Decentralization is not just a technical property of the Aztec Network, it is the governing principle. 

No single team, company, or individual controls how the network evolves. Upgrades are proposed in public, debated in the open, and approved by the people running the network. Decentralized sequencing, proving, and governance are hard-coded into the base protocol so that no central actor can unilaterally change the rules, censor transactions, or appropriate user value.

The governance framework that makes this possible has three moving parts: Aztec Improvement Proposal (AZIP), Aztec Upgrade Proposal (AZUP), and the onchain vote. Together, they form a pipeline that takes an idea to a live protocol change, with multiple independent checkpoints along the way.

The Virtual Town Square

Every upgrade starts with an AZIP. AZIPs are version-controlled design documents, publicly maintained on GitHub, modeled on the same EIP process that has governed Ethereum since its earliest days. Anyone is encouraged to suggest improvements to the Aztec Network protocol spec.

Before a formal proposal is opened, ideas live in GitHub Discussions, an open forum where the community can weigh in, challenge assumptions, and shape the direction of a proposal before it hardens into a spec. This is the virtual town square: the place where the network's future gets debated in public, not decided behind closed doors.

The AZIP framework is what decentralization looks like in practice. Multiple ideas can surface simultaneously, get stress-tested by the community, and the strongest ones naturally rise. Good arguments win, not titles or seniority. The process selects for quality discussion precisely because anyone can participate and everything is visible.

Once an AZIP is formalized as a pull request, it enters a structured lifecycle: Draft, Ready for Discussion, then Accepted or Rejected. Rejected AZIPs are not deleted — they remain permanently in the repository as a record of what was tried and why it was rejected. Nothing gets quietly buried.

Security Considerations are mandatory for all Core, Standard, and Economics AZIPs. Proposals without them cannot pass the Draft stage. Security is structural, not an afterthought.

From Proposal to Upgrade

Once Core Contributors, a merit-based and informal group of active protocol contributors, have reviewed an AZIP and approved it for inclusion, it gets bundled into an AZUP.

An AZUP takes everything an AZIP described and deploys it — a real smart contract, real onchain actions. Each AZUP includes a payload that encodes the exact onchain changes that will occur if the upgrade is approved. Anyone can inspect the payload on a block explorer and see precisely what will change before voting begins.

The payload then goes to sequencers for signaling. Sequencers are the backbone of the network. They propose blocks, attest to state, and serve as the first governance gate for any upgrade. A payload must accumulate enough signals from sequencers within a fixed round to advance. The people actually running the network have to express coordinated support before any change reaches a broader vote.

Once sequencers signal quorum, the proposal moves to tokenholders. Sequencers' staked voting power defaults to "yea" on proposals that came through the signaling path, meaning opposition must be active, not passive. Any sequencer or tokenholder who wants to vote against a proposal must explicitly re-delegate their stake before the voting snapshot is taken. The system rewards genuine engagement from all sides.

For a proposal to pass, it must meet quorum, a supermajority margin, and a minimum participation threshold, all three. If any condition is unmet, the proposal fails.

Built-In Delays, Built-In Safety

Even after a proposal passes, it does not execute immediately. A mandatory delay gives node operators time to deploy updated software, allows the community to perform final checks, and reduces the risk of sudden uncoordinated changes hitting the network. If the proposal is not executed within its grace period, it expires.

Failed AZUPs cannot be resubmitted. A new proposal must be created that directly addresses the feedback received. There is no way to simply retry and hope for a different result.

No Single Point of Control

The teams building the network have no special governance power. Sequencers, tokenholders, and Core Contributors are the governing actors, each playing a distinct and non-redundant role.

No single party can force or block an upgrade. Sequencers can withhold signals. Tokenholders can vote nay. Proposals not executed within the grace period expire on their own.

This is decentralization working as intended. The network upgrades not because a team decides it should, but because the people running it agree that it should.

If you want to help shape what Aztec becomes, the forum is open. The proposals are public. The town square is yours. 

Follow Aztec on X to stay up to date on the latest developments.

Aztec’s Approach to Security

Aztec is novel code — the bleeding edge of cryptography and blockchain technology. As the first decentralized L2 on Ethereum, Aztec is powered by a global network of sequencers and provers. Decentralization introduces some novel challenges in how security is addressed; there is no centralized sequencer to pause or a centralized entity who has power over the network. The rollout of the network reflects this, with distinct goals at each phase.

Ignition

Validate governance and decentralized block building work as intended on Ethereum Mainnet. 

