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An answer to PSE’s Top 10 Private-Transfer Problems
Last week, PSE published an insightful and comprehensive user-research piece on private transfers on Ethereum. They interviewed 38 teams in the space and asked what's broken, what's missing, what builders wish they had. The list reads like a wishlist of features every privacy app on L1 is currently trying to engineer towards. It's the kind of rigorous, builder-grounded research the privacy ecosystem has needed.
We read the list. It's the list we've been building against for years.
Aztec solves all of these problems. Every requested feature already lives on Aztec. The proving system, the private contract language, the decentralized network, the privacy wallet architecture, the key model, the snark-friendliness: all of Aztec was built against this list before it was a list.
What follows is a walkthrough. For each of PSE's top technical findings, here's the feature builders are asking for, and how it works on Aztec today.
Ethereum Problem: Proof generation is too slow on user devices, especially mobile. Elliptic-curve pairing operations are a specific bottleneck. Server-side proving is a censorship and privacy leak vector. Sub-second proving was the stated threshold.
Aztec solution: Proving on Aztec runs locally in the PXE (Private eXecution Environment, pronounced "pixie"), so no data ever leaves the user's device. Chonk, our client-side zk proving system, is ruthlessly optimised for fast recursive proving on low-memory devices like phones, native and in-browser. Years of optimization have already gone in, and we're still finding more. It’s best in class and we haven’t even merged-in GPU acceleration yet!
The slow pairing checks that PSE's interviewees called out as a bottleneck aren’t a problem with Aztec; pairings are simply batched together and deferred away from the user's device, handled by the more powerful network instead, without leaking any information. With such a powerful local prover, there’s little need to outsource proving to an untrusted party.
Ethereum Problem: Verifying a ZK proof on Ethereum is prohibitively expensive. A Groth16 proof for a private transfer costs several hundred thousand L1 gas. A Halo2 (KZG Plonk) proof can cost approximately one million gas
Aztec solution: Aztec amortises L1 verification gas across all transactions in the rollup. At current network throughput, that cost is split across roughly 2,000 users per proof. Later this year, it’s slated to be split across ~20,000. Rollup costs are also partially subsidised by Aztec block rewards.
Net result: hundreds of L1 gas per user instead of millions. Plus cheap L2 gas. The user pays pennies for an Aztec transaction.
Ethereum Problem: Wrapping and unwrapping tokens leaks privacy and breaks composability. Smart contracts can't easily interact with encrypted balances. Private state is isolated; contract state is normally shared.
Aztec solution: Private state is not isolated on Aztec. The private state of one contract can be composed with that of another. This can unlock new privacy-preserving DeFi patterns directly on Aztec.
A single private transaction can call a stack of private functions across multiple contracts, with private inputs, private state transitions, and privacy over which functions were even executed and how many. Observers see that a transaction landed. They do not see what happened inside it. Stew on that for a second: a call stack of nested private functions across contracts written by different developers, each causing state transitions, all completely private.
Aztec also runs public functions, similar to Ethereum, inside the same smart contract, so you can build existing DeFi primitives on Aztec.
For Ethereum DeFi specifically, Aztec has a tidy L1-to-L2 messaging layer. Private balances can be unshielded to interact with L1 protocols and shielded back, without leaking who did the interaction and without leaky public gas payments. And for private DeFi primitives that need genuinely shared private state (state nobody knows the value of, but which anyone can mutate), people have built Aztec contracts that compose conventional Aztec private state with co-snark or FHE sidecars.
Private and public state are peers inside a single Aztec smart contract. Builders mix and match.
Ethereum Problem: Entry and exit points are the dominant privacy leak, not the protocol itself. Depositing and quickly withdrawing makes identity analysis trivial.
Aztec solution: The main fix is to stop crossing the boundary so often. (Or even if you do cross the boundary, Aztec has leakage protections).
