Aztec Labs relaunches zk.money for private payments on Ethereum

Aztec Labs is relaunching zk.money on September 29, 2026, reviving the private payments application that was originally shuttered starting in March 2023. The comeback arrives just eight days after Aztec activated private smart contract execution on September 21, giving the relaunched app a fundamentally more capable foundation than its predecessor ever had. What changed since zk.money went dark The original zk.money had a quiet, somewhat unceremonious exit. The sunsetting process dragged from March 2023 through May 2024, when Aztec Labs fully relinquished the domain. At the time, the project was pivoting hard toward building out its broader Layer 2 infrastructure rather than maintaining consumer-facing products. That infrastructure work has since materialized. Aztec’s Ignition Chain, a fully decentralized Layer 2 architecture, went live in November 2025. The Alpha V5 upgrades completed in July 2026 then unlocked the feature that makes this relaunch meaningful: private smart contract execution, activated on September 21. Transaction costs tell the story of why the timing makes sense now. Post-V5, average transaction fees on the Aztec Network sit under $0.05. The organizational split...