Alpha

Enable transactions at 1TPS, ~6s block times and improve the security of the network via continual ongoing audits and bug bounty. New releases of the alpha network are expected regularly to address any security vulnerabilities. Please note, every alpha deployment is distinct and state is not migrated between Alpha releases. 

Beta

We will transition to Beta once the network scales to >10 TPS, with reduced block times while ensuring 99.9% uptime. Additionally, the transition requires no critical bugs disclosed via bug bounty in 3 months. State migrations across network releases can be considered.

TL;DR: The roadmap from Ignition to Alpha to Beta is designed to reflect the core team's growing confidence in the network's security.

This phased approach lets us balance ecosystem growth while building security confidence and steadily expanding the community of researchers and tools working to validate the network’s security, soundness and correctness.

Ultimately, time in production without an exploit is the most reliable indicator of how secure a codebase is.

At the start of Alpha, that confidence is still developing. The core team believes the network is secure enough to support early ecosystem use cases and handle small amounts of value. However this is experimental alpha software and users should not deposit more value than they are willing to lose. Apps may choose to limit deposit amounts to mitigate risk for users.

Audits are ongoing throughout Alpha, with the goal to achieve dual external audits across the entire codebase.

The table below shows current security and audit coverage at the time of writing.

The main bug bounty for the network is not yet live, other than for the non-cryptographic L1 smart contracts as audits are ongoing. We encourage security researchers to responsibly disclose findings in line with our security policy .

As the audits are still ongoing, we expect to discover vulnerabilities in various components. The fixes will be packaged and distributed with the “v5” release.

If we discover a Critical vulnerability in “v4” in accordance with the following severity matrix, which would require the change of verification keys to fix, we will first alert the portal operators to pause deposits and then post a message on the forum, stating that the rollup has a vulnerability.

Security of the Aztec Virtual Machine (AVM)

Aztec uses a hybrid execution model, handling private and public execution separately — and the security considerations differ between them.

As per the audit table above, it is clear that the Aztec Virtual Machine (AVM) has not yet completed its internal and external audits. This is intentional as all AVM execution is public, which allows it to benefit from a “Training Wheel” — the validator re-execution committee.

Every 72 seconds, a collection of newly proposed Aztec blocks are bundled into a "checkpoint" and submitted to L1. With each proposed checkpoint, a committee of 48 staking validators randomly selected from the entire set of validators (presently 3,959) re-execute all txs of all blocks in the checkpoint, and attest to the resulting state roots. 33 out of 48 attestations are required for the checkpoint proposal to be considered valid. The committee and the eventual zk proof must agree on the resultant state root for a checkpoint to be added to the proven chain. As a result, an attacker must control 33/48 of any given committee to exploit any bug in the AVM.

The only time the re-execution committee is not active is during the escape hatch, where the cost to propose a block is set at a level which attempts to quantify the security of the execution training wheel. For this version of the alpha network, this is set a 332M AZTEC, a figure intended to approximate the economic protection the committee normally provides, equivalent to roughly 19% of the un-staked circulating supply at the time of writing. Since the Aztec Foundation holds a significant portion of that supply, the effective threshold is considerably higher in practice.

Quantifying the cost of committee takeover attacks

A key design assumption is that just-in-time bribery of the sequencer committee is impractical and the only ****realistic attack vector is stake acquisition, not bribery.

Assuming a sequencer set size of 4,000 and a committee that rotates each epoch (~38.4mins) from the full sequencer set using a Fisher-Yates shuffle seeded by L1 RANDAO we can see the probability and amount of stake required in the table below.

To achieve a 99% probability of controlling at least one supermajority within 3 days, an attacker would need to control approximately 55.4% of the validator set - roughly 2,215 sequencers representing 443M AZTEC in stake. Assuming an exploit is successful their stake would likely de-value by 70-80%, resulting in an expected economic loss of approximately 332M AZTEC.

To achieve only a 0.5% probability of controlling at least one supermajority within 6 months, an attacker would need to control approximately 33.88% of the validator set.

What does this means for builders?

The practical effect of this training wheel is that the network can exist while there are known security issues with the AVM, as long as the value an attacker would gain from any potential exploit is less than the cost of acquiring 332M AZTEC.

The training wheel allows security researchers to spend more time on the private execution paths that don’t benefit from the training wheel and for the network to be deployed in an alpha version where security researchers can attempt to find additional AVM exploits.

In concrete terms, the training wheel means the Alpha network can reasonably secure value up to around 332M AZTEC (~$6.5M at the time of writing).

Ecosystem builders should keep the above limits in mind, particularly when designing portal contracts that bridge funds into the network.

