Aztec Network
28 Jan
## min read

AZTEC under the hood: range proofs

Take a closer look at range proofs in Aztec, a key component in ensuring transaction privacy.

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Written by
Zac Williamson
Edited by

Our previous article about AZTEC described how the protocol works, but I left the ‘why’ part for another day, so hello there!

This article is an in-depth look into how the AZTEC protocol enables efficient confidential transactions.

But before I start, I have a confession to make.

You see, I have a problem when it comes to explaining cryptography. It is in general quite confusing and unintuitive — the practise of proving you know relationships between data without having to share what that data is. It’s a little odd, and difficult to explain.

This problem isn’t something I alone struggle with. If you ever read cryptographic papers or articles, the author will usually attempt to translate these odd concepts into something more intuitive and familiar by wheeling out Alice and Bob.

Alice and Bob are the world’s most uninspiring double act and they only have one routine. When Alice and Bob turn up, they will immediately begin to embark on an abstract series of guessing games with seemingly arbitrary rules. Sometimes Alice or Bob don’t know some of the rules, which clears up precisely nothing. This game usually takes place in a cave and Alice might have some coins (public coins). You know you’re really in for a treat when Bob begins to monologue about how a uniformly distributed random number generator can be distinguished from a hash function.

I do not like Alice and Bob. I find their presence to be unhelpful. Still, as I have not managed to square the circle of intuitively explaining zero knowledge proofs I have invoked them in this article but I want to make one thing clear; I’m not happy about it.

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Dissecting a confidential transaction

Before describing what the protocol does, I want to start with what we need so that when I introduce a concept I can explain why it has value. We want a way of representing ‘balances’ with encrypted numbers. E.g. instead of a ledger recording that I have 20 Ethereum and that you have 5, these numbers are encrypted.

We can’t record this as a simple encrypted ledger, because if I want to send you money, I would need to be able to figure out what your new encrypted balance should be — but I don’t know your original balance so this is hard to do.

So instead of mapping owners to balances, we map balances to owners via the concept of an encrypted ‘note’.

  • A note is worth some defined amount and has an owner.
  • If I own multiple notes, I can combine them into a single note.
  • If I own a note, I can split it into multiple notes. These notes can have different owners

I can transfer ‘value’ by splitting a note and having one (or more) notes owned by the recipient.

A perfectly balanced 'joint-split' transaction. The sum of the input note equals the sum of the output notes

In the world of encrypted notes, what do we need for a confidential transaction?

  • A way of encrypting value into notes
  • A way of proving that the sum of the values of some input notes, equal the sum of the values of some output notes

And in order to get those things, we need to dive into the world of elliptic curve cryptography.

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Elliptic curve cryptography and homomorphic encryption

Elliptic curves have relatively simple formulae, for example the curve we use has the formula y² = x³ + 3 (the 3 is important…). If drawn on a piece of paper, we can pretend it looks like this:

An elliptic curve. Not the right elliptic curve, but this one looks nice.

We use elliptic curves because they can be used to create one-way functions (can map from A → B, but if given B you can’t figure out A) that preserve some mathematical operations.

Here’s how it works. If you have two points on a curve, draw a line through them and find where that line hits the curve for the 3rd time (which will always happen), then invert that point in the y-axis. The resulting point is the result of our ‘addition’ operation.

Elliptic curve point addition

When adding a point to itself, the line that’s drawn is the tangent to the curve at that point.

We require the inversion in the y-axis because without out it our ‘addition’ is not associative: (P+Q) + R would not equal P+ (Q+R).

But…why?

Good question! We can use point addition to define elliptic curve scalar multiplication. If we have a point, P, and an integer x, we can ‘multiply’ P by x, but adding P to itself x times.

If the elliptic curve parameters are carefully chosen, scalar multiplication is a one-way function. If I have x and P, I can easily compute x•P. But if I have P and x•P, I can’t figure out x. Naturally, terms and conditions apply. This only works if x is a random number, or has randomness added into it (if x is predictable then it’s much easier to figure it out via trial-and-error brute force techniques).

But…why?

Good question! There are cheaper and faster one-way functions out there, like hashing algorithms. But elliptic curves preserve some of the mathematical properties of the values they encrypt.

Take two random integers x and y and calculate x•G and y•G. Now add them together. The resulting point is the same point you get by adding together x and y, then multiplying the result by G.

P = x•G + y•G = (x+y)•G

This ability to perform homomorphic addition means we can perform additions on encrypted numbers as if they weren’t encrypted, which is rather useful.

Naturally, terms and conditions apply. The problem (well, one of them) with homomorphic addition over elliptic curves is that the addition is performed modulo an extremely large prime number p. For the curve we use, this is equal to 21888242871839275222246405745257275088548364400416034343698204186575808495617.

