Noir
22 Mar
## min read

Zero-knowledge gaming with BattleZips x Noir

BattleZips and Noir partnered up for zero-knowledge gaming, showcasing encrypted gameplay on the blockchain.

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Building games of imperfect information with Aztec’s Noir language

Noir was conceived of as an open-source, universal zero knowledge language. It was always meant to make the experience of developing in zero-knowledge much more accessible, by:

  • having simple to read syntax that’s easy to reason about
  • abstracting away cryptographic concepts and security considerations
  • incorporating cryptographic libraries for commonly used crypto primitives

So when we heard about the Mach34 team and their work on BattleZips — a Battleship clone relying on zero-knowledge — we knew we had to work together.We met the Mach34 team after they placed at the ETHDenver 2022 hackathon with a Circom-written version of the classic Hasbro game Battleship.Shortly after we released Noir, they expressed ➡️ interest in rewriting Battlezips, providing us feedback, and creating a tutorial series on writing zk circuits and programs in Noir.

➡️ Watch the BattleZips-Noir YouTube series here.

We provided them an Aztec Grant in late 2022, and they were off to the races, culminating in showcasing the Noir-powered Battlezips running in the browser at our sponsored game night at ETHDenver 2023.

➡️ Play Battlezips in your browser.

Here’s an unabridged conversation with Mach34 on their experience building on Noir and what developers can expect building on the universal zk language.

A Noir-ish conversation with Mach34

Q: Tell us about BattleZips. How does the game use zero-knowledge cryptography?

A: BattleZips is a zero-knowledge implementation of the popular board game Battleship that uses proofs to shield ship positions. While this is by no means an original idea for a zero-knowledge application, Battleships was chosen as it is a simple but complete example of integrating arbitrary business logic in zero knowledge circuits.

By settling zero knowledge proofs in smart contracts, we can create novel digital and economic interactions that make the existing role of Information Escrow by third parties obsolete. BattleZips helped us understand how to apply zero knowledge proofs, and we hope the BattleZips-Noir course gives you the same advantages!

Q: What inspired you to start Mach 34 and develop BattleZips? Why explore Noir?

A: BattleZips marked the beginning of our journey into zero-knowledge cryptography and expanded our horizon on where this technology could be applied in real world use cases.

This is one of the factors that lead us to creating Mach 34. Mach 34 is a Web3 and ZK Software Consultancy. We chose to focus on mastering the web3 tech stack for the sake of expertise rather than a specific application. This enables us to explore any industry ripe for decentralization, growing our overall experience with the enterprise of web3.

Corporations and governments alike habitually abuse the authoritative topology of web2 networks; as Web3/ ZK Consultants, we have the means and the desire to help innovators usurp centralized processes and give sovereignty in cyberspace back to the users.

It is crucial that we stay up to date with the latest trends in this fast developing space to ensure we provide superior expertise to clients. Our prior experience writing proofs demonstrated to us that there is a significant variation between the different tools that exist, how rapidly they can be applied to an engineering problem, and what they accomplish. This led us to explore Noir upon its official release and see how it differentiated itself from pre-existing alternatives.

Q: How did you find the ease of usability of Noir compared to other zero-knowledge domain specific languages you’ve worked with?

A: Prior to Noir we used the Circom language and the Halo 2 proving system written in Rust. Proceeding from a first look at the Noir documentation to writing circuits was a fairly quick and straightforward process.

We thought that Noir lived up to most of what it promised in its introductory medium post. If one were to begin learning Noir without wanting to get bogged down in learning the inner workings of ZK and how circuits translate to proofs then they could certainly do so. It does a good job of abstracting away from the more complex aspects of the topic.

One thing that could improve the developer experience is ensuring that the nargo command-line tool and the Aztec NPM packages compile the same Noir version. This is an issue we ran into mid way through the development process that resulted in a refactor to ensure we could test our circuits with the Aztec NPM packages.

Q: As a full-stack development shop, how has the process of incorporating zk-cryptography changed the way you approach software development projects?

A: Our interest in zero-knowledge cryptography was one of the driving factors for starting Mach 34. Historically and to this day, one of the most sought after skills in the web3 space is the ability to write smart contracts.