Imagine if thousands of private smart contracts lived on the same network and could call each other without leaking which contracts were called, which arguments were passed, or what was returned. Imagine they all shared one global note tree and one global nullifier tree. That's Aztec. Once funds are inside, users don't need to keep crossing the private/public boundary to do useful things: Aztec is its own rich environment for composable, private execution of smart contracts.
Even when a private function does need to call a public function – be it an L1 DeFi contract, or a native public function within Aztec – the developer controls the information they reveal; not the protocol. The call can even be "incognito" to hide msg_sender. A single environment for many private apps to thrive also means re-usable tooling for builders.
Ethereum Problem: Privacy features (per-dapp addresses, private transfers) aren't natively integrated into major wallets. Reliance on dapp-specific UIs damages UX.
Aztec solution: Ethereum wallets weren't built for any of this, and they don't need to be: the chain underneath them has no private state to protect. Aztec wallets are an entirely new category of software.
Aztec wallets are able to manage all these new privacy-centric concepts:
Aztec wallets are in active development, and this is an area where we expect many teams to build different wallets that are customized to various user needs. An early wallet is already baked into the protocol for developers to start using today.
Ethereum Problem: Encrypted tokens and many privacy protocols depend on external networks for encryption, decryption, or relaying. Threshold-decryption committees and TEE hardware vendors are added trust assumptions on top of the chain itself.
Aztec solution: Aztec's private and public execution environments are not reliant on external networks. Aztec is its own decentralised network: ~4,000 validators stake on it, block proposers are randomly selected, a random committee attests, and a decentralised set of provers proves the rollup's execution. Validity is ultimately backed by cryptographic proofs settled on Ethereum.
External networks (co-snark networks, TEEs, MPC or FHE sidecars) become an opt-in choice for the specific case of private shared state. The trust tradeoffs there are something the contract developer signs up for explicitly, not a tax every user pays on every transaction by default.
Ethereum Problem: Keccak is inefficient to prove inside ZK circuits. There is no native support for a ZK-friendly hash like Poseidon.
Aztec solution: Poseidon2 is enshrined across the entire Aztec protocol, for rapid proving of every tx. Every Aztec state tree, the proving system, the innards of the protocol; everywhere. Reading and writing state inside a circuit is as cheap as it gets.
Keccak, SHA, and Blake hashes are still available through optimised Noir libraries when contracts need them for L1 interoperability. The default is ZK-friendly; the L1-friendly hashes are there when you reach for them.
Ethereum Problem: Syncing private state (scanning for incoming notes and events) is a client-side bottleneck. Users wait for scans to complete before seeing their balance. Tachyon-style oblivious sync was cited as a path forward.
Aztec solution: Brute-force syncing of private state is rarely needed. Most real-world use cases involve a sender and recipient who can establish a shared secret offchain first.
From that shared secret, both parties can derive a sequence of random-looking “tags”. Each encrypted note log is prepended with the next tag in the sequence. The recipient already knows the next tag, so they know exactly what to query. Note discovery happens in seconds, not minutes. The scheme slots cleanly into PIR or mixnet approaches for extra privacy on the query itself, and smart contracts that don't trust senders to use the correct tag can just constrain it inside the circuit.
That’s not to say that Aztec requires interactivity between all senders and recipients. For genuinely non-interactive use cases (recipient can't talk to the sender before the transfer), Aztec enables devs to customize both their log emission and their note-discovery logic however they like. (Aztec also has ways to speed up the brute-force scanning approach from "scan the whole chain" to "scan a tiny subset of non-interactive handshake txs"
Ethereum Problem: Shielded pools are fragmented across dapps and chains, reducing the effective privacy set for all users. Each new privacy protocol must bootstrap its own.
Aztec solution: There is one global note tree and one global nullifier tree on Aztec, shared by every smart contract on the network. Every private app contributes to and draws from the same privacy set. No per-app bootstrap. No walled gardens.
