Zero-knowledge scaling firm StarkWare has launched Personal KYC on Starknet, enabling customers to finish know-your-customer necessities with out revealing their full private info.
The system, introduced Tuesday as a demo, makes use of STRK20 privateness options and zero-knowledge STARK proofs to let customers show particular attributes, akin to being older than 18 or holding legitimate credentials, with out revealing their full passport particulars or handle.
“Whether or not it is advisable to show you’re over 18, maintain a sound credential or meet an eligibility rule, verification ought to solely verify the exact reality,” StarkWare stated. Companies shouldn’t accumulate the complete id behind it, “as a result of each id database turns into a legal responsibility the second it exists.”
KYC compliance entails handing over private info and trusting firms to maintain it secure. The rollout comes because the US hit a report 3,322 knowledge compromises in 2025, a 79% improve over 5 years, and the worldwide common value of an information breach is $4.4 million, in accordance to StationX.
StarkWare customers begin by scanning their passport on their telephones, utilizing the digicam and NFC chip to learn and make sure the doc is real and signed by its issuing authority.
They will then encrypt id knowledge to their Starknet pockets, register attributes in a public onchain registry, and submit zero-knowledge proofs for selective checks. Verifiers can verify eligibility by studying the general public registry with out ever seeing the precise id knowledge.
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“Personal KYC reveals that verification and privateness aren’t a trade-off,” StarkWare stated. “An establishment can verify precisely what it wants with out assembling one other copy of somebody’s id it then has to defend.”
Contracts examine the proofs, not the passports. Supply: StarkWare
“Id checks as we speak ask in your complete doc after they solely want one reality,” the Starknet workforce stated.
The system is much like Sam Altman’s World ID (Worldcoin), which makes use of zk-proofs to confirm humanness by way of iris scans on {hardware} orbs. Nonetheless, World ID confronted backlash over centralized biometric custody, whereas StarkWare’s self-custody mannequin goals to deal with that subject.
Information breaches value thousands and thousands
In keeping with Axis Intelligence, greater than 1 billion well being care data have been breached, with a mean value of $7.42 million, as of 2026. Within the US, 772 giant well being care knowledge breaches had been confirmed in 2025, the very best annual whole ever recorded.
The most important and most damaging knowledge breach within the crypto business occurred at {hardware} pockets supplier Ledger, which suffered an enormous database hack in 2020, ensuing within the leak of greater than 270,000 buyer data and a wave of phishing assaults that proceed to at the present time.
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