zkPass

Founded in 2022 by Bing J and Joshua Peng, zkPass is a Sydney-based company that has developed a protocol for private data verification. The firm is positioned at the intersection of Web2 and Web3, providing a decentralized identity verification solution.

zkPass has secured a total of $15 million in funding across two rounds. Its initial seed round in August 2023 raised $2.5 million from notable investors including Binance Labs, Sequoia China, and OKX Ventures. A subsequent Series A round in October 2024 brought in an additional $12.5 million, valuing the company at $100 million based on a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT). This round attracted a consortium of investors such as dao5, Animoca Brands, CE Innovation Capital, and Flow Traders, among others.

The core of the company's offering is the zkTLS oracle protocol, which leverages a combination of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), multi-party computation (MPC), and three-party transport layer security (3P-TLS). This technology enables users to generate a proof of their data from any HTTPS website without needing to upload the documents themselves or rely on APIs. The verification process happens locally in the user's browser, generating a zero-knowledge proof in under a second, which can then be shared with decentralized applications (dApps) or other parties. This ensures that sensitive personal data is not exposed or transferred to third parties.

The business model is centered on providing a secure and privacy-preserving bridge for data verification between the traditional web and the decentralized ecosystem. The protocol has broad applicability across various sectors including decentralized finance (DeFi), healthcare, gaming, social media, and education. Use cases range from verifying financial records for lending applications and proving identity credentials to confirming healthcare data and validating gaming achievements, all without compromising the user's privacy. By October 2024, the platform had already been used to generate over two million zero-knowledge attestations from more than 70 web data sources.

Keywords: private data verification, zero-knowledge proof, zkTLS, oracle protocol, multi-party computation, decentralized identity, Web3, data privacy, secure data sharing, blockchain, cryptography, DeFi, verifiable credentials, digital identity, data security, MPC, ZKP, privacy-preserving protocol, on-chain verification, cross-ecosystem data exchange