Tornado Cash vs zk.money

Tornado Cash excels at providing robust, trustless privacy for high-value transactions by using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) on Ethereum. Its non-custodial pools, like the 100 ETH pool, have secured billions in total value locked (TVL), demonstrating deep institutional trust. However, its reliance on a fixed anonymity set and its status as a sanctioned entity by the OFAC present significant operational and compliance risks for enterprises.

zk.money (Aztec Connect) takes a different approach by focusing on private DeFi interactions and lower-value payments. It leverages zk-rollup technology to batch transactions, significantly reducing gas fees per private action. This results in a trade-off: while it offers cheaper, application-specific privacy, its ecosystem is more limited compared to Tornado's generalized, asset-agnostic model, and the protocol has been sunset, shifting focus to the new Aztec network.

The key trade-off: If your priority is maximum liquidity, proven security, and a generalized tool for large ETH/ERC-20 deposits, Tornado Cash's established pools are the benchmark. If you prioritize lower-cost privacy for specific DeFi interactions or are building on a new zk-rollup stack, the architectural lessons and fee efficiency of the zk.money model are more relevant, despite its sunset status.

Tornado Cash excels at providing robust, non-custodial privacy for high-value transactions on Ethereum and multiple EVM chains because of its battle-tested, trustless smart contract design and massive liquidity pools. For example, its Ethereum pool holds over $200M in TVL, offering deep anonymity sets that make transaction tracing statistically improbable. Its use of zk-SNARKs ensures that deposit and withdrawal links remain cryptographically severed, a standard that has withstood intense scrutiny.

zk.money (Aztec Connect) took a fundamentally different approach by prioritizing privacy-preserving DeFi access through its zk-rollup architecture. This strategy enabled private interactions with protocols like Lido and Element Finance directly within shielded transactions. The trade-off was a narrower scope focused on the Aztec network, which, while innovative, resulted in less protocol diversity and a smaller overall ecosystem compared to Tornado's multi-chain deployment before its sunset.

The key architectural trade-off is between a generalized privacy mixer and a specialized private rollup. Tornado Cash provides maximal, chain-agnostic anonymity for asset concealment. Aztec Connect offered a more integrated but closed-circuit system for private composability within its own L2 environment.

Consider Tornado Cash if your core need is censorship-resistant asset obfuscation for large amounts across major EVM chains, and you can navigate the regulatory and front-end accessibility challenges associated with its use. Its decentralized, immutable contracts remain the gold standard for pure transactional privacy.

Choose zk.money's successor (Aztec) if your project's vision aligns with building net-new applications requiring programmable privacy—such as private voting, payroll, or sealed-bid auctions—leveraging a dedicated zk-rollup stack. While the original zk.money service is deprecated, the underlying Aztec technology represents the strategic choice for teams building the next generation of private smart contracts.