Imagine we want to validate a ‘transaction’. I have a note worth 0 and I want to convert it into a note worth -1 and 1. Let’s represent these values as ‘notes’ on an elliptic curve: -1•G and 1•G.

Naturally, 0•G = -1•G + 1•G. So we can satisfy the balancing relationship required by our join-split transaction. But for our elliptic curve, -1 is actually p-1, which is a huge number!

If we used this kind of logic to validate dollar-denominated confidential transactions, we have just created a ‘note’ worth more dollars than the amount that exists in the observable universe, which is a bit of a problem.

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Range proofs to the rescue

We need a range proof to deal with this problem. If we check that every encrypted number that enters our cryptosystem is many orders of magnitude less than p/2, then it’s never possible to ‘wrap’ around the modulus boundary and create ‘negative’ numbers.

But we have another problem now. If the modular nature of homomorphic arithmetic is the villain in our story, then range proofs are less of a plucky hero with heart and plot armor, and more like a cut-throat mercenary who will pillage everything down to the elastic in your pants. Range proofs are expensive. The computational cost to verify most range proofs adds a significant overhead to the cryptographic protocols that use them.

For example, a common method is to create encrypted representations of every bit in a number, and then prove that every bit is either 0 or 1. However for, say, a 32-bit number, you would need to validate 32 zero-knowledge proofs. There are some ingenious techniques for squishing the size of these proofs down and combining them into a mega-proof, but the amount of computation required by a verification program will still scale with the number of bits your encrypted number can potentially contain.

For the Ethereum protocol, this translates into gas costs that quickly hit the block gas limit.

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Range proofs via digital signatures

Picture the scene. You are a proud and loyal citizen of the People’s Representative Democratic Party of Zero-Knowledgeandia. In this timeline, you are called Alice due to a clerical incident at the registry office; the Party does not make mistakes.

Today, you are stoically queuing at the bread line in order to feed your family for another week.

However, you have a problem. Commissar Bob will only sell bread to upstanding citizens who have a sufficiently low State Disobedience score.

Naturally, you are a proud and loyal citizen and do in fact posess a sufficiently low score. However if you simply tell Bob your score you will be sentenced to 5 years of hard labour in the acid-boron caves for not being GDPR-2.0 compilant.

Your one saving grace is that Bob, being a stickler for following rules, absolutely loves abstract guessing games with public coins. So you can use a zero-knowledge proof.

However, Bob only posesses an 8-bit Robotron-1999 People’s Tabulating Machine and only has one minute to process your proof before you get kicked out of the bread line for loitering.

How can Alice present Bob with an efficient range proof that her score is below a threshold? Will Alice’s family be fed for another week?

It is on this cliff-hanger that we will dive into the depths of the AZTEC protocol and its range proof.

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Saving the day with lazy range proofs

In software engineering we have a principle called lazy evaluation. Simply put, don’t bother doing something unless you have to, and only do it when you need to. It might be expensive to verify a range proof, but it is much cheaper to verify that somebody else has verified a range proof.

Digital Signatures and range proofs

Making range proofs somebody else’s problem introduces a trusted setup into the protocol, performed by the “somebody else” in question. In this setup phase, we generate a random integer y, the trusted setup private key (this is the ‘toxic waste’ of our protocol). The trusted setup public key is published (y•G), along with digital signatures for every integer that we tolerate in our range proof (e.g. 0 to 1 million). Once this is done, knowledge of y must be destroyed.

Now, in order to perform a range proof, all we need to do is present a signature, and prove it was signed by y. If we have done our job properly, this means that the integer in the signature is also inside the allowed range, because those were the only signatures that were created.

This does introduce risk that y is not destroyed and information about it is leaked. However we have a multiparty computation protocol that enables our trusted setup to be performed by a large number of people (ideally thousands). Each person generates their own piece of ‘toxic waste’, performs their part of the computation, then destroys their waste. Only one person has to act honestly and destroy their toxic waste for the entire protocol to be secure.

With out of the way, here, hold these:

The point μ is a form of Bohen-Boyen (BB) signature and is part of the trusted setup signature database. The integer k represents a number that we accept in our range proof, so we have one signature for each integer in our range. The integer y represents a special trusted-setup private key and the point T represents the trusted-setup public key.

If we are given a point μ and a scalar k, we can check whether μ is indeed a signature without knowing what y is; we only need T.

Why is this? Well, our tactic is to embed the ratio G: y•G into the encryption of every number in the range register, so in a way that is somehow testable but also irrecoverable. Bilinear parings test ratios of exponents and enable us to blinding, magically, test that our ‘signature’ cam from a pre-constructed list signed by y (we can ‘fake’ a proof this proof by knowing y, which is why it is paramount that knowledge of y is destroyed).