Private payments, private swaps, lending, payroll, treasury, identity attestations: all of them land in the same global commitment set, by construction.
Ethereum Problem: Ethereum developer tooling lacks support for private transfers and private state. Standards for private tokens, compliance, and wallet interactions are missing. Many privacy teams are small, with short runway and expensive audits.
Aztec solution: Aztec ships the full toolchain for private contracts: Noir for writing private logic, the Aztec smart contract framework with macros that hide the protocol mess so devs can focus on app logic, the PXE for keys / state / syncing / proof generation, a JS SDK, a local node for testing, a CLI, and a real, live, decentralised L2.
The mental overhead of building a privacy protocol on Aztec collapses to "just write the app logic." Here is an example of a complete private transfer function on Aztec:
#[authorize_once("from", "authwit_nonce")]
#[external("private")]
fn transfer_in_private(from: AztecAddress, to: AztecAddress, amount: u128, authwit_nonce: Field) {
self.storage.balances.at(from).sub(amount).deliver(MessageDelivery.ONCHAIN_CONSTRAINED);
self.storage.balances.at(to).add(amount).deliver(MessageDelivery.ONCHAIN_CONSTRAINED);
}
Look at how simple that is.
A two-line function body.
Two lines.
Aztec takes care of the rest.
Behind those #[...] macros, the framework handles: caller authorisation, note syncing, fetching notes from the user's private db, Merkle membership proofs against the global note tree, safe nullifier creation (without leaking master secrets to the circuit), randomness for new notes, encrypted ciphertext generation, log tagging for fast recipient discovery, and public-input population. The PXE handles key management, private state, and proof generation. The smart contract itself contains its own message-processing logic for log discovery, decryption, and storage on the recipient side.
If you want whitelists, blacklists, association sets, custom tx authorisation, viewing-key hierarchies, temporary view access, selective disclosure to specific counterparties, just import a Noir library. Want something more adventurous than private payments? Same toolchain.
PSE's findings are not ten unrelated bugs. They're the same problem refracted ten ways: privacy retrofitted onto a chain that was not designed for it yields bad tradeoffs.
Aztec was designed against this list before it was a list. One global note tree and one global nullifier tree. Private and public state inside the same contract. Compose calls between private contracts without leaking anything. Fast client-side proving on phones via Chonk. Snark-friendliness everywhere. Rollup-amortised L1 gas costs, fractions of a cent per user. Native account abstraction with private fee paymasters. No painfully slow private state syncing: a tagging-based note discovery scheme that runs in seconds. An entirely new category of wallet that treats privacy as a first-class concern. Simple, high-level smart contract syntax that collapses a basic private token transfer function into two lines.
There were 10 privacy features Ethereum devs wanted, all of them live on Aztec. The infrastructure is in place. Build the thing.
Aztec is the blockchain that solved the privacy problem. Start at docs.aztec.network or read the architecture deep-dive on The Best of Both Worlds: How Aztec Blends Private and Public State.
Alpha is live: a fully feature-complete, privacy-first network. The infrastructure is in place, privacy is native to the protocol, and developers can now build truly private applications.
Nine years ago, we set out to redesign blockchain for privacy. The goal: create a system institutions can adopt while giving users true control of their digital lives. Privacy band-aids are coming to Ethereum (someday), but it’s clear we need privacy now, and there’s an arms race underway to build it. Privacy is complex, it’s not a feature you can bolt-on as an afterthought. It demands a ground-up approach, deep tech stack integration, and complete decentralization.
In November 2025, the Aztec Ignition Chain went live as the first decentralized L2 on Ethereum, it’s the coordination layer that the execution layer sits on top of. The network is not operated by the Aztec Labs or the Aztec Foundation, it’s run by the community, making it the true backbone of Aztec.
With the infrastructure in place and a unanimous community vote, the network enters Alpha.