Portals are the main way value will be bridged into the alpha network, and as a result are also the main target for any exploits. The design of portals can allow the network to secure far higher value. If a portal secures > 332M AZTEC and allows all of its funds to be taken in one withdrawal without any rate limits, delays or pause functionality then it is a target for an AVM exploit attack.

If a portal implements a maximum withdrawal per user, pause functionality or delays for larger withdrawals it becomes harder for an attacker to steal a large quantum of funds in one go.

Conclusion

The Aztec Alpha code is ready to go. The next step is for someone in the community to submit a governance proposal and for the network to vote on enabling transactions. This is decentralization working as intended.

Once live, Alpha will run at 1 TPS with roughly 6 second block times. Audits are still ongoing across several components, so keep deposits small and only put in what you're comfortable losing.

On the security side, a 48-validator re-execution committee provides the main protection during Alpha, requiring 33/48 consensus on every 72-second checkpoint. Successfully attacking the AVM would require controlling roughly 55% of the validator set at a cost of around 332M AZTEC, putting the practical security ceiling at approximately $6.5M.

Alpha is about growing the ecosystem, expanding the security of the network, and accumulating the one thing no audit can shortcut: time in production. This is the network maturing in exactly the way it was designed to as it progresses toward Beta.

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The Ignition Chain launched late last year, as the first fully decentralized L2 on Ethereum– a huge milestone for decentralized networks. The team has reinvented what true programmable privacy means, building the execution model from the ground up— combining the programmability of Ethereum with the privacy of Zcash in a single execution environment.

Since then, the network has been running with zero downtime with 3,500+ sequencers and 50+ provers across five continents. With the infrastructure now in place, the network is fully in the hands of the community, and the culmination of the past 8 years of work is now converging. 

Major upgrades have landed across four tracks: the execution layer, the proving system, the programming language, Noir, and the decentralization stack. Together, these milestones deliver on Aztec’s original promise, a system where developers can write fully programmable smart contracts with customizable privacy.

The infrastructure is in place. The code is ready. And we’re ready to ship. 

What’s New on the Roadmap?

The Execution Layer

The execution layer delivers on Aztec's core promise: fully programmable, privacy-preserving smart contracts on Ethereum. 

A complete dual state model is now in place–with both private and public state. Private functions execute client-side in the Private Execution Environment (PXE), running directly in the user's browser and generating zero-knowledge proofs locally, so that private data never leaves the original device. Public functions execute on the Aztec Virtual Machine (AVM) on the network side. 

Aztec.js is now live, giving developers a full SDK for managing accounts and interacting with contracts. Native account abstraction has been implemented, meaning every account is a smart contract with customizable authentication rules. Note discovery has been solved through a tagging mechanism, allowing recipients to efficiently query for relevant notes without downloading and decrypting everything on the network.

Contract standards are underway, with the Wonderland team delivering AIP-20 for tokens and AIP-721 for NFTs, along with escrow contracts and logic libraries, providing the production-ready building blocks for the Alpha Network. 

The Proving System

The proving system is what makes Aztec's privacy guarantees real, and it has deep roots.

In 2019, Aztec's cofounder Zac Williamson and Chief Scientist Ariel Gabizon introduced PLONK, which became one of the most widely used proving systems in zero-knowledge cryptography. Since then, Aztec's cryptographic backend, Barretenberg, has evolved through multiple generations, each facilitating faster, lighter, and more efficient proving than the last. The latest innovation, CHONK (Client-side Highly Optimized ploNK), is purpose-built for proving on phones and browsers and is what powers proof generation for the Alpha Network.

CHONK is a major leap forward for the user experience, dramatically reducing the memory and time required to generate proofs on consumer devices. It leverages best-in-class circuit primitives, a HyperNova-style folding scheme for efficiently processing chains of private function calls, and Goblin, a hyper-efficient purpose-built recursion acceleration scheme. The result is that private transactions can be proven on the devices people actually use, not just powerful servers.

This matters because privacy on Aztec means proofs are generated on the user's own device, keeping private data private. If proving is too slow or too resource-intensive, privacy becomes impractical. CHONK makes it practical.

Decentralization

Decentralization is what makes Aztec's privacy guarantees credible. Without it, a central operator could censor transactions, introduce backdoors, or compromise user privacy at will. 

Aztec addressed this by hardcoding decentralized sequencing, proving, and governance directly into the base protocol. The Ignition Chain has proven the stability of this consensus layer, maintaining zero downtime with over 3,500 sequencers and 50+ provers running across five continents. Aztec Labs and the Aztec Foundation run no sequencers and do not participate in governance.

