In the current Web3 landscape, we face a fundamental paradox: Transparency vs. Privacy. Public blockchains are designed to be immutable and transparent, yet identity is inherently sensitive and private.
Traditional KYC (Know Your Customer) systems force users to sacrifice their privacy by uploading raw documents to centralized databases or leaking sensitive metadata on-chain. Noah is building the solution to this paradox: a privacy-preserving identity layer powered by Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE).
**The Core Problem: The Identity Leak
**
Today, whenever you prove you are over 18 or from a specific jurisdiction to access a DeFi protocol, you are usually doing one of two things:
Doxxing yourself: Releasing your wallet’s link to your real-world identity.
Trusting a Middleman: Relying on a central authority to hold your data and issue a “trust me” token.
Neither of these fits the ethos of a decentralized future.
Noah leverages Zama’s FHEVM technology to allow computations on encrypted data. Unlike Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP), which can be complex to generate and often require revealing specific “public signals,” FHE allows the blockchain itself to perform logic on data it cannot see.**
How It Works:
Encrypted Identity: Your identity attributes (age, nationality, and accreditation) are encrypted locally and stored on-chain in an encrypted state.
Confidential Logic: Protocols can request a check (e.g., isUserOver18?). The Noah smart contract performs this comparison homomorphically.
Private Result: The result of the comparison is processed through a threshold decryption mechanism (via Zama’s Gateway), granting access without ever revealing the user’s actual age or sensitive details.
Why it Matters
Noah isn’t just a KYC tool; it is a privacy layer. By moving identity verification into the encrypted compute space, we enable a world where:
Users own their data and only share “proofs of eligibility.”
Developers can build compliant protocols without handling sensitive PII (Personally Identifiable Information).
Regulators can ensure compliance without compromising the individual’s right to privacy.
Conclusion
Identity is the final frontier for Web3. For the next billion users to join, they need to know their lives won’t be indexed on a public ledger. Noah provides that shield, using state-of-the-art FHE to ensure that the privacy layer for identity isn’t just a dream—it’s the new standard.
Yeah, but are there differences between Noah and Zentity
Sybil Resistance (The “One Person” Problem)
Noah: We implemented a Nullifier System. By hashing your actual passport number (privately) into a nullifier, Noah ensures that one physical person can only register one wallet. Even if you have 10 wallets, the smart contract will reject 9 of them because the nullifier already exists.
Zentity: Focuses on Attestations. Their system allows an issuer to say “This wallet is from Germany,” but it doesn’t natively prevent that same person from getting a second attestation for a different wallet using the same ID.
2. Selective Disclosure vs. Attribute Storage
Noah: Is a Privacy Layer. We emphasize computation over data. Instead of storing “He lives in USA,” the protocol stores an encrypted blob that can only answer specific questions (e.g., isAbove18? or isNotSanctioned?). The goal is that the protocol never even knows your attributes—only that you pass the test.
Zentity: Is a Compliance Framework. They store specific attributes like “birth year offset,” “country,” and “compliance level” as encrypted values. It’s designed for protocols (like their CompliantERC20) to check these specific values before allowing a transfer.
3. Integrated OCR & SDK vs. Contract Toolkit
Noah: We provide a Full-Stack Identity UX. Noah includes the OCR engine (to read passports), the FHE encryption logic, and the noah-protocol SDK. A developer can build a “Verify with Noah” button in minutes without knowing how FHE works.
Zentity: Is a Contract-First Library. It’s a powerful set of tools for developers who want to build their own compliance logic into their tokens or DAO. They provide the “Lego bricks” (like IdentityRegistry and ComplianceRules), but leave the frontend and identity-sourcing (the actual document scanning) to the dev.
In short:
Zentity is like a security guard framework—it gives you the tools to build a checkpoint.
Noah is like an identity shield; it provides the person a way to pass checkpoints without revealing who they are, while proving they aren’t a bot or a duplicate.