Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion, a deal meant to deepen the company's privacy technology stack. Along with the acquisition, Aztec pledged to keep ZKPassport, a project from Obsidion, as an open-source offering.
A privacy stack gets deeper
Aztec Labs builds tools for private transactions and smart contracts, often using zero-knowledge proofs. Obsidion had been working on ZKPassport, a system for privacy-preserving credentials that let users prove things about themselves without revealing extra data. Bringing those two sets of capabilities together gives Aztec a broader set of building blocks for developers who want to keep user data private.
The acquisition also adds Obsidion's team and their know-how in verifiable credentials. That's a growing area in both crypto and traditional identity systems, where the goal is to confirm facts without exposing the underlying information.
Open-source commitment
ZKPassport won't become proprietary. Aztec Labs said it will maintain the project as open-source. That means existing users and new developers can still access, fork, and contribute to the code. The company didn't say whether ZKPassport will eventually be folded into its own products or kept as a separate standalone tool. For now, the project stays under the same license it had before the deal.
The move fits Aztec's own track record. The company has released much of its own software under open-source terms, so keeping ZKPassport open aligns with that approach.
No timeline yet
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Aztec Labs has not said when it plans to integrate Obsidion's technology into its existing stack. ZKPassport remains available on its current repository, and the open-source pledge gives developers a clear signal that the project won't be locked up.