Noir

Noir 1.0 is nearing completion, bringing a stable, production-grade language within reach. Aztec's own protocol circuits have been entirely rewritten in Noir, meaning the language is already battle-tested at the deepest layer of the stack. 

Internal and external audits of the compiler and toolchain are progressing in parallel, and security tooling including fuzzers and bytecode parsers is nearly finished. A stable, audited language means application teams can build on Alpha with confidence that the foundation beneath them won't shift.

What Comes Next

The code for Alpha Network, a functionally complete and raw version of the network, is ready.

The Alpha Network brings fully programmable, privacy-preserving smart contracts to Ethereum for the first time. It's the culmination of years of parallel work across the four tracks in the Aztec Roadmap. Together, they enable efficient client-side proofs that power customizable smart contracts, letting users choose exactly what stays private and what goes public. 

No other project in the space is close to shipping this. 

The code is written. The network is running. All the pieces are in place. The governance proposal is now live on the forum and open for discussion. Read through it, ask questions, poke holes, and help shape the path forward. 

Once the community is aligned, the proposal moves to a vote. This is how a decentralized network upgrades. Not by a team pushing a button, but by the people running it.

Programmable privacy will unlock a renaissance in onchain adoption. Real-world applications are coming and institutions are paying attention. Alpha represents the culmination of eight years of intense work to deliver privacy on Ethereum. 

Now it needs to be battle-tested in the wild. 

View the updated product roadmap here and join us on Thursday, March 5th, at 3 pm UTC on X to hear more about the most recent updates to our product roadmap.

In November 2025, the Aztec Ignition Chain went live as the first decentralized L2 on Ethereum. Since launch, more than 185 operators across 5 continents have joined the network, with 3,400+ sequencers now running. The Ignition Chain is the backbone of the Aztec Network; true end-to-end programmable privacy is only possible when the underlying network is decentralized and permissionless. 

Until now, only participants from the $AZTEC token sale have been able to stake and earn block rewards ahead of Aztec's upcoming Token Generation Event (TGE), but that's about to change. Keep reading for an update on the state of the network and learn how you can spin up your own sequencer or start delegating your tokens to stake once TGE goes live.

Block Production 

The Ignition Chain launched to prove the stability of the consensus layer before the execution environment ships, which will enable privacy-preserving smart contracts. The network has remained healthy, crossing a block height of 75k blocks with zero downtime. That includes navigating Ethereum's major Fusaka upgrade in December 2025 and a governance upgrade to increase the queue speed for joining the sequencer set.

Block Rewards

Over 30M $AZTEC tokens have been distributed to sequencers and provers to date. Block rewards go out every epoch (every 32 blocks), with 70% going to sequencers and 30% going to provers for generating block proofs.

If you don't want to run your own node, you can delegate your stake and share in block rewards through the staking dashboard. Note that fractional staking is not currently supported, so you'll need 200k $AZTEC tokens to stake.

Global Participation  

The Ignition Chain launched as a decentralized network from day one. The Aztec Labs and Aztec Foundation teams are not running any sequencers on the network or participating in governance. This is your network.

Anyone who purchased 200k+ tokens in the token sale can stake or delegate their tokens on the staking dashboard. Over 180 operators are now running sequencers, with more joining daily as they enter the sequencer set from the queue. And it's not just sequencers: 50+ provers have joined the permissionless, decentralized prover network to generate block proofs.

These operators span the globe, from solo stakers to data centers, from Australia to Portugal.

Node Performance

Participating sequencers have maintained a 99%+ attestation rate since network launch, demonstrating strong commitment and network health. Top performers include P2P.org, Nethermind, and ZKV. You can see all block activity and staker performance on the Dashtec dashboard. 

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How to Join the Network 

On January 26th, 2026, the community passed a governance proposal for TGE. This makes tokens tradable and unlocks the AZTEC/ETH Uniswap pool as early as February 11, 2026. Once that happens, anyone with 200k $AZTEC tokens can run a sequencer or delegate their stake to participate in block rewards.

Here's what you need to run a validator node:

• CPU: 8 cores
• RAM: 16 GB
• Storage: 1 TB NVMe SSD
• Bandwidth: 25 Mbps

These are accessible specs for most solo stakers. If you've run an Ethereum validator before, you're already well-equipped.

To get started, head to the Aztec docs for step-by-step instructions on setting up your node. You can also join the Discord to connect with other operators, ask questions, and get support from the community. Whether you run your own hardware or delegate to an experienced operator, you're helping build the infrastructure for a privacy-preserving future.

Solo stakers are the beating heart of the Aztec Network. Welcome aboard.