Nice, in-depth article on anonymous-credentials and its challenges:

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymous-credentials-an-illustrated-primer/

Anonymous credentials and the related term zero-knowledge proof are core building blocks for privacy-preserving online age verification.

As I understand, the age verification Australia currently requires to upload a legal document (e.g. a driver's license or government ID), or requires proof by doing a "video self". Both techniques would not be privacy-preserving, because in both cases you are sharing personal information with a company (e.g. Meta).

Cryptography like anonymous credentials solves that problem. At least in theory. You can prove your age, and the other side does not learn anything else about you. Still, to roll it out in real-world scenarios there are many challenges (e.g. dealing with attacks like credential theft).

Side-note: the EU proposal is also built on the same type of cryptography: https://ageverification.dev/av-doc-technical-specification/docs/architecture-and-technical-specifications/

#crypto #AnonymousCredentials #ageverification