Meet ZK Passport - our latest R&D deep dive at Safe Research, exploring zero-knowledge proofs on biometric passports and IDs for privacy-preserving verifications in your smart wallet.
Think of it this way:
Traditional IDs = sharing your full personal data to prove age or citizenship
ZK Passport = proving just the facts (e.g., “over 18”) without exposing names, birthdates, or anything else We break down how it works: NFC scanning, on-device proof generation, shared Merkle trees for anonymity, and a hands-on demo using the ZKPassport app + SDK for Safe wallet recovery via smart contracts that store only scoped personhood IDs.
Key trade-offs: device limits, replay risks, personhood vs. full identity (avoid doxxing!). We also compare ecosystems like ZKPassport, Rarimo, Self Protocol, and Privado ID for selective disclosure and Sybil resistance. Limitations? No built-in liveness checks yet, and document renewals need careful handling—but we recommend nonces, MFA, timelocks for production. Future: ZK-ML advancements incoming.
For the full analysis, demo, and code (unaudited PoC: https://github.com/safe-research/zk-passport), read our blog post here: ZK Passport: where are we now ?