Alpha is the first Layer 2 with a full execution environment for private smart contracts. All accounts, transactions, and the execution itself can be completely private. Developers can now choose what they want public and what they want to keep private while building with the three privacy pillars we have in place across data, identity, and compute.
These privacy pillars, which can be used individually or combined, break down into three core layers:
Alpha is feature complete–meaning this is the only full-stack solution for adding privacy to your business or application. You build, and Aztec handles the cryptography under the hood.
It’s Composable. Private-preserving contracts are not isolated; they can talk to each other and seamlessly blend both private and public state across contracts. Privacy can be preserved across contract calls for full callstack privacy.
No backdoor access. Aztec is the only decentralized L2, and is launching as a fully decentralized rollup with a Layer 1 escape hatch.
It’s Compliant. Companies are missing out on the benefits of blockchains because transparent chains expose user data, while private networks protect it, but still offer fully customizable controls. Now they can build compliant apps that move value around the world instantly.
Developers can explore our privacy primitives across data, identity, and compute and start building with them using the documentation here. Note that this is an early version of the network with known vulnerabilities, see this post for details. While this is the first iteration of the network, there will be several upgrades that secure and harden the network on our path to Beta. If you’d like to learn more about how you can integrate privacy into your project, reach out here.
To hear directly from our Cofounders, join our live from Cannes Q&A on Tuesday, March 31st at 9:30 am ET. Follow us on X to get the latest updates from the Aztec Network.
On Wednesday 17 March 2026 our team discovered a new vulnerability in the Aztec Network. Following the analysis, the vulnerability has been confirmed as a critical vulnerability in accordance with our vulnerability matrix.
The vulnerability affects the proving system as a whole, and is not mitigated via public re-execution by the committee of validators. Exploitation can lead to severe disruption of the protocol and theft of user funds.
In accordance with our policy, fixes for the network will be packaged and distributed with the “v5” release of the network, currently planned for July 2026.
The actual bug and corresponding patch will not be publicly disclosed until “v5.”
Aztec applications and portals bridging assets from Layer 1s should warn users about the security guarantees of Alpha, in particular, reminding users not to put in funds they are not willing to lose. Portals or applications may add additional security measures or training wheels specific to their application or use case.
We will shortly establish a bug tracker to show the number and severity of bugs known to us in v4. The tracker will be updated as audits and security researchers discover issues. Each new alpha release will get its own tracker. This will allow developers and users to judge for themselves how they are willing to use the network, and we will use the tracker as a primary determinant for whether the network is ready for a "Beta" label.
We have identified a vulnerability in barretenberg allowing inclusion of incorrect proofs in the Aztec Network mempool, and ask all nodes to upgrade to versions v.4.1.2 or later.
We’d like to thank Consensys Diligence & TU Vienna for a recent discovery of a separate vulnerability in barretenberg categorized as medium for the network and critical for Noir:
We have published a fixed version of barretenberg.
We’d also like to thank Plainshift AI for discovery, reproduction, and reporting of one more vulnerability in the Aztec Network and their ongoing work to help secure the network.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alpha is live: a fully feature-complete, privacy-first network. The infrastructure is in place, privacy is native to the protocol, and developers can now build truly private applications.
Nine years ago, we set out to redesign blockchain for privacy. The goal: create a system institutions can adopt while giving users true control of their digital lives. Privacy band-aids are coming to Ethereum (someday), but it’s clear we need privacy now, and there’s an arms race underway to build it. Privacy is complex, it’s not a feature you can bolt-on as an afterthought. It demands a ground-up approach, deep tech stack integration, and complete decentralization.
In November 2025, the Aztec Ignition Chain went live as the first decentralized L2 on Ethereum, it’s the coordination layer that the execution layer sits on top of. The network is not operated by the Aztec Labs or the Aztec Foundation, it’s run by the community, making it the true backbone of Aztec.
With the infrastructure in place and a unanimous community vote, the network enters Alpha.