We know the values of G and y•G. If we also can get μ and y•μ, we can validate that the mapping between (G -> y•G) and (μ ->y•μ) is the same and therefore we can prove that μ is a signature from the signature database. This is what we require for our bilinear pairing comparison.

In order to do this, we need y•μ. To get this, we need to compute this quantity:

This might make more sense if we re-write G as ((y -k)/(y-k))•G, and μ in terms of G:

Because of homomorphic addition, the ‘scalar multiplier’ of G is y/(y-k), leading us to this:

Validating Boneh-Boyen signatures: bilinear pairings

For any valid Boneh-Boyen signature μ, we can compute y•μ despite not knowing the value of y. But how do we know that this signature was signed by the trusted setup private key and is not a forgery?

If we have these two points, we can check that y is indeed the correct private key through a bilinear pairing.

Vitalik wrote a great article on bilinear pairings that explains it better than I can, if you want to know more I recommend reading it. To summarise, pairings perform a kind of multiplication of elliptic curve points. If I perform the pairing operation on two points: e(a•P,b•R), it doesn’t matter which points contain the scalars a and b because the result multiplies them together. For example, the following four pairing operations create the same result:

e(a•P,b•R) = e(b•P,a•R) = e(ab•P,R) = e(P,ab•R)

So take our trusted-setup public key, T = y•G. If we are given elliptic curve points μ and y•μ, we can check that this is the case by pairing these points with T and G respectively and checking both sides of the following equation match:

Putting it all together, we can validate whether an elliptic curve point μ is a Boneh-Boyen signature over an integer k, signed by trusted-setup private key y, by validating the following equation:

The takeaway from this, is that if a person can prove that they have a signature signed by y, and link the value k of the signature to an encrypted value, then we know that the encrypted value can only be one of the integers signed in the trusted setup. I.e. we have a range proof. Tadaaa…

It’s important that this can be done without anybody actually knowing what yis, because y was destroyed at the end of the trusted setup process.

The value in all of this is that the verification equation does not care about how big k is. The bigger the range, the bigger the signature database created by the trusted setup, but the computational cost of verifying this range proof is always constant.

But wait, there’s more! Creating an encryption scheme with an embedded range proof

During our trusted setup protocol, we created an elliptic curve point μ for every integer we accept in our range proof and put them in a database. We also publish the public key T.

So now, we can pick out one of these points and prove that it was signed by T. But this does not give us the confidentiality we need.

If I see somebody else use a signature point in a transaction, I can just look up which integer that point corresponds to in the database!

We need to add in a randomizing factor. Pick a random variable a. This is our viewing key. Now, if we want to construct a range proof over an integer k, we pick out the required point μ and multiply it by the viewing key. Let’s call this point γ

In order to prove that γ is a signature signed by y, we need to be able to get y•γ. instead of y•μ. But this is straightforward, just compute k•γ + a•G instead of k•μ + G:

Let’s introduce a point, σ, to represent this: σ = y•γ. Now, to prove we have a valid signature given the pair of points (γ, σ), a verifier must validate that the following equations are true:

The value in this is that an observer cannot link γ to a signature in the signature database, because we’ve scrambled the signature with our viewing key a. However, we can still prove that whatever γ contains, it is still a Boneh-Boyen signature signed by the trusted setup private key y, even though nobody actually knows what this is and all we have to work with is T.

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Putting it all together: the AZTEC ‘commitment’ function

You might have noticed that this bilinear pairing verification equation requires the integers k and a. The verification equations are being run inside a ‘smart contract’ validation algorithm, and we naturally don’t want to broadcast these integers! That’s kind of the whole point.

This is relatively straightforward and can be done through a zero-knowledge proof. But that is a whole other article in and of itself, for now let’s just assume this can be done.

The two points (γ, σ) represent an encryption of an integer k. Given these two points, only one specific value of k and one specific value of a will satisfy the verification equations.

This is because γ is a function of the trusted setup private key y, and the generator point G is not. Assuming the trusted setup is done properly, and knowledge of y has been destroyed, it is not possible to ‘factorize’ out the integer (k) multiplying γ, by adding terms to the integer (a) multiplying G, without breaking elliptic curve cryptography.This is the computational binding property that is required for a useable encryption scheme.

It is also not possible to glean any information about k by examining the points (γ, σ), other than the fact that it is within our range proof bounds. This is because the viewing key (a) acts as a randomizing factor that needs to be factored out before k can be extracted. This is the perfectly hiding property, the second property required for any encryption scheme.

