Last week, the Builder Spotlight explored Faucet Drops, one of the leading submissions for the Celo Foundations’ Proof of Ship 6 virtual hackathon, leveraging Self’s humanity and identity verification tools. This week, another standout builder from the same cohort takes the stage: Akhil Nanavati, a developer using Self SDK to add privacy-preserving age verification to his project, AgeGate. 

Akhil was first introduced to the Web3 ecosystem during a Celo-sponsored hackathon in 2023, which inspired him to explore the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond. Around this time, he learned about zero-knowledge proofs, inspired by the technology’s potential to power onchain systems that best protect user privacy. 

As a seasoned hackathon participant, Akhil saw the opportunity with Proof of Ship to create a platform that enables safe and responsible adult content sharing on the decentralized web. This is why he built AgeGate, a decentralized web app that allows users to upload and view age-restricted content. The self-custodial app does not store any users’ privately identifiable information, with Self serving as the age verification layer. 

AgeGate is setting a new standard for safe, private, and responsible adult content sharing on the decentralized web. By combining zero-knowledge age verification with a creator-first platform, it ensures open expression without compromising compliance or privacy. 

The Self team connected with Akhil to learn more about AgeGate’s creation and future outlook; keep reading for his Q&A:

What inspired you to develop AgeGate?

The internet is accessible to everyone now, allowing users to access pretty much whatever they want. This creates one key problem: there’s a lack of proper age restrictions on internet content. Social media algorithms often serve adult content without regulation, and with mobile phones in the hands of children, they’re accessing this adult content that can influence their thinking and mindset. Since “you become what you consume,” I wanted to create a system ensuring that adult content can only be uploaded and viewed by people who are above 18 years of age, with their age verified in a privacy-preserving way. 

When did you decide identity verification was a core pillar necessary to solve for?

Ever since I started exploring the Web3 space, I’ve believed that identity verification is essential. However, I’ve also been equally convinced that user data must remain private and should never be exposed. Balancing verification with privacy became a core principle for me from the start, and ZKPs offered the perfect way to achieve that.

Why did you choose Self for the identity layer?

I chose Self because it’s both easy to integrate and highly effective at identity verification, with passport-based verification that is accessible to most people. Other solutions I evaluated had additional requirements that were hard to meet, which delayed another project I’ve long wanted to build, an anonymous social platform. Self’s approach removed those hurdles while keeping the privacy guarantees I needed.

What's your vision for the future of AgeGate?

In the future, I plan to add support for video content and evolve AgeGate into an underlying protocol that other platforms can integrate seamlessly. This way, any platform that needs privacy-preserving age verification can adopt AgeGate as a plug-and-play solution, expanding its impact far beyond a single website.

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