Alpha is the first Layer 2 with a full execution environment for private smart contracts. All accounts, transactions, and the execution itself can be completely private. Developers can now choose what they want public and what they want to keep private while building with the three privacy pillars we have in place across data, identity, and compute.
These privacy pillars, which can be used individually or combined, break down into three core layers:
Alpha is feature complete–meaning this is the only full-stack solution for adding privacy to your business or application. You build, and Aztec handles the cryptography under the hood.
It’s Composable. Private-preserving contracts are not isolated; they can talk to each other and seamlessly blend both private and public state across contracts. Privacy can be preserved across contract calls for full callstack privacy.
No backdoor access. Aztec is the only decentralized L2, and is launching as a fully decentralized rollup with a Layer 1 escape hatch.
It’s Compliant. Companies are missing out on the benefits of blockchains because transparent chains expose user data, while private networks protect it, but still offer fully customizable controls. Now they can build compliant apps that move value around the world instantly.
Developers can explore our privacy primitives across data, identity, and compute and start building with them using the documentation here. Note that this is an early version of the network with known vulnerabilities, see this post for details. While this is the first iteration of the network, there will be several upgrades that secure and harden the network on our path to Beta. If you’d like to learn more about how you can integrate privacy into your project, reach out here.
To hear directly from our Cofounders, join our live from Cannes Q&A on Tuesday, March 31st at 9:30 am ET. Follow us on X to get the latest updates from the Aztec Network.
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.
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 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 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 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.
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.
Privacy has emerged as a major driver for the crypto industry in 2025. We’ve seen the explosion of Zcash, the Ethereum Foundation’s refocusing of PSE, and the launch of Aztec’s testnet with over 24,000 validators powering the network. Many apps have also emerged to bring private transactions to Ethereum and Solana in various ways, and exciting technologies like ZKPassport that privately bring identity on-chain using Noir have become some of the most talked about developments for ushering in the next big movements to the space.
Underpinning all of these developments is the emerging consensus that without privacy, blockchains will struggle to gain real-world adoption.
Without privacy, institutions can’t bring assets on-chain in a compliant way or conduct complex swaps and trades without revealing their strategies. Without privacy, DeFi remains dominated and controlled by advanced traders who can see all upcoming transactions and manipulate the market. Without privacy, regular people will not want to move their lives on-chain for the entire world to see every detail about their every move.
While there's been lots of talk about privacy, few can define it. In this piece we’ll outline the three pillars of privacy and gives you a framework for evaluating the privacy claims of any project.
True privacy rests on three essential pillars: transaction privacy, identity privacy, and computational privacy. It is only when we have all three pillars that we see the emergence of a private world computer.
Transaction privacy means that both inputs and outputs are not viewable by anyone other than the intended participants. Inputs include any asset, value, message, or function calldata that is being sent. Outputs include any state changes or transaction effects, or any transaction metadata caused by the transaction. Transaction privacy is often primarily achieved using a UTXO model (like Zcash or Aztec’s private state tree). If a project has only the option for this pillar, it can be said to be confidential, but not private.
Identity privacy means that the identities of those involved are not viewable by anyone other than the intended participants. This includes addresses or accounts and any information about the identity of the participants, such as tx.origin, msg.sender, or linking one’s private account to public accounts. Identity privacy can be achieved in several ways, including client-side proof generation that keeps all user info on the users’ devices. If a project has only the option for this pillar, it can be said to be anonymous, but not private.
Computation privacy means that any activity that happens is not viewable by anyone other than the intended participants. This includes the contract code itself, function execution, contract address, and full callstack privacy. Additionally, any metadata generated by the transaction is able to be appropriately obfuscated (such as transaction effects, events are appropriately padded, inclusion block number are in appropriate sets). Callstack privacy includes which contracts you call, what functions in those contracts you’ve called, what the results of those functions were, any subsequent functions that will be called after, and what the inputs to the function were. A project must have the option for this pillar to do anything privately other than basic transactions.
