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 data.
The system, introduced Tuesday as a demo, makes use of STRK20 privateness options and zero-knowledge STARK proofs to let customers show particular attributes, reminiscent of being older than 18 or holding legitimate credentials, with out revealing their full passport particulars or tackle.
“Whether or not it’s good to show you’re over 18, maintain a sound credential or meet an eligibility rule, verification ought to solely verify the exact truth,” StarkWare stated. Companies mustn’t gather the complete identification behind it, “as a result of each identification database turns into a legal responsibility the second it exists.”
KYC compliance includes handing over private data and trusting corporations to maintain it secure. The rollout comes because the US hit a file 3,322 information 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 digital camera and NFC chip to learn and ensure the doc is real and signed by its issuing authority.
They will then encrypt identification information 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 identification information.
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“Personal KYC exhibits 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 identification it then has to defend.”
Contracts verify the proofs, not the passports. Supply: StarkWare
“Identification checks at present ask in your entire doc once they solely want one truth,” the Starknet workforce stated.
The system is just like Sam Altman’s World ID (Worldcoin), which makes use of zk-proofs to confirm humanness through 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 information have been breached, with a median value of $7.42 million, as of 2026. Within the US, 772 giant well being care information breaches had been confirmed in 2025, the very best annual whole ever recorded.
The biggest and most damaging information 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 information and a wave of phishing assaults that proceed to at the present time.
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