Similarly as the past few years have shown, we believe enabling privacy and scalability in web3 applications is only going to become more and sought after and ultimately a necessity. In anticipation of this we have positioned ourselves at Mach 34 to have the skills and expertise necessary to help companies engineer ZK solutions.

Q: What kind of impact do you think Noir and other zero-knowledge domain specific languages will have on the broader software development community? Where do you see the industry going?

A: Noir and other ZK DSLs play a pivotal role in the proliferation of zero-knowledge cryptography by abstracting away from the underlying cryptographic principles.

As history shows, abstraction is absolutely necessary for any technology to become widely adopted. If engineers were never able to design high level programming languages from low-level opcodes then we would have far fewer and less effective software developers than we do today.

Once the complexity and thought is removed from the underlying components that make zero-knowledge cryptography possible in the first place, engineers have more time to think about applications that would benefit from ZK. It looks like we are about to enter an exciting phase where we will start to see more examples of the technology applied to real world use cases.

Q: What advice would you give to developers who are interested in learning more about zero-knowledge cryptography and how to use it in their projects?

A: This is definitely an exciting space to get involved in given it is still very much in its infancy. It is poised to solve issues related to privacy and scalability in public blockchains, as well as contexts out of web3 where there is currently a lack of much needed privacy.

This being said, resources for learning are still sparse and those that exist often have a technical complexity that can make them hard to digest. It can take quite a bit of patience and perseverance to become acclimated to this space but it is well worth the effort given that you are one of the individuals pioneering the ecosystem.

If you are a developer that has an interest in getting started in ZK then I think reading some high-level introductory materials would be a good starting point.

After a basic understanding is gained on the topic then exploring a DSL like Circom or Noir to write a simple circuit would be a beneficial next step.

Once it becomes clearer to you what can be accomplished and what tools are at your disposal then really the limit is what you can ideate. The cool thing is that there is still so much room for novel innovation that it could very well be the case no one has thought of your idea yet. Don’t sit idle and wait for things to develop further! Now is a great time to jump in!

Q: Are there any upcoming projects at Mach 34 that you can share with us that utilize zero-knowledge cryptography or other cutting-edge technologies?

A: Mach 34 has been researching and working towards constructing a “Zero-Knowledge State Channel”. While rollups offer fantastic scalability, we were put off by the need for a sequencer. Furthermore, aside from Aztec Connect and a few others, ZK Rollups do not have any private state. Thus, we began to explore how state channels might be repurposed with zero knowledge.

To open a ZK State Channel, parties will agree on the terms of the execution (like a smart contract). The channel initialization dictates what steps can be taken next, and by whom. Rather than posting every transaction on-chain, a state object is recursively built off-chain.

While previous state channel constructions had optimistic trust assumptions, we can leverage ZK to perform verifiable computations that have instant, trustless finality. Once a state channel has reached an end condition, the entire state execution is notarized by posting the state channel proof on-chain for all nodes to verify in zero knowledge.

This final proof further employs zero knowledge to hide most of the intermediate state; only pre-determined derived metrics or public outputs are made publicly available on-chain.

This has many interesting use-cases; we plan to demonstrate how this construction is useful for credit scoring by adding ELO scores to the State Channel version of BattleZips. This provides a verifiable metric that scores the performance of an individual without revealing any of their in-game moves.

We envision countless use-cases for ZK State Channels across all segments of web3. Undoubtedly, there are use-cases that we haven’t thought of. For this reason, all of our work on ZK State Channels is free and open source. While we intend to utilize the infrastructure for profit, we want to make sure that all possibilities are explored in service of the best possible future for web3 developers and users.

Q: What are some use cases you’re excited for?

A: One area of exciting potential outside of blockchain is how zero-knowledge can transform personal identification.

When providing personal ID, the majority of the time more information is conveyed than necessary. Proving one is of a legal drinking age need only confirm the person is above 21 years of age, yet sharing the ID divulges information such as street address and name.

Using zero knowledge proofs conceivably one could prove they are at least 21 without having to provide additional information. Another example is having to provide a social security number in a KYC process. Leaking a SSN number can have catastrophic consequences so one would prefer this is done as infrequently as possible. With ZK proofs instead one could prove they bear a SSN number without needing to reveal exactly what theirs is.