Bitcoin ushered in a new paradigm of digital money. As a permissionless, peer-to-peer currency and store of value, it changed the way value could be sent around the world and who could participate. Ethereum expanded this vision to bring us the world computer, a decentralized, general-purpose blockchain with programmable smart contracts.
Given the limitations of running a transparent blockchain that exposes all user activity, accounts, and assets, it was clear that adding the option to preserve privacy would unlock many benefits (and more closely resemble real cash). But this was a very challenging problem. Zcash was one of the first to extend Bitcoin’s functionality with optional privacy, unlocking a new privacy-preserving UTXO model for transacting privately. As we’ll see below, many of the current privacy-focused projects are working on similar kinds of private digital money for Ethereum or other chains.
Now, Aztec is bringing us the final missing piece: a private world computer.
A private world computer is fully decentralized, programmable, and permissionless like Ethereum and has optional privacy at every level. In other words, Aztec is extending all the functionality of Ethereum with optional transaction, identity, and computational privacy. This is the only approach that enables fully compliant, decentralized applications to be built that preserve user privacy, a new design space that we see as ushering in the next Renaissance for the space.
Private digital money emerges when you have the first two privacy pillars covered - transactions and identity - but you don’t have the third - computation. Almost all projects today that claim some level of privacy are working on private digital money. This includes everything from privacy pools on Ethereum and L2s to newly emerging payment L1s like Tempo and Arc that are developing various degrees of transaction privacy
When it comes to digital money, privacy exists on a spectrum. If your identity is hidden but your transactions are visible, that's what we call anonymous. If your transactions are hidden but your identity is known, that's confidential. And when both your identity and transactions are protected, that's true privacy. Projects are working on many different approaches to implement this, from PSE to Payy using Noir, the zkDSL built to make it intuitive to build zk applications using familiar Rust-like syntax.
Private digital money is designed to make payments private, but any interaction with more complex smart contracts than a straightforward payment transaction is fully exposed.
What if we also want to build decentralized private apps using smart contracts (usually multiple that talk to each other)? For this, you need all three privacy pillars: transaction, identity, and compute.
If you have these three pillars covered and you have decentralization, you have built a private world computer. Without decentralization, you are vulnerable to censorship, privileged backdoors and inevitable centralized control that can compromise privacy guarantees.
What exactly is a private world computer? A private world computer extends all the functionality of Ethereum with optional privacy at every level, so developers can easily control which aspects they want public or private and users can selectively disclose information. With Aztec, developers can build apps with optional transaction, identity, and compute privacy on a fully decentralized network. Below, we’ll break down the main components of a private world computer.
A private world computer is powered by private smart contracts. Private smart contracts have fully optional privacy and also enable seamless public and private function interaction.
Private smart contracts simply extend the functionality of regular smart contracts with added privacy.
As a developer, you can easily designate which functions you want to keep private and which you want to make public. For example, a voting app might allow users to privately cast votes and publicly display the result. Private smart contracts can also interact privately with other smart contracts, without needing to make it public which contracts have interacted.
Transaction: Aztec supports the optionality for fully private inputs, including messages, state, and function calldata. Private state is updated via a private UTXO state tree.
Identity: Using client-side proofs and function execution, Aztec can optionally keep all user info private, including tx.origin and msg.sender for transactions.
Computation: The contract code itself, function execution, and call stack can all be kept private. This includes which contracts you call, what functions in those contracts you’ve called, what the results of those functions were, and what the inputs to the function were.
A decentralized network must be made up of a permissionless network of operators who run the network and decide on upgrades. Aztec is run by a decentralized network of node operators who propose and attest to transactions. Rollup proofs on Aztec are also run by a decentralized prover network that can permissionlessly submit proofs and participate in block rewards. Finally, the Aztec network is governed by the sequencers, who propose, signal, vote, and execute network upgrades.