Naturally, if I give you an encrypted point pair (γ, σ) and the viewing key (a), you can figure out what k is (I mean, it’s called a viewing key for a reason!). This is because we can compute k•γ by computing σ — a•G. Now that we have k•γ and γ, we can extract k via a brute-force algorithm (because the set of integers that k is from is relatively small, say between a million and a billion values).

It is this commitment function, an encryption scheme that contains an implicit range proof, that enables the AZTEC protocol’s zero-knowledge proofs to be efficiently verified.

Well, that’s about it for now. Over the coming weeks we’ll be publishing more articles about the workings of the AZTEC protocol, as this one only scratches the surface. If you want to learn more, you can read a complete description of the AZTEC protocol and its soundness properties in our paper.

Cheers,

Zac.

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Aztec Network
Aztec Network
24 Sep
xx min read

Testnet Retro - 2.0.3 Network Upgrade

Special thanks to Santiago Palladino, Phil Windle, Alex Gherghisan, and Mitch Tracy for technical updates and review.

On September 17th, 2025, a new network upgrade was deployed, making Aztec more secure and flexible for home stakers. This upgrade, shipped with all the features needed for a fully decentralized network launch, includes a completely redesigned slashing system that allows inactive or malicious operators to be removed, and does not penalize home stakers for short outages. 

With over 23,000 operators running validators across 6 continents (in a variety of conditions), it is critical not to penalize nodes that temporarily drop due to internet connectivity issues. This is because users of the network are also found across the globe, some of whom might have older phones. A significant effort was put into shipping a low-memory proving mode that allows older mobile devices to send transactions and use privacy-preserving apps. 

The network was successfully deployed, and all active validators on the old testnet were added to the queue of the new testnet. This manual migration was only necessary because major upgrades to the governance contracts had gone in since the last testnet was deployed. The new testnet started producing blocks after the queue started to be “flushed,” moving validators into the rollup. Because the network is fully decentralized, the initial flush could have been called by anyone. The network produced ~2k blocks before an invalid block made it to the chain and temporarily stalled block production. Block production is now restored and the network is healthy. This post explains what caused the issue and provides an update on the current status of the network. 

Note: if you are a network operator, you must upgrade to version 2.0.3 and restart your node to participate in the latest testnet. If you want to run a node, it’s easy to get started.

What’s included in the upgrade? 

This upgrade was a team-wide effort that optimized performance and implemented all the mechanisms needed to launch Aztec as a fully decentralized network from day 1. 

Feature highlights include: 

  • Improved node stability: The Aztec node software is now far more stable. Users will see far fewer crashes and increased performance in terms of attestations and blocks produced. This translates into a far better experience using testnet, as transactions get included much faster.
  • Boneh–Lynn–Shacham (BLS) keys: When a validator registers on the rollup, they also provide keys that allow BLS signature aggregation. This unlocks future optimizations where signatures can be combined via p2p communication, then verified on Ethereum, while proving that the signatures come from block proposers.
  • Low-memory proving mode: The client-side proving requirements have dropped dramatically from 3.7GB to 1.3GB through a new low-memory proving mode, enabling older mobile devices to send Aztec transactions and use apps like zkPassport. 
  • AVM performance: The Aztec Virtual Machine (AVM) performance has seen major improvements with constraint coverage jumping from 0% to approximately 90-95%, providing far more secure AVM proving and more realistic proving performance numbers from provers. 
  • Flexible key management: The system now supports flexible key management through keystores, multi-EOA support, and remote signers, eliminating the need to pass private keys through environment variables and representing a significant step toward institutional readiness. 
  • Redesigned slashing: Slashing has been redesigned to provide much better consensus guarantees. Further, the new configuration allows nodes not to penalize home stakers for short outages, such as 20-minute interruptions. 
  • Slashing Vetoer: The Slasher contract now has an explicit vetoer: an address that can prevent slashing. At Mainnet, the initial vetoer will be operated by an independent group of security researchers who will also provide security assessments on upgrades. This acts as a failsafe in the event that nodes are erroneously trying to slash other nodes due to a bug.

With these updates in place, we’re ready to test a feature-complete network. 

What happened after deployment? 

As mentioned above, block production started when someone called the flush function and a minimum number of operators from the queue were let into the validator set. 

Shortly thereafter, while testing the network, a member of the Aztec Labs team spun up a “bad” sequencer that produced an invalid block proposal. Specifically, one of the state trees in the proposal was tampered with. 

Initial block production 

The expectation was that this would be detected immediately and the block rejected. Instead, a bug was discovered in the validator code where the invalid block proposal wasn't checked thoroughly enough. In effect, the proposal got enough attestations, so it was posted to the rollup. Due to extra checks in the nodes, when the nodes pulled the invalid block from Ethereum, they detected the tampered tree and refused to sync it. This is a good outcome as it prevented the attack. Additionally, prover nodes refused to prove the epoch containing the invalid block. This allowed the rollup to prune the entire bad epoch away. After the prune, the invalid state was reset to the last known good block.