Explore the BattleZips project

We’re thrilled that the Mach34 team have done such a deep and candid dive into Noir’s capabilities, and their feedback has been invaluable.For developers interested in building on Noir, check out their well-documented BattleZips repo.

➡️ Explore the BattleZips Github repo and codebase.

Build on Noir

Interested in building zero-knowledge applications on Noir — or contributing to the open-source project?

Join Us

We’re always looking for talented engineers, cryptographers, and businesspeople to join Aztec. We are committed to bringing encryption to blockchain through our encrypted zkRollup, and we’ve raised over $125 million from the best investors in crypto, including a16z and Paradigm to do so. Come onboard.

➡️ See our open roles here.

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Noir
Noir
18 Sep
xx min read

Just write “if”: Why Payy left Halo2 for Noir

The TL;DR:

Payy, a privacy-focused payment network, just rewrote its entire ZK architecture from Halo2 to Noir while keeping its network live, funds safe, and users happy. 

Code that took months to write now takes weeks (with MVPs built in as little as 30 minutes). Payy’s codebase shrank from thousands of lines to 250, and now their entire engineering team can actually work on its privacy infra. 

This is the story of how they transformed their ZK ecosystem from one bottlenecked by a single developer to a system their entire team can modify and maintain.

Starting with Halo2

Eighteen months ago, Payy faced a deceptively simple requirement: build a privacy-preserving payment network that actually works on phones. That requires client-side proving.

"Anyone who tells you they can give you privacy without the proof being on the phone is lying to you," Calum Moore - Payy's Technical Lead - states bluntly.

To make a private, mobile network work, they needed:

  • Mobile proof generation with sub-second performance
  • Minimal proof sizes for transmission over weak mobile signals
  • Low memory footprint for on-device proving
  • Ethereum verifier for on-chain settlement

To start, the team evaluated available ZK stacks through their zkbench framework:

STARKs (e.g., RISC Zero): Memory requirements made them a non-starter on mobile. Large proof sizes are unsuitable for mobile data transmission.

Circom with Groth16: Required trusted setup ceremonies for each circuit update. It had “abstracted a bit too early” and, as a result, is not high-level enough to develop comfortably, but not low-level enough for controls and optimizations, said Calum.

Halo2: Selected based on existing production deployments (ZCash, Scroll), small proof sizes, and an existing Ethereum verifier. As Calum admitted with the wisdom of hindsight: “Back a year and a half ago, there weren’t any other real options.”

Bus factor = 1 😳

Halo2 delivered on its promises: Payy successfully launched its network. But cracks started showing almost immediately.

First, they had to write their own chips from scratch. Then came the real fun: if statements.

"With Halo2, I'm building a chip, I'm passing this chip in... It's basically a container chip, so you'd set the value to zero or one depending on which way you want it to go. And, you'd zero out the previous value if you didn't want it to make a difference to the calculation," Calum explained, “when I’m writing in Noir, I just write ‘if’. "

With Halo2, writing an if statement (programming 101) required building custom chip infra. 

Binary decomposition, another fundamental operation for rollups, meant more custom chips. The Halo2 implementation quickly grew to thousands of lines of incomprehensible code.

And only Calum could touch any of it.

The Bottleneck

"It became this black box that no one could touch, no one could reason about, no one could verify," he recalls. "Obviously, we had it audited, and we were confident in that. But any changes could only be done by me, could only be verified by me or an auditor."

In engineering terms, this is called a bus factor of one: if Calum got hit by a bus (or took a vacation to Argentina), Payy's entire proving system would be frozen. "Those circuits are open source," Calum notes wryly, "but who's gonna be able to read the Halo2 circuits? Nobody."

Evaluating Noir: One day, in Argentina…

During a launch event in Argentina, "I was like, oh, I'll check out Noir again. See how it's going," Calum remembers. He'd been tracking Noir's progress for months, occasionally testing it out, waiting for it to be reliable.

"I wrote basically our entire client-side proof in about half an hour in Noir. And it probably took me - I don't know, three weeks to write that proof originally in Halo2."