A private world computer enables the creation of DeFi applications where accounts, transactions, order books, and swaps remain private. Users can protect their trading strategies and positions from public view, preventing front-running and maintaining competitive advantages. Additionally, users can bridge privately into cross-chain DeFi applications, allowing them to participate in DeFi across multiple blockchains while keeping their identity private despite being on an existing transparent blockchain.
This technology makes it possible to bring institutional trading activity on-chain while maintaining the privacy that traditional finance requires. Institutions can privately trade with other institutions globally, without having to touch public markets, enjoying the benefits of blockchain technology such as fast settlement and reduced counterparty risk, without exposing their trading intentions or volumes to the broader market.
Organizations can bring client accounts and assets on-chain while maintaining full compliance. This infrastructure protects on-chain asset trading and settlement strategies, ensuring that sophisticated financial operations remain private. A private world computer also supports private stablecoin issuance and redemption, allowing financial institutions to manage digital currency operations without revealing sensitive business information.
Users have granular control over their privacy settings, allowing them to fine-tune privacy levels for their on-chain identity according to their specific needs. The system enables selective disclosure of on-chain activity, meaning users can choose to reveal certain transactions or holdings to regulators, auditors, or business partners while keeping other information private, meeting compliance requirements.
The shift from transparent blockchains to privacy-preserving infrastructure is the foundation for bringing the next billion users on-chain. Whether you're a developer building the future of private DeFi, an institution exploring compliant on-chain solutions, or simply someone who believes privacy is a fundamental right, now is the time to get involved.
Follow Aztec on X to stay updated on the latest developments in private smart contracts and decentralized privacy technology. Ready to contribute to the network? Run a node and help power the private world computer.
The next Renaissance is here, and it’s being powered by the private world computer.
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.
A brand is more than aesthetics—it's a mental model that makes Aztec's spirit tangible.
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.
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.
Just as our technology bridges different eras of cryptographic innovation, our new visual identity draws from multiple periods of human creativity and technological advancement.
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.
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.
We evolved our original icon to reflect this new chapter while honoring our foundation. The layered diamond structure tells the story:
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.
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.
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.
The $AZTEC token sale was conducted entirely onchain to maximize transparency and fair distribution. Next steps for holders are as follows:
The $AZTEC token sale has come to a close– the sale was conducted entirely onchain, and the power is now in your hands. Over 16.7k people participated, with 19,476 ETH raised. A huge thank you to our community and everyone who participated– you all really showed up for privacy. 50% of the capital committed has come from the community of users, testnet operators and creators!
Now that you have your tokens, what’s next? This guide walks you through the next steps leading up to TGE, showing you how to withdraw, stake, and vote with your tokens.
The $AZTEC sale was conducted onchain to ensure that you have control over your own tokens from day 1 (even before tokens become transferable at TGE).
The team has no control over your tokens. You will be self-custodying them in a smart contract known as the Token Vault on the Ethereum mainnet ahead of TGE.
Your Token Vault contract will:
To create and withdraw your tokens to your Token Vault, simply go to the sale website and click on ‘Create Token Vault.’ Any unused ETH from your bids will be returned to your wallet in the process of creating your Token Vault.
If you have 200,000+ tokens, you are eligible to start staking and earning block rewards today.
You can stake by connecting your Token Vault to the staking dashboard, just select a provider to delegate your stake. Alternatively, you can run your own sequencer node.
If your Token Vault holds 200,000+ tokens, you must stake in order to withdraw your tokens after TGE. If your Token Vault holds less than 200,000 tokens, you can withdraw without any additional steps at TGE
Fractional staking for anyone with less than 200,000 tokens is not currently supported, but multiple external projects are already working to offer this in the future.
TGE is triggered by an onchain governance vote, which can happen as early as February 11th, 2026.
At TGE, 100% of tokens from the token sale will be transferable. Only token sale participants and genesis sequencers can participate in the TGE vote, and only tokens purchased in the sale will become transferrable.