Block production stalled

The prune revealed another, smaller bug, where, after a failed block sync, a prune does not get processed correctly, requiring a node restart to clear up. This led to a 90-minute outage from the moment the block proposal was posted until the testnet recovered. The time was equally split between waiting for pruning to happen and for the nodes to restart in order to process the prune.

The Fix

Validators were correctly re-executing all transactions in the block proposals and verifying that the world state root matched the one in the block proposal, but they failed to check that intermediate tree roots, which are included in the proposal and posted to the rollup contract on L1, were also correct. The attack tweaked one of these intermediate roots while proposing a correct world state root, so it went unnoticed by the attestors. 

As mentioned above, even though the block made it through the initial attestation and was posted to L1, the invalid block was caught by the validators, and the entire epoch was never proven as provers refused to generate a proof for the inconsistent state. 

A fix was pushed that resolved this issue and ensured that invalid block proposals would be caught and rejected. A second fix was pushed that ensures inconsistent state is removed from the uncommitted cache of the world state.

Block production restored

What’s Next

Block production is currently running smoothly, and the network health has been restored. 

Operators who had previously upgraded to version 2.0.3 will need to restart their nodes. Any operator who has not upgraded to 2.0.3 should do so immediately. 

Attestation and Block Production rate on the new rollup

Slashing has also been functioning as expected. Below you can see the slashing signals for each round. A single signal can contain votes for multiple validators, but a validator's attester needs to receive 65 votes to be slashed.

Votes on slashing signals

Join us this Thursday, September 25, 2025, at 4 PM CET on the Discord Town Hall to hear more about the 2.0.3 upgrade. To stay up to date with the latest updates for network operators, join the Aztec Discord and follow Aztec on X.

Noir
Noir
18 Sep
xx min read

Just write “if”: Why Payy left Halo2 for Noir

The TL;DR:

Payy, a privacy-focused payment network, just rewrote its entire ZK architecture from Halo2 to Noir while keeping its network live, funds safe, and users happy. 

Code that took months to write now takes weeks (with MVPs built in as little as 30 minutes). Payy’s codebase shrank from thousands of lines to 250, and now their entire engineering team can actually work on its privacy infra. 

This is the story of how they transformed their ZK ecosystem from one bottlenecked by a single developer to a system their entire team can modify and maintain.

Starting with Halo2

Eighteen months ago, Payy faced a deceptively simple requirement: build a privacy-preserving payment network that actually works on phones. That requires client-side proving.

"Anyone who tells you they can give you privacy without the proof being on the phone is lying to you," Calum Moore - Payy's Technical Lead - states bluntly.

To make a private, mobile network work, they needed:

  • Mobile proof generation with sub-second performance
  • Minimal proof sizes for transmission over weak mobile signals
  • Low memory footprint for on-device proving
  • Ethereum verifier for on-chain settlement

To start, the team evaluated available ZK stacks through their zkbench framework:

STARKs (e.g., RISC Zero): Memory requirements made them a non-starter on mobile. Large proof sizes are unsuitable for mobile data transmission.

Circom with Groth16: Required trusted setup ceremonies for each circuit update. It had “abstracted a bit too early” and, as a result, is not high-level enough to develop comfortably, but not low-level enough for controls and optimizations, said Calum.

Halo2: Selected based on existing production deployments (ZCash, Scroll), small proof sizes, and an existing Ethereum verifier. As Calum admitted with the wisdom of hindsight: “Back a year and a half ago, there weren’t any other real options.”

Bus factor = 1 😳

Halo2 delivered on its promises: Payy successfully launched its network. But cracks started showing almost immediately.

First, they had to write their own chips from scratch. Then came the real fun: if statements.

"With Halo2, I'm building a chip, I'm passing this chip in... It's basically a container chip, so you'd set the value to zero or one depending on which way you want it to go. And, you'd zero out the previous value if you didn't want it to make a difference to the calculation," Calum explained, “when I’m writing in Noir, I just write ‘if’. "

With Halo2, writing an if statement (programming 101) required building custom chip infra. 

Binary decomposition, another fundamental operation for rollups, meant more custom chips. The Halo2 implementation quickly grew to thousands of lines of incomprehensible code.

And only Calum could touch any of it.

The Bottleneck

"It became this black box that no one could touch, no one could reason about, no one could verify," he recalls. "Obviously, we had it audited, and we were confident in that. But any changes could only be done by me, could only be verified by me or an auditor."