Calum recreated Payy's client-side proof in Noir in 30 minutes. And when he tested the proving speed, without any optimization, they were seeing 2x speed improvements.

"I kind of internally… didn't want to tell my cofounder Sid that I'd already made my decision to move to Noir," Calum admits. "I hadn't broken it to him yet because it's hard to justify rewriting your proof system when you have a deployed network with a bunch of money already on the network and a bunch of users."

Rebuilding (Ship of Theseus-ing) Payy

Convincing a team to rewrite the core of a live financial network takes some evidence. The technical evaluation of Noir revealed improvements across every metric:

Proof Generation Time: Sub-0.5 second proof generation on iPhones. "We're obsessive about performance," Calum notes (they’re confident they can push it even further).

Code Complexity: Their entire ZK implementation compressed from thousands of lines of Halo2 to just 250 lines of Noir code. "With rollups, the logic isn't complex—it's more about the preciseness of the logic," Calum explains.

Composability: In Halo2, proof aggregation required hardwiring specific verifiers for each proof type. Noir offers a general-purpose verifier that accepts any proof of consistent size.

"We can have 100 different proving systems, which are hyper-efficient for the kind of application that we're doing," Calum explains. "Have them all aggregated by the same aggregation proof, and reason about whatever needs to be."

Migration Time

Initially, the goal was to "completely mirror our Halo2 proofs": no new features. This conservative approach meant they could verify correctness while maintaining a live network.

The migration preserved Payy's production architecture:

  • Rust core (According to Calum, "Writing a financial application in JavaScript is borderline irresponsible")
  • Three-proof system: client-side proof plus two aggregators  
  • Sparse Merkle tree with Poseidon hashing for state management

When things are transparent, they’re secure

"If you have your proofs in Noir, any person who understands even a little bit about logic or computers can go in and say, 'okay, I can kinda see what's happening here'," Calum notes.

The audit process completely transformed. With Halo2: "The auditors that are available to audit Halo2 are few and far between."

With Noir: "You could have an auditor that had no Noir experience do at least a 95% job."

Why? Most audit issues are logic errors, not ZK-specific bugs. When auditors can read your code, they find real problems instead of getting lost in implementation details.

Code Comparison

Halo2: Binary decomposition

  • Write a custom chip for binary decomposition
  • Implement constraint system manually
  • Handle grid placement and cell references
  • Manage witness generation separately
  • Debug at the circuit level when something goes wrong

Payy’s previous 383 line implementation of binary decomposition can be viewed here (pkg/zk-circuits/src/chips/binary_decomposition.rs).

Payy’s previous binary decomposition implementation

Meanwhile, binary decomposition is handled in Noir with the following single line.

pub fn to_le_bits<let N: u32>(self: Self) -> [u1; N]

(Source)

What's Next

With Noir's composable proof system, Payy can now build specialized provers for different operations, each optimized for its specific task.

"If statements are horrendous in SNARKs because you pay the cost of the if statement regardless of its run," Calum explains. But with Noir's approach, "you can split your application logic into separate proofs, and run whichever proof is for the specific application you're looking for."

Instead of one monolithic proof trying to handle every case, you can have specialized proofs, each perfect for its purpose.

The Bottom Line

"I fell a little bit in love with Halo2," Calum admits, "maybe it's Stockholm syndrome where you're like, you know, it's a love-hate relationship, and it's really hard. But at the same time, when you get a breakthrough with it, you're like, yes, I feel really good because I'm basically writing assembly-level ZK proofs."

“But now? I just write ‘if’.”

Technical Note: While "migrating from Halo2 to Noir" is shorthand that works for this article, technically Halo2 is an integrated proving system where circuits must be written directly in Rust using its constraint APIs, while Noir is a high-level language that compiles to an intermediate representation and can use various proving backends. Payy specifically moved from writing circuits in Halo2's low-level constraint system to writing them in Noir's high-level language, with Barretenberg (UltraHonk) as their proving backend.

Both tools ultimately enable developers to write circuits and generate proofs, but Noir's modular architecture separates circuit logic from the proving system - which is what made Payy's circuits so much more accessible to their entire team, and now allows them to swap out their proving system with minimal effort as proving systems improve.

Payy's code is open source and available for developers looking to learn from their implementation.

