle now. The company said zk.money hides wallet balances, payment amounts, and the parties to a transfer from the public ledger. Users also control who can interact with their tag, according to the announcement. For payments, the wallet replaces long Ethereum addresses with names such as bob.zk.money. Users can send or request funds by sharing a link, and Aztec Labs said the tags use Ethereum Name Service technology that resolves wherever ENS CCIP is supported. zk.money offers private transfers with user-held funds On Ethereum’s public ledger, an address can expose its balance and transaction history to anyone who looks it up. Aztec Labs said zk.money gives account holders a way to make payments without publishing those details. “Onchain transactions between two individuals shouldn’t mean publishing your financial history to the world,” Joe Andrews, CEO of Aztec Labs, said in the announcement. He described zk.money as a wallet where users retain control of their financial history. Aztec Labs also said people can send funds to zk.money tags directly from exchanges on Ethereum. For a U.S. user holding crypto on an exchange, the feature provides a route to a private wallet if the exchange supports sending the relevant asset to the tag. The announcement did not name participating exchanges or specify which assets they support. According to the company, zk.money uses self-custodial wallets and immutable smart contracts, with no privileged administrator role that can move or freeze a user’s funds. The distinction matters to anyone transferring assets from an exchange account: after the transfer, Aztec Labs says control of the funds rests with the wallet holder. The release describes future connections with Ethereum decentralized finance protocols, but it does not announce a specific integration. For now, the stated payment options are links, zk.money tags, and transfers from Ethereum exchanges. Aztec Network provides the wallet’s private transaction layer The first zk.money launched in 2021 and reached more than 75,000 unique wallets, with $100 million in transaction volume, according to Aztec Labs. The company retired it in 2023 while it worked on the infrastructure for a general-purpose private network. The returning wallet runs on that network rather than the original product’s infrastructure. In July, crypto.news covered Aztec’s v5 alpha release, which introduced a system for applications to use private and public data within the same Ethereum layer-2 environment. Aztec Labs said the design performs private computations on a user’s device and submits cryptographic proofs for verification without revealing the underlying transaction details. The v5 release also described how applications could combine confidential user information with public blockchain activity. Aztec presented that capability as a way for developers to build private smart contracts, including applications that interact with shared financial services. Separately, in May, the company acquired ZKPassport’s identity tools and said its app and code would remain open source. ZKPassport lets users prove selected details from an identity document without disclosing the entire document. Its tools had been used for sanctions checks during Aztec’s December 2025 token sale, according to the earlier report. Aztec Labs has not announced a ZKPassport feature in the relaunched zk.money wallet. Earlier Aztec products faced separate contract incidents The relaunch follows security investigations involving older Aztec products. In June, Aztec Labs investigated a $2 million transfer from an immutable contract tied to a discontinued payments product launched in 2021. At the time, the Aztec Foundation said the affected product had no links to smart contracts for the current Aztec Network or the AZTEC token. Aztec Labs said it held no administrator keys for the old system and could not pause or upgrade its contract. Days earlier, an attacker had drained about $2.1 million from a separate, retired product called Aztec Connect, according to coverage of the exploit. Aztec Labs said users and assets on the current network were unaffected by that incident. Aztec Labs said the two exploited contracts belonged to deprecated products and were separate from the current Aztec Network. The relaunched zk.money runs on that network and was not affected by either incident. For the new zk.money, Aztec Labs again describes the absence of a privileged administrator as a feature of its self-custodial design. Users can reach the wallet through the web interface or a locally run frontend, while the company says a mobile app will follow.
