Aztec Network
25 Mar
## min read

Privacy for Pennies: Scaling Aztec’s zkRollup

Learn how how Aztec's ZkRollup achieves scalable blockchain privacy at a minimal cost, enhancing both efficiency and security.

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Written by
Jon Wu
Edited by

The economics of our privacy-first Ethereum rollup.

Our goal at Aztec is to make privacy a no-brainer. That’s why our rollup is designed to give you fully private Ethereum transactions at dramatically lower cost than mainnet.

We consider privacy a critical missing component of Ethereum’s scalability roadmap, given that its user functionality is non-economic in nature.

But privacy must also be affordable, and in order to understand how we’ll get to privacy for cheap, we need to do a deeper study of rollup economics.

Background on Ethereum scaling

You might already be familiar with the difference between the two consensus Ethereum scaling solutions: Optimistic Rollups (ORUs) and zkRollups (ZKRs). I’ll let Vitalik explain here.

But in case you want my take, here’s the basic trade-off between Optimistic Rollups and zkRollups:

Optimistic

Optimistic rollup block producers post an Ethereum transaction containing a state root. The ecosystem “optimistically” takes the state of the system to be valid.

During a 7 day challenge period, anyone can prove the invalidity of the state transition by downloading the block of transactions and comparing the previous Merkle root state to the new Merkle root state.

If there is an invalid state transition, they can submit a fraud proof, causing the block producer to be slashed and the blockchain state to be rolled back to its original state.

Note that the cost of executing transactions with an optimistic rollup is very close to free, since it’s essentially the cost of computation as done by a single sequencer (just like, a computer somewhere). However, there is still a variable cost of posting data to Ethereum.

Zero-knowledge

In a zero-knowledge rollup, the rollup incurs a significant fixed cost. Rather than passively awaiting fraud proofs, ZKRs proactively post a succinct zero knowledge proof to Ethereum Layer 1 validating a set of off-chain computations (a “validity proof”).

While the security of off-chain transactions in a zkRollup is unimpeachable due to the deterministic nature of zero knowledge proofs, there must be sufficiently high transaction throughput to amortize the cost of posting the proof to Ethereum.

Tl;dr:

  • Optimistic: no fixed costs, finality delayed by 7 day challenge & withdrawal period; in case of fraud, blockchain state gets rolled back
  • zk: high fixed costs, finality limited by speed of rollup, no challenge or withdrawal period, no possible fraud (caveat: as long as the cryptography works as intended)

Simple rollup math

Aztec, of course is a zero-knowledge rollup. (In fact, it’s a recursive zk-rollup–a zk-zk-rollup, but we’ll get to that).

That means it does incur the fixed cost of posting a SNARK-based proof to Ethereum. But it also means it’s highly scalable.

Scalability

What do we mean by scalability? In a blockchain context, scalability means the marginal cost of transactions goes down with each incremental transaction. The faster the marginal cost falls, the more scalable something is.

In terms of cost, optimistic rollups have no fixed expense, but over a large enough number of transactions, zkRollups quickly overcome their fixed cost disadvantage and win over optimistic roll-ups with superior data compression.

So: zkRollups are more scalable.

Now, if you think about most Layer 1’s, including Ethereum, they’re anti-scalable. The more transactions go through Ethereum, the higher the cost of each marginal transaction.

zkRollups for kids

Here’s a school child’s diagram of the scalability equation for Aztec and other zkRollups:

Must be a really good school if this is what they’re teaching ‘em.

Hopefully this gives you a picture of how Aztec’s path to scaling our own rollup:

  • Reduce the cost of posting a rollup (we control this)
  • Increase the number of transactions per rollup (we mostly control this)
  • Lower the per-transaction cost of posting call data (we don’t control this for Ethereum, but we can select a lower-cost data availability solution)

Let’s tackle these one by one, compare the current system relative to performance a year ago, and discuss what they mean for future network performance.

Cost of posting rollups

In Aztec’s current technological paradigm, an improvement of our proving system called UltraPlonk, the cost of posting a proof to Ethereum is approximately 550,000 gas, ~30% cheaper than it was when zk.money was first launched.

We anticipate this coming down to ~180,000 gas with the advent of our next-generation proving system, [super secret code name redacted].

Transactions per rollup

Our current system was recently upgraded from 112 transactions per rollup at zk.money’s launch to 896 transactions per rollup, an improvement in throughput of 8x.

The way Aztec worked under the hood prior to this most recent upgrade is:

  • A proof is generated client-side in-browser
  • 28 client proofs are then aggregated into an “inner” rollup proof
  • 4 inner rollup proofs are then aggregated into an “outer” rollup proof

That “outer” rollup proof is then verified in what we call the root rollup circuit — the circuit that establishes the validity of all the underlying work that goes into ensuring execution on Aztec happened as expected. Then that final proof gets posted on-chain for posterity.