Aztec Network
Aztec Network
4 Sep
xx min read

A New Brand for a New Era of Aztec

After eight years of solving impossible problems, the next renaissance is here. 

We’re at a major inflection point, with both our tech and our builder community going through growth spurts. The purpose of this rebrand is simple: to draw attention to our full-stack privacy-native network and to elevate the rich community of builders who are creating a thriving ecosystem around it. 

For eight years, we’ve been obsessed with solving impossible challenges. We invented new cryptography (Plonk), created an intuitive programming language (Noir), and built the first decentralized network on Ethereum where privacy is native rather than an afterthought. 

It wasn't easy. But now, we're finally bringing that powerful network to life. Testnet is live with thousands of active users and projects that were technically impossible before Aztec.

Our community evolution mirrors our technical progress. What started as an intentionally small, highly engaged group of cracked developers is now welcoming waves of developers eager to build applications that mainstream users actually want and need.

Behind the Brand: A New Mental Model

A brand is more than aesthetics—it's a mental model that makes Aztec's spirit tangible. 

Our Mission: Start a Renaissance

Renaissance means "rebirth"—and that's exactly what happens when developers gain access to privacy-first infrastructure. We're witnessing the emergence of entirely new application categories, business models, and user experiences.

The faces of this renaissance are the builders we serve: the entrepreneurs building privacy-preserving DeFi, the activists building identity systems that protect user privacy, the enterprise architects tokenizing real-world assets, and the game developers creating experiences with hidden information.

Values Driving the Network

This next renaissance isn't just about technology—it's about the ethos behind the build. These aren't just our values. They're the shared DNA of every builder pushing the boundaries of what's possible on Aztec.

Agency: It’s what everyone deserves, and very few truly have: the ability to choose and take action for ourselves. On the Aztec Network, agency is native

Genius: That rare cocktail of existential thirst, extraordinary brilliance, and mind-bending creation. It’s fire that fuels our great leaps forward. 

Integrity: It’s the respect and compassion we show each other. Our commitment to attacking the hardest problems first, and the excellence we demand of any solution. 

Obsession: That highly concentrated insanity, extreme doggedness, and insatiable devotion that makes us tick. We believe in a different future—and we can make it happen, together. 

Visualizing the Next Renaissance

Just as our technology bridges different eras of cryptographic innovation, our new visual identity draws from multiple periods of human creativity and technological advancement. 

The Wordmark: Permissionless Party 

Our new wordmark embodies the diversity of our community and the permissionless nature of our network. Each letter was custom-drawn to reflect different pivotal moments in human communication and technological progress.

  • The A channels the bold architecture of Renaissance calligraphy—when new printing technologies democratized knowledge. 
  • The Z strides confidently into the digital age with clean, screen-optimized serifs. 
  • The T reaches back to antiquity, imagined as carved stone that bridges ancient and modern. 
  • The E embraces the dot-matrix aesthetic of early computing—when machines first began talking to each other. 
  • And the C fuses Renaissance geometric principles with contemporary precision.

Together, these letters tell the story of human innovation: each era building on the last, each breakthrough enabling the next renaissance. And now, we're building the infrastructure for the one that's coming.

The Icon: Layers of the Next Renaissance

We evolved our original icon to reflect this new chapter while honoring our foundation. The layered diamond structure tells the story:

  • Innermost layer: Sensitive data at the core
  • Black privacy layer: The network's native protection
  • Open third layer: Our permissionless builder community
  • Outermost layer: Mainstream adoption and real-world transformation

The architecture echoes a central plaza—the Roman forum, the Greek agora, the English commons, the American town square—places where people gather, exchange ideas, build relationships, and shape culture. It's a fitting symbol for the infrastructure enabling the next leap in human coordination and creativity.

Imagery: Global Genius 

From the Mughal and Edo periods to the Flemish and Italian Renaissance, our brand imagery draws from different cultures and eras of extraordinary human flourishing—periods when science, commerce, culture and technology converged to create unprecedented leaps forward. These visuals reflect both the universal nature of the Renaissance and the global reach of our network. 

But we're not just celebrating the past —we're creating the future: the infrastructure for humanity's next great creative and technological awakening, powered by privacy-native blockchain technology.

