After 7 years of building in the open, last month we announced that Devnet is now live. This marked a huge milestone for Aztec and the Ethereum community by enabling private, client-side smart contract execution with robust public verifiability.
To celebrate we launched Alpha Build, a series of three developer sprints with up to US$100,000 in prizes and the opportunity to deploy on the Aztec for the first time. The first sprint, Alpha Build 1, focused on payments, wallets, programmable accounts, and fees. It garnered 50 participants, 6 teams, and a total of 13 amazing projects, ranging from wallets using Ethereum signatures to cloud based wallet features and beyond.
Starting October 8th - October 29th, 2024, the second sprint, Alpha Build 2 (AB2), will focus on identity and social. In this developer sprint, we’re seeking real-world use cases for privacy-preserving identity verification. We want to explore applications of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, including innovative uses that integrate email verification and social attestations, as well as a modular approach to creating privacy-first applications.
Alpha Build 2 Challenge Overview
Challenge 1: ZKEmail Guardian | Use zkEmail to prove things on Aztec
Select one idea from the list below or suggest your own to the Aztec Team before beginning the challenge. Please detail your choice in your project’s ReadMe, or you can utilize an existing zkEmail circuit in Noir.
Some ideas to help get you started:
- Prove restaurant reservations to write privacy preserving reviews, aka a Private Yelp.
- Prove car registration or used car sales privately through email.
- Prove employment privately through email, and details about employment such as salary range, health benefits, etc.
- Prove that you canceled a service from the cancellation email so that you can get a discount at a competitor.
- Prove builder status through contribution to a GitHub repo without revealing your username to claim airdrops anonymously.
- Build a sports betting platform with email verification of placed bets and social reputation system.
- Create a fitness challenge platform using gym email receipts and social media post verifications.
- Decentralized escrow service using email verifications and social reputation to transfer notifications for payment proof, restaurant reservation trading, domain ownership escrow.
- Carbon offset tracking system with email-verified purchases and social impact attestations.
- Private event ticketing system with email confirmations and social group membership.
- Skill verification system using email certificates.
See the full list of zkEmail's project ideas for more inspiration on novel ways in which email can be used for verification.
Challenge 2: Social Cipher | Implement onchain or offchain verification of NFT ownership on Aztec
For this challenge, we’re looking for 3 things:
- Implementation of offchain verification of NFT ownership on Aztec.
- Prove on an Aztec contract that you own an NFT at a specific block, using an archive tree.
- Document the process with a system architecture overview in the ReadMe of your project.
Some ideas to help you get started:
- A private NFT gallery showcase such as a Shopify like app where store owners can create a store, list their NFTs for sale and users can buy anonymously.
- Private NFT gated event check-in system.
- Prove you own an NFT from a collection at some timestamp to another contract and enable ability to claim an airdrop, mint a subscription, enable tiered memberships, or variable pricing on subscriptions.
- Create a Discord bot for private NFT ownership verification.
- Create an X bot for private NFT based profile verification.
Evaluation & Criteria
The evaluation criteria for AB2 emphasize innovation in privacy preservation, assessing how effectively the proposed solution safeguards user data while maintaining practical viability, including proving times and transaction fees.
The Aztec Team will also account for potential impact on the Aztec ecosystem and how well the solution leverages its unique features, along with demonstrating tangible real-world applications and benefits.
Solutions that excel in these areas will be prioritized for their ability to drive meaningful advancements in privacy and utility within Aztec.
How to Get Involved
Don’t miss your chance to deploy on the Aztec Network for the first time and for a piece of the US$100,000 prize pool.
To get started, fill out the Alpha Build Application. We will review applications and, if selected, invite you to join a private Discord channel for Alpha Build. Join us October 3, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. ET on X to hear more about Alpha Build 2 from our President and Co-Founder, Joe Andrews as we explore challenges, themes, and innovative ideas.
Stay updated on all things Noir and Aztec by following Noir and Aztec on X, and join the Aztec developer community on Discord.
