Privacy Tech in Review: ZK Money

At ZKV we support innovation in privacy within the blockchain space. During a recent brainstorming session, we thought it would be cool to showcase forward-thinking privacy-focused projects here on the blog. And so we are launching a series of articles reviewing the user experience and tech behind exciting projects in the space — welcome to Privacy Tech in Review by ZKV.

The first product we will try out is zk.money by Aztec Protocol. As we have covered in other articles, Aztec is one of the projects building zero-knowledge tech to improve privacy in the blockchain space. ZKValidator is also an Aztec investor.

That being said, what is zk.money?

In a few words, zk.money is a Layer 2 privacy rollup which allows any Ethereum user to shield transactions and balances in DAI and ETH. The word “shielding” is underpinned by a zkSNARK (Zero-Knowledge SucciNct ARguments of Knowledge, a type of cryptographic) proof that protects the user’s privacy. Sending and receiving a token is anonymous, and does not publicly publish any of the transaction data.

Getting started with zk.money

First things first, navigate to zk.money. You are presented with a really simple interface, you can’t get lost in it because it’s pretty straightforward.

After that, you have to connect your wallet which at the moment only Metamask and WalletConnect are supported.

Creating an account

What happens in the backend here is that you are generating an ‘Aztec private key’ through signing, so that through your account you can decrypt your balances on zkETH.

Once you connect your wallet, you will be prompted to pick a username, which can be used to receive crypto within the app. It is a pretty cool feature because it removes the complexity of using hexadecimal addresses whilst also protecting your data.

In the background, a zero-knowledge proof is created which links your encryption keys to some spending keys and registers your alias.

Once your username is registered, you will have to sign a couple of times with your wallet. I have done the process twice and it, sometimes, can take a little time, so be patient.

After you are done creating your account, now it’s time to put zk.money to work and shield some ETH.

Using zk.money

Once you get to this stage, you will notice that the minimum amount you can shield is 0.01 ETH plus gas; it is designed this way to prevent wash traders from exploiting the product. The maximum amount you can only shield up is30 ETH as a precaution since the product has not yet been externally audited.

Once you enter the amount you wish to shield, you click the shield button and, you then will be prompted to a screen where you now will see your shielded ETH, which has been now transformed into zkETH, a wrapped token used in zk.money to protect your privacy.

From here, you can now receive or send zkETH to other users of zk.money in a private fashion.

Conclusions

I have to say the Aztec team has done a really good job in simplifying the product since I have seen earlier versions of zk.money where the user journey was a bit more complicated, adding a lot more friction.

As a product intended for a mainstream market, I think it is easy to use and will probably get even better with the next releases that are due this year.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter at @zkvalidator to stay up to date with being on the loop for the latest ion zero-knowledge tech. We will be reviewing privacy tools regularly, if you have a product you would like us to review reach out to us at hector@zkvalidator.com