In engineering terms, this is called a bus factor of one: if Calum got hit by a bus (or took a vacation to Argentina), Payy's entire proving system would be frozen. "Those circuits are open source," Calum notes wryly, "but who's gonna be able to read the Halo2 circuits? Nobody."

Evaluating Noir: One day, in Argentina…

During a launch event in Argentina, "I was like, oh, I'll check out Noir again. See how it's going," Calum remembers. He'd been tracking Noir's progress for months, occasionally testing it out, waiting for it to be reliable.

"I wrote basically our entire client-side proof in about half an hour in Noir. And it probably took me - I don't know, three weeks to write that proof originally in Halo2."

Calum recreated Payy's client-side proof in Noir in 30 minutes. And when he tested the proving speed, without any optimization, they were seeing 2x speed improvements.

"I kind of internally… didn't want to tell my cofounder Sid that I'd already made my decision to move to Noir," Calum admits. "I hadn't broken it to him yet because it's hard to justify rewriting your proof system when you have a deployed network with a bunch of money already on the network and a bunch of users."

Rebuilding (Ship of Theseus-ing) Payy

Convincing a team to rewrite the core of a live financial network takes some evidence. The technical evaluation of Noir revealed improvements across every metric:

Proof Generation Time: Sub-0.5 second proof generation on iPhones. "We're obsessive about performance," Calum notes (they’re confident they can push it even further).

Code Complexity: Their entire ZK implementation compressed from thousands of lines of Halo2 to just 250 lines of Noir code. "With rollups, the logic isn't complex—it's more about the preciseness of the logic," Calum explains.

Composability: In Halo2, proof aggregation required hardwiring specific verifiers for each proof type. Noir offers a general-purpose verifier that accepts any proof of consistent size.

"We can have 100 different proving systems, which are hyper-efficient for the kind of application that we're doing," Calum explains. "Have them all aggregated by the same aggregation proof, and reason about whatever needs to be."

Migration Time

Initially, the goal was to "completely mirror our Halo2 proofs": no new features. This conservative approach meant they could verify correctness while maintaining a live network.

The migration preserved Payy's production architecture:

  • Rust core (According to Calum, "Writing a financial application in JavaScript is borderline irresponsible")
  • Three-proof system: client-side proof plus two aggregators  
  • Sparse Merkle tree with Poseidon hashing for state management

When things are transparent, they’re secure

"If you have your proofs in Noir, any person who understands even a little bit about logic or computers can go in and say, 'okay, I can kinda see what's happening here'," Calum notes.

The audit process completely transformed. With Halo2: "The auditors that are available to audit Halo2 are few and far between."

With Noir: "You could have an auditor that had no Noir experience do at least a 95% job."

Why? Most audit issues are logic errors, not ZK-specific bugs. When auditors can read your code, they find real problems instead of getting lost in implementation details.

Code Comparison

Halo2: Binary decomposition

  • Write a custom chip for binary decomposition
  • Implement constraint system manually
  • Handle grid placement and cell references
  • Manage witness generation separately
  • Debug at the circuit level when something goes wrong

Payy’s previous 383 line implementation of binary decomposition can be viewed here (pkg/zk-circuits/src/chips/binary_decomposition.rs).

Payy’s previous binary decomposition implementation

Meanwhile, binary decomposition is handled in Noir with the following single line.

pub fn to_le_bits<let N: u32>(self: Self) -> [u1; N]

(Source)

What's Next

With Noir's composable proof system, Payy can now build specialized provers for different operations, each optimized for its specific task.

"If statements are horrendous in SNARKs because you pay the cost of the if statement regardless of its run," Calum explains. But with Noir's approach, "you can split your application logic into separate proofs, and run whichever proof is for the specific application you're looking for."

Instead of one monolithic proof trying to handle every case, you can have specialized proofs, each perfect for its purpose.

The Bottom Line

"I fell a little bit in love with Halo2," Calum admits, "maybe it's Stockholm syndrome where you're like, you know, it's a love-hate relationship, and it's really hard. But at the same time, when you get a breakthrough with it, you're like, yes, I feel really good because I'm basically writing assembly-level ZK proofs."

“But now? I just write ‘if’.”

Technical Note: While "migrating from Halo2 to Noir" is shorthand that works for this article, technically Halo2 is an integrated proving system where circuits must be written directly in Rust using its constraint APIs, while Noir is a high-level language that compiles to an intermediate representation and can use various proving backends. Payy specifically moved from writing circuits in Halo2's low-level constraint system to writing them in Noir's high-level language, with Barretenberg (UltraHonk) as their proving backend.

Both tools ultimately enable developers to write circuits and generate proofs, but Noir's modular architecture separates circuit logic from the proving system - which is what made Payy's circuits so much more accessible to their entire team, and now allows them to swap out their proving system with minimal effort as proving systems improve.