You’re Invited 

Join us to ask questions, learn more and dive into the lore.

Join Our Discord Town Hall. September 4th at 8 AM PT, then every Thursday at 7 AM PT. Come hear directly from our team, ask questions, and connect with other builders who are shaping the future of privacy-first applications.

Take your stance on privacy. Visit the privacy glyph generator to create your custom profile pic and build this new world with us.

Stay Connected. Visit the new website and to stay up-to-date on all things Noir and Aztec, make sure you’re following along on X.

The next renaissance is what you build on Aztec—and we can't wait to see what you'll create.

Aztec Network
Aztec Network
22 Jul
xx min read

Introducing the Adversarial Testnet

Aztec’s Public Testnet launched in May 2025.

Since then, we’ve been obsessively working toward our ultimate goal: launching the first fully decentralized privacy-preserving layer-2 (L2) network on Ethereum. This effort has involved a team of over 70 people, including world-renowned cryptographers and builders, with extensive collaboration from the Aztec community.

To make something private is one thing, but to also make it decentralized is another. Privacy is only half of the story. Every component of the Aztec Network will be decentralized from day one because decentralization is the foundation that allows privacy to be enforced by code, not by trust. This includes sequencers, which order and validate transactions, provers, which create privacy-preserving cryptographic proofs, and settlement on Ethereum, which finalizes transactions on the secure Ethereum mainnet to ensure trust and immutability.

Strong progress is being made by the community toward full decentralization. The Aztec Network now includes nearly 1,000 sequencers in its validator set, with 15,000 nodes spread across more than 50 countries on six continents. With this globally distributed network in place, the Aztec Network is ready for users to stress test and challenge its resilience.

Introducing the Adversarial Testnet

We're now entering a new phase: the Adversarial Testnet. This stage will test the resilience of the Aztec Testnet and its decentralization mechanisms.

The Adversarial Testnet introduces two key features: slashing, which penalizes validators for malicious or negligent behavior in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, and a fully decentralized governance mechanism for protocol upgrades.

This phase will also simulate network attacks to test its ability to recover independently, ensuring it could continue to operate even if the core team and servers disappeared (see more on Vitalik’s “walkaway test” here). It also opens the validator set to more people using ZKPassport, a private identity verification app, to verify their identity online.  

Slashing on the Aztec Network

The Aztec Network testnet is decentralized, run by a permissionless network of sequencers.

The slashing upgrade tests one of the most fundamental mechanisms for removing inactive or malicious sequencers from the validator set, an essential step toward strengthening decentralization.

Similar to Ethereum, on the Aztec Network, any inactive or malicious sequencers will be slashed and removed from the validator set. Sequencers will be able to slash any validator that makes no attestations for an entire epoch or proposes an invalid block.

Three slashes will result in being removed from the validator set. Sequencers may rejoin the validator set at any time after getting slashed; they just need to rejoin the queue.

Decentralized Governance

In addition to testing network resilience when validators go offline and evaluating the slashing mechanisms, the Adversarial Testnet will also assess the robustness of the network’s decentralized governance during protocol upgrades.

Adversarial Testnet introduces changes to Aztec Network’s governance system.

Sequencers now have an even more central role, as they are the sole actors permitted to deposit assets into the Governance contract.

After the upgrade is defined and the proposed contracts are deployed, sequencers will vote on and implement the upgrade independently, without any involvement from Aztec Labs and/or the Aztec Foundation.

Start Your Plan of Attack  

Starting today, you can join the Adversarial Testnet to help battle-test Aztec’s decentralization and security. Anyone can compete in six categories for a chance to win exclusive Aztec swag, be featured on the Aztec X account, and earn a DappNode. The six challenge categories include:

  • Homestaker Sentinel: Earn 1 Aztec Dappnode by maximizing attestation and proposal success rates and volumes, and actively participating in governance.
  • The Slash Priest: Awarded to the participant who most effectively detects and penalizes misbehaving validators or nodes, helping to maintain network security by identifying and “slashing” bad actors.
  • High Attester: Recognizes the participant with the highest accuracy and volume of valid attestations, ensuring reliable and secure consensus during the adversarial testnet.
  • Proposer Commander: Awarded to the participant who consistently creates the most successful and timely proposals, driving efficient consensus.
  • Meme Lord: Celebrates the creator of the most creative and viral meme that captures the spirit of the adversarial testnet.
  • Content Chronicler: Honors the participant who produces the most engaging and insightful content documenting the adversarial testnet experience.

