Aztec Labs launches Nyx privacy wallet on upgraded Aztec Network

Aztec Labs has brought back zk.money, the privacy-focused wallet it killed off in 2023, this time running on a significantly upgraded version of its zero-knowledge Layer 2 network. The new wallet, called Nyx, is a self-custodial privacy tool with yield-earning capabilities. It launched alongside the Aztec Network’s Alpha V5 upgrade, which went live in July 2026 and brought major performance gains: private transaction proving speed improved by more than 2x, while costs dropped roughly 50%. Why Aztec killed zk.money in the first place The original zk.money and its companion product, Aztec Connect, were shut down in March 2023. Deposits were halted on March 21 of that year, though withdrawal support continued until approximately March 2024 to let users retrieve their funds. The team’s reasoning was strategic: the existing infrastructure relied on centralized sequencers, which created a trust bottleneck that undermined the whole point of building privacy tools. Instead of patching a fundamentally compromised architecture, Aztec Labs chose to redirect all resources toward building a fully decentralized privacy platform from the ground up, developing client-side zero-knowledge proofs and...