Payy's code is open source and available for developers looking to learn from their implementation.

Aztec Network
Aztec Network
4 Sep
xx min read

A New Brand for a New Era of Aztec

After eight years of solving impossible problems, the next renaissance is here. 

We’re at a major inflection point, with both our tech and our builder community going through growth spurts. The purpose of this rebrand is simple: to draw attention to our full-stack privacy-native network and to elevate the rich community of builders who are creating a thriving ecosystem around it. 

For eight years, we’ve been obsessed with solving impossible challenges. We invented new cryptography (Plonk), created an intuitive programming language (Noir), and built the first decentralized network on Ethereum where privacy is native rather than an afterthought. 

It wasn't easy. But now, we're finally bringing that powerful network to life. Testnet is live with thousands of active users and projects that were technically impossible before Aztec.

Our community evolution mirrors our technical progress. What started as an intentionally small, highly engaged group of cracked developers is now welcoming waves of developers eager to build applications that mainstream users actually want and need.

Behind the Brand: A New Mental Model

A brand is more than aesthetics—it's a mental model that makes Aztec's spirit tangible. 

Our Mission: Start a Renaissance

Renaissance means "rebirth"—and that's exactly what happens when developers gain access to privacy-first infrastructure. We're witnessing the emergence of entirely new application categories, business models, and user experiences.

The faces of this renaissance are the builders we serve: the entrepreneurs building privacy-preserving DeFi, the activists building identity systems that protect user privacy, the enterprise architects tokenizing real-world assets, and the game developers creating experiences with hidden information.

Values Driving the Network

This next renaissance isn't just about technology—it's about the ethos behind the build. These aren't just our values. They're the shared DNA of every builder pushing the boundaries of what's possible on Aztec.

Agency: It’s what everyone deserves, and very few truly have: the ability to choose and take action for ourselves. On the Aztec Network, agency is native

Genius: That rare cocktail of existential thirst, extraordinary brilliance, and mind-bending creation. It’s fire that fuels our great leaps forward. 

Integrity: It’s the respect and compassion we show each other. Our commitment to attacking the hardest problems first, and the excellence we demand of any solution. 

Obsession: That highly concentrated insanity, extreme doggedness, and insatiable devotion that makes us tick. We believe in a different future—and we can make it happen, together. 

Visualizing the Next Renaissance

Just as our technology bridges different eras of cryptographic innovation, our new visual identity draws from multiple periods of human creativity and technological advancement. 

The Wordmark: Permissionless Party 

Our new wordmark embodies the diversity of our community and the permissionless nature of our network. Each letter was custom-drawn to reflect different pivotal moments in human communication and technological progress.

  • The A channels the bold architecture of Renaissance calligraphy—when new printing technologies democratized knowledge. 
  • The Z strides confidently into the digital age with clean, screen-optimized serifs. 
  • The T reaches back to antiquity, imagined as carved stone that bridges ancient and modern. 
  • The E embraces the dot-matrix aesthetic of early computing—when machines first began talking to each other. 
  • And the C fuses Renaissance geometric principles with contemporary precision.

Together, these letters tell the story of human innovation: each era building on the last, each breakthrough enabling the next renaissance. And now, we're building the infrastructure for the one that's coming.

The Icon: Layers of the Next Renaissance

We evolved our original icon to reflect this new chapter while honoring our foundation. The layered diamond structure tells the story:

  • Innermost layer: Sensitive data at the core
  • Black privacy layer: The network's native protection
  • Open third layer: Our permissionless builder community
  • Outermost layer: Mainstream adoption and real-world transformation

The architecture echoes a central plaza—the Roman forum, the Greek agora, the English commons, the American town square—places where people gather, exchange ideas, build relationships, and shape culture. It's a fitting symbol for the infrastructure enabling the next leap in human coordination and creativity.

Imagery: Global Genius 

From the Mughal and Edo periods to the Flemish and Italian Renaissance, our brand imagery draws from different cultures and eras of extraordinary human flourishing—periods when science, commerce, culture and technology converged to create unprecedented leaps forward. These visuals reflect both the universal nature of the Renaissance and the global reach of our network. 

But we're not just celebrating the past —we're creating the future: the infrastructure for humanity's next great creative and technological awakening, powered by privacy-native blockchain technology.

You’re Invited 

Join us to ask questions, learn more and dive into the lore.

Join Our Discord Town Hall. September 4th at 8 AM PT, then every Thursday at 7 AM PT. Come hear directly from our team, ask questions, and connect with other builders who are shaping the future of privacy-first applications.

Take your stance on privacy. Visit the privacy glyph generator to create your custom profile pic and build this new world with us.

