Aztec Labs Relaunches zk.money on Ethereum (ETH) Layer 2 With $2,500 Deposit Cap

Aztec Labs Returns Private Payments to Ethereum

Ethereum (ETH) users have a new way to move funds off the public record: Aztec Labs relaunched zk.money on Sep. 29, bringing back its self-custodial private payment wallet after a three-year absence, now built on the Aztec Network, the firm's privacy-focused layer 2 connected to Ethereum. The relaunch means payments made through the wallet keep balances, transfer amounts and the parties to a transaction off Ethereum's public ledger, where an ordinary address exposes its full balance and history to anyone who looks it up. Users can reach the wallet through the zk.money website — where handles are claimable now — or through a frontend they run on their own device, and the company says a mobile app is planned.

Payments replace long hexadecimal addresses with readable names such as bob.zk.money. According to the announcement, the tags use Ethereum Name Service technology and resolve wherever ENS CCIP is supported; readers weighing a handle of their own can start with our guide to how to get a .ETH domain. Funds can be sent or requested by sharing a link, and Aztec Labs said people can send to zk.money tags directly from exchanges on Ethereum, giving an exchange user a route into a private wallet — though the announcement named no participating exchanges and specified no supported assets. Users also control who can interact with their tag.

Self-Custody With No Admin Key

Self-custody sits at the center of the design. Aztec Labs describes the wallet as running on immutable smart contracts with no privileged administrator role that could move or freeze a user's funds, so once assets arrive, control rests entirely with the holder. CEO Joe Andrews framed the product bluntly: onchain transactions between two individuals should not mean publishing your financial history to the world, he said, describing zk.money as a wallet where users retain control of that history. The name carries history of its own — the original zk.money launched in 2021, served more than 75,000 unique wallets and processed roughly $100 million in transaction volume before it was retired while the team built the general-purpose private infrastructure that now underpins the Aztec Network.

$2,500 Caps in an Unaudited Alpha

The returning wallet arrives with strict limits. Each deposit, payment and withdrawal must stay below $2,500, and all users share a $50,000 daily deposit allowance that replenishes over time — caps Aztec's own bridging documentation describes as a safeguard while the system is new, raiseable only through a new contract. Money enters as dollar-pegged stablecoins: users can deposit DAI, USDC or USDT from Ethereum, with USDC and USDT automatically converted to DAI, the only currency used inside zk.money. Andrews called DAI the most decentralized of the mass-market stablecoins on Ethereum today and said other assets could follow. Deposits from Ethereum remain publicly traceable — the sender and amount show on-chain even though the recipient stays private — and a deposit costs 35 cents plus prevailing gas fees while a withdrawal costs 20 cents, with 100 sponsored transactions available each day. The wallet also screens deposit and withdrawal addresses against a sanctions policy, and a sealed server co-signs operations without being able to spend user funds on its own.

The network itself remains in early Alpha, and its alpha documentation warns the software has not been fully audited and that critical bugs are possible. Contributors disclosed a critical flaw in the V5 proof system in August, with a fix planned for V6; Andrews said zk.money will launch before that fix ships, with a separate system called Oxide checking payments for software-induced errors and users able to migrate once the fix lands. Aztec says limits will rise as confidence grows and a later version goes live. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Privacy Demand Meets Ethereum's Layer 2 Buildout

Our reading of the release is that zk.money's return marks a practical test of whether privacy can ship at the application layer on Ethereum rather than waiting on protocol change — developers are still weighing proposals for the planned 2027 Hegotá upgrade that would let privacy apps handle approvals and fees with less outside help, while Aztec is delivering a working product on its own network now. The binding constraints, per Aztec's own documentation, are the unaudited cryptography and the Ethereum-side deposit trace, not the wallet's design.