It’s proofs on proofs on proofs.

For the release of Aztec Connect SDK, we’ve increased the outer rollup’s capacity to 32 inner proofs by optimizing the outer rollup circuit. 28 * 32 = 896. Magic.

That’s why we go through all this headache, writing circuits that can efficiently verify recursive Plonk proofs.

If you’re following so far, the share of rollup costs per transaction fell from:

  • 750k / 112 = 6,700 gas; to
  • 550k / 896 = 614 gas → an 11x improvement!

We think that’s well worth inventing novel forms of cryptography.

Per-txn cost of call data

In addition to the proof, which validates Aztec’s off-chain transactions, Aztec also has to post call data¹ for each transaction, such that anyone can reconstruct the state of Aztec’s rollup and prove the validity of off-chain computation.

Currently, the cost of posting call data to Ethereum is 16 gas per byte. Vitalik has submitted EIP-4488 lowering the cost of call data to 3 gas per byte, while there’s another proposal, confusingly named EIP-4844, which offers a new data format specifically designed to lower the cost to rollups of posting data on Ethereum.

Aztec broadly supports efforts to reduce the cost of data on Ethereum, and we’ll discuss the minutiae of the two EIPs in a separate post.

For now, it’s true for our architecture that scaling costs beyond a few hundred transactions asymptotically approach the cost of call data:

aditi on Twitter: "the result is that even in the case of end users leveraging rollups, posting call data to Eth beholds them to the gas costs they face today as a result of this fixed ratio. modeled below, you'll see that cost will always hit a rough asymptote b/c of fixed call data cost pic.twitter.com/uq9cTYARC4 / Twitter"

the result is that even in the case of end users leveraging rollups, posting call data to Eth beholds them to the gas costs they face today as a result of this fixed ratio.

Note that the chain on which Aztec posts call data is critical for security, because data availability is of chief concern in case Aztec’s rollup provider ceases to function and system state needs to be reconstructed once the provider comes back online.

Note that while a rollup provider going down can only freeze users’ funds in place, with no ability to steal funds, recomputing blockchain state can only happen if state is available (hence data availability).

That’s why for the foreseeable future, we intend to post the rollup’s state to Ethereum–it is for now the Lindy-est, most secure chain with consistent and proven uptime. We’re also excited about exploring our own first-party offchain data availability solution and 3rd-party chains like Celestia.

For now, an Aztec transaction requires the storage of a number of items on-chain:

  • Transaction viewing keys (8,480 gas)²
  • Join-split call data (2,064 gas)³
  • For DeFi transactions, call data for deposit and claim (2,064 * 2)⁴
  • Total: 14,672 gas

Recap & what the future holds

Aztec’s zkRollup has scaled efficiently since the launch of zk.money on mainnet. The impending launch of the Aztec Connect SDK brings up to 100x cost savings for Ethereum DeFi services, all while offering full privacy.

The cost of a private transaction on Aztec will always be cheaper than the cost of a public transaction on Ethereum, despite the added complexity of encrypted transactions — you always get privacy for free (or better than free).

The one elephant in the room is data cost on Ethereum. Call data represents the vast majority (88.8%) of the gas cost for a DeFi transaction. And over time, as proof verification costs fall and the rollup scales further, call data will represent nearly 100% of transaction costs.

At that point, scaling Aztec will also mean optimizing Ethereum.

Next time we’ll cover:

  • Our initiatives to reduce these costs, including taking viewing keys off-chain and pushing for EIP’s reducing the cost of call data on Ethereum
  • How Aztec Connect SDK adds just a little more math to the above

Build with Aztec Connect SDK

Are you a developer who wants to bring privacy to your favorite DeFi protocol? If you build it, we’ll fund it.

Aztec Grants Program: https://airtable.com/shrvglCZ24jaH73oe

Connect Starter: https://github.com/AztecProtocol/aztec-connect-starter.

Help make privacy a no-brainer.

Join the Aztec Community

We’re always on the lookout for talented engineers and applied cryptographers. If joining our mission to bring scalable privacy to Ethereum excites you — check out our open roles.

And continue the conversation with us on Discord or Twitter.

  1. Call data is currently the cheapest form of data storage on Ethereum. It’s a special form of memory used to store function parameters (hence “call” data, because it’s used to call external functions).
  2. Viewing keys are required to view encrypted transactions and read the details of a transaction. Unlike state, they’re not critical for system liveness.
  3. The join-split circuit is a simple formula that ensures Aztec encrypted notes are added (joined) and divided (split) correctly. It follows the simple equivalence (a + b) = (c + d).
  4. The DeFi circuit ensures assets are correctly delivered to the Aztec Rollup (deposited) and returned from the Aztec Rollup (withdrawn).

Privacy for Pennies: Scaling Aztec’s zkRollup was originally published in Aztec on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story

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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.