Stay Connected. Visit the new website and to stay up-to-date on all things Noir and Aztec, make sure you’re following along on X.

The next renaissance is what you build on Aztec—and we can't wait to see what you'll create.

Aztec Network
Aztec Network
22 Jul
xx min read

Introducing the Adversarial Testnet

Aztec’s Public Testnet launched in May 2025.

Since then, we’ve been obsessively working toward our ultimate goal: launching the first fully decentralized privacy-preserving layer-2 (L2) network on Ethereum. This effort has involved a team of over 70 people, including world-renowned cryptographers and builders, with extensive collaboration from the Aztec community.

To make something private is one thing, but to also make it decentralized is another. Privacy is only half of the story. Every component of the Aztec Network will be decentralized from day one because decentralization is the foundation that allows privacy to be enforced by code, not by trust. This includes sequencers, which order and validate transactions, provers, which create privacy-preserving cryptographic proofs, and settlement on Ethereum, which finalizes transactions on the secure Ethereum mainnet to ensure trust and immutability.

Strong progress is being made by the community toward full decentralization. The Aztec Network now includes nearly 1,000 sequencers in its validator set, with 15,000 nodes spread across more than 50 countries on six continents. With this globally distributed network in place, the Aztec Network is ready for users to stress test and challenge its resilience.

Introducing the Adversarial Testnet

We're now entering a new phase: the Adversarial Testnet. This stage will test the resilience of the Aztec Testnet and its decentralization mechanisms.

The Adversarial Testnet introduces two key features: slashing, which penalizes validators for malicious or negligent behavior in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, and a fully decentralized governance mechanism for protocol upgrades.

This phase will also simulate network attacks to test its ability to recover independently, ensuring it could continue to operate even if the core team and servers disappeared (see more on Vitalik’s “walkaway test” here). It also opens the validator set to more people using ZKPassport, a private identity verification app, to verify their identity online.  

Slashing on the Aztec Network

The Aztec Network testnet is decentralized, run by a permissionless network of sequencers.

The slashing upgrade tests one of the most fundamental mechanisms for removing inactive or malicious sequencers from the validator set, an essential step toward strengthening decentralization.

Similar to Ethereum, on the Aztec Network, any inactive or malicious sequencers will be slashed and removed from the validator set. Sequencers will be able to slash any validator that makes no attestations for an entire epoch or proposes an invalid block.

Three slashes will result in being removed from the validator set. Sequencers may rejoin the validator set at any time after getting slashed; they just need to rejoin the queue.

Decentralized Governance

In addition to testing network resilience when validators go offline and evaluating the slashing mechanisms, the Adversarial Testnet will also assess the robustness of the network’s decentralized governance during protocol upgrades.

Adversarial Testnet introduces changes to Aztec Network’s governance system.

Sequencers now have an even more central role, as they are the sole actors permitted to deposit assets into the Governance contract.

After the upgrade is defined and the proposed contracts are deployed, sequencers will vote on and implement the upgrade independently, without any involvement from Aztec Labs and/or the Aztec Foundation.

Start Your Plan of Attack  

Starting today, you can join the Adversarial Testnet to help battle-test Aztec’s decentralization and security. Anyone can compete in six categories for a chance to win exclusive Aztec swag, be featured on the Aztec X account, and earn a DappNode. The six challenge categories include:

  • Homestaker Sentinel: Earn 1 Aztec Dappnode by maximizing attestation and proposal success rates and volumes, and actively participating in governance.
  • The Slash Priest: Awarded to the participant who most effectively detects and penalizes misbehaving validators or nodes, helping to maintain network security by identifying and “slashing” bad actors.
  • High Attester: Recognizes the participant with the highest accuracy and volume of valid attestations, ensuring reliable and secure consensus during the adversarial testnet.
  • Proposer Commander: Awarded to the participant who consistently creates the most successful and timely proposals, driving efficient consensus.
  • Meme Lord: Celebrates the creator of the most creative and viral meme that captures the spirit of the adversarial testnet.
  • Content Chronicler: Honors the participant who produces the most engaging and insightful content documenting the adversarial testnet experience.

Performance will be tracked using Dashtec, a community-built dashboard that pulls data from publicly available sources. Dashtec displays a weighted score of your validator performance, which may be used to evaluate challenges and award prizes.

The dashboard offers detailed insights into sequencer performance through a stunning UI, allowing users to see exactly who is in the current validator set and providing a block-by-block view of every action taken by sequencers.

To join the validator set and start tracking your performance, click here. Join us on Thursday, July 31, 2025, at 4 pm CET on Discord for a Town Hall to hear more about the challenges and prizes. Who knows, we might even drop some alpha.

To stay up-to-date on all things Noir and Aztec, make sure you’re following along on X.