Performance will be tracked using Dashtec, a community-built dashboard that pulls data from publicly available sources. Dashtec displays a weighted score of your validator performance, which may be used to evaluate challenges and award prizes.

The dashboard offers detailed insights into sequencer performance through a stunning UI, allowing users to see exactly who is in the current validator set and providing a block-by-block view of every action taken by sequencers.

To join the validator set and start tracking your performance, click here. Join us on Thursday, July 31, 2025, at 4 pm CET on Discord for a Town Hall to hear more about the challenges and prizes. Who knows, we might even drop some alpha.

To stay up-to-date on all things Noir and Aztec, make sure you’re following along on X.

Noir
Noir
26 Jun
xx min read

ZKPassport Case Study: A Look into Online Identity Verification

Preventing sybil attacks and malicious actors is one of the fundamental challenges of Web3 – it’s why we have proof-of-work and proof-of-stake networks. But Sybil attacks go a step further for many projects, with bots and advanced AI agents flooding Discord servers, sending thousands of transactions that clog networks, and botting your Typeforms. Determining who is a real human online and on-chain is becoming increasingly difficult, and the consequences of this are making it difficult for projects to interact with real users.

When the Aztec Testnet launched last month, we wrote about the challenges of running a proof-of-stake testnet in an environment where bots are everywhere. The Aztec Testnet is a decentralized network, and in order to give good actors a chance, a daily quota was implemented to limit the number of new sequencers that could join the validator set per day to start proposing blocks. Using this system, good actors who were already in the set could vote to kick out bad actors, with a daily limit of 5 new sequencers able to join the set each day. However, the daily quota quickly got bottlenecked, and it became nearly impossible for real humans who are operating nodes in good faith to join the Aztec Testnet.

In this case study, we break down Sybil attacks, explore different ways the ecosystem currently uses to prevent them, and dive into how we’re leveraging ZKPassport to prevent Sybil attacks on the Aztec Testnet.

Preventing Sybil Attacks

With the massive repercussions that stem from privacy leaks (see the recent Coinbase incident), any solution to prevent Sybil attacks and prove humanity must not compromise on user privacy and should be grounded in the principles of privacy by design and data minimization. Additionally, given that decentralization underpins the entire purpose of Web3 (and the Aztec Network), joining the network should remain permissionless.

Our goal was to find a solution that allows users to permissionlessly prove their humanity without compromising their privacy. If such a technology exists (spoiler alert: it does), we believe that this has the potential to solve one of the biggest problems faced by our industry: Sybil attacks. Some of the ways that projects currently try to prevent Sybil attacks or prove [humanity] include:

  • “Know Your Customer” (KYC): A process in which users upload a picture or scan of their government ID, which is checked and then retained (indefinitely) by the project, and any “bad actors” are rejected.
    • Pros: High likelihood they are human, although AI has begun to introduce a new set of challenges.
    • Cons: User data is retained and viewable by a centralized entity, which could lead to compromised data and privacy leaks, ultimately impacting the security of the individuals. Also, KYC processes in the age of AI means it is easy to fake a passport as only an image is used to verify and not any biometric data held on the passport itself. Existing KYC practices are outdated, not secure and prone to data leaks increasing personal security risk for the users.
  • On-chain activity and account linking (i.e, Gitcoin passport)
    • Pros: No personal identity data shared (name, location, etc.)
    • Cons: Onchain activity and social accounts are not Sybil-resistant.
  • Small payment to participate
    • Pros: Impractical/financially consequential for bots to join. Effective for centralized infra providers as it can cover the cost they incur from Sybil attacks.
    • Cons: Requires users to pay out of pocket to test the network, and doesn’t prevent bots from participating, and is ineffective for decentralized infra as it is difficult to spread incurred costs to all affected operators.
  • zkEmail
    • Pros: The user shares no private information.
    • Cons: Users cannot be blocked by jurisdiction, for example, it would be impossible to carry out sanctions checks, if required.
  • ZKPassport, a private identity verification app.
    • Pros: User verifies they possess a valid ID without sharing private information. No information is retained therefore no leaks of data can occur impacting the personal security of the user.
    • Cons: Users must have a valid passport or a compatible government ID, in each case, that is not expired.

Both zkEmail and ZKPassport are powered by Noir, the universal language of zk, and are great solutions for preventing Sybil attacks.

With zkEmail, users can do things like prove that they received a confirmation email from a centralized exchange showing that they successfully passed KYC, all without showing any of the email contents or personal information. While this offers a good solution for this use case, we also wanted the functionality of enabling the network to block certain jurisdictions (if needed), without the network knowing where the user is from. This also enables users to directly interface with the network rather than through a third-party email confirmation.

Given this context, ZKPassport was, and is, the perfect fit.

About ZKPassport

For the Aztec Testnet, we’ve integrated ZKPassport to enable node operators to prove they are human and participate in the network. This integration allows the network to dramatically increase the number of sequencers that can be added each day, which is a huge step forward in decentralizing the network with real operators.

ZKPassport allows users to share only the details about themselves that they choose by scanning a passport or government ID. This is achieved using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) that are generated locally on the user’s phone. Implementing client-side zk-proofs in this way enables novel use-cases like age verification, where someone can prove their age without actually sharing how old they are (see the recent report on How to Enable Age Verification on the Internet Today Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs).

As of this week, the ZKPassport app is live and available to download on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

How ZKPassport works

Most countries today issue biometric passports or national IDs containing NFC chips (over 120 countries are currently supported by ZKPassport). These chips contain information on the full name, date of birth, nationality, and even digital photographs of the passport or ID holder. They can also contain biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans.

By scanning the NFC chip located in their ID document with a smartphone, users generate proof based on a specific request from an app. For example, some apps might require only the user’s age or nationality. In the case of Aztec, no information is needed about the user other than that they do indeed hold a valid passport or ID.

Client-side proving

Once the user installs the ZKPassport app and scans their passport, the proof of identity is generated on the user's smartphone (client-side).

All the private data read from the NFC chip in the passport or ID is processed client-side and never leaves the smartphone (aka: only the user is aware of their data). Only this proof is sent to an app that has requested some information. The app can then verify the validity of the user’s age or nationality, all without actually seeing anything about the user other than what the user has authorized the app to see. In the case of age verification, the user may want to prove that they are over 18, so they’ll create a proof of this on their phone, and the requesting app is able to verify this information without knowing anything else about them.

For the Aztec Testnet, the network only needs to know that the user holds a valid passport, so no information is shared by the user other than “yes, I hold a valid passport or ID.”

Getting started with ZKPassport on Aztec Testnet

This is a nascent and evolving technology, and various phone models, operating systems, and countries are still being optimized for. To ensure this works seamlessly, we’ll be selecting the first cohort of people who have already been running active validators on a rolling basis to help test ZKPassport and provide early feedback.

If someone successfully verifies that they are a valid passport holder, they will be added to a queue to enter the validator set. Once they are in line, they are guaranteed entry. The queue will enable an estimated additional 10% of the current set to be allowed in each day. For example, if 800 sequencers are currently in the set, 80 new sequencers will be allowed to join that day.

This allows existing operators to maintain control of the network in the event that bad actors enter, while dramatically increasing the number of new validators added compared to the current number.

Humanizing Web3  

With ZKPassport now live, the Aztec Testnet is better equipped to distinguish real users from bots, without compromising on privacy or decentralization.

This integration is already enabling more verified human node operators to join the validator set, and the network is ready to welcome more. By leveraging ZKPs and client-side proving, ZKPassport ensures that humanity checks are both secure and permissionless, bringing us closer to a decentralized future that doesn’t rely on trust in centralized authorities.

This is exciting not just for Aztec but for the broader ecosystem. As the network continues to grow and develop, participation must remain open to anyone acting in good faith, regardless of geography or background, while keeping out bots and other malicious actors. ZKPassport makes this possible.

We’re excited to see the community expand, powered by real people helping to build a more private, inclusive, and human Web3.

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