Community members discuss potential votes on the governance forum. If the community agrees, sequencers signal to start a vote with their block proposals. Once enough sequencers agree, the vote goes onchain for eligible token holders.
Voting lasts 7 days, requires participation of at least 100,000,000 $AZTEC tokens, and passes if 2/3 vote yes.
Following a successful yes vote, anyone can execute the proposal after a 7-day execution delay, triggering TGE.
At TGE, the following tokens will be 100% unlocked and available for trading:
Join us Thursday, December 11th at 3 pm UTC for the next Discord Town Hall–AMA style on next steps for token holders. Follow Aztec on X to stay up to date on the latest developments.
We invented the math. We wrote the language. Proved the concept and now, we’re opening registration and bidding for the $AZTEC token today, starting at 3 pm CET.
The community-first distribution offers a starting floor price based on a $350 million fully diluted valuation (FDV), representing an approximate 75% discount to the implied network valuation (based on the latest valuation from Aztec Labs’ equity financings). The auction also features per-user participation caps to give community members genuine, bid-clearing opportunities to participate daily through the entirety of the auction.
The token auction portal is live at: sale.aztec.network
We’ve taken the community access that made the 2017 ICO era great and made it even better.
For the past several months, we've worked closely with Uniswap Labs as core contributors on the CCA protocol, a set of smart contracts that challenge traditional token distribution mechanisms to prioritize fair access, permissionless, on-chain access to community members and the general public pre-launch. This means that on day 1 of the unlock, 100% of the community's $AZTEC tokens will be unlocked.
This model is values-aligned with our Core team and addresses the current challenges in token distribution, where retail participants often face unfair disadvantages against whales and institutions that hold large amounts of money.
Early contributors and long-standing community members, including genesis sequencers, OG Aztec Connect users, network operators, and community members, can start bidding today, ahead of the public auction, giving those who are whitelisted a head start and early advantage for competitive pricing. Community members can participate by visiting the token sale site to verify eligibility and mint a soul-bound NFT that confirms participation rights.
To read more about Aztec’s fair-access token sale, visit the economic and technical whitepapers and the token regulatory report.
Discount Price Disclaimer: Any reference to a prior valuation or percentage discount is provided solely to inform potential purchasers of how the initial floor price for the token sale was calculated. Equity financing valuations were determined under specific circumstances that are not comparable to this offering. They do not represent, and should not be relied upon as, the current or future market value of the tokens, nor as an indication of potential returns. The price of tokens may fluctuate substantially, the token may lose its value in part or in full, and purchasers should make independent assessments without reliance on past valuations. No representation or warranty is made that any purchaser will achieve profits or recover the purchase price.
Information for Persons in the UK: This communication is directed only at persons outside the UK. Persons in the UK are not permitted to participate in the token sale and must not act upon this communication.
MiCA Disclaimer: Any crypto-asset marketing communications made from this account have not been reviewed or approved by any competent authority in any Member State of the European Union. Aztec Foundation as the offeror of the crypto-asset is solely responsible for the content of such crypto-asset marketing communications. The Aztec MiCA white paper has been published and is available here. The Aztec Foundation can be contacted at hello@aztec.foundation or +41 41 710 16 70. For more information about the Aztec Foundation, visit https://aztec.foundation.
Every time you swap tokens on Uniswap, deposit into a yield vault, or vote in a DAO, you're broadcasting your moves to the world. Anyone can see what you own, where you trade, how much you invest, and when you move your money.
Tracking and analysis tools like Chainalysis and TRM are already extremely advanced, and will only grow stronger with advances in AI in the coming years. The implications of this are that the ‘pseudo-anonymous’ wallets on Ethereum are quickly becoming linked to real-world identities. This is concerning for protecting your personal privacy, but it’s also a major blocker in bringing institutions on-chain with full compliance for their users.
Until now, your only option was to abandon your favorite apps and move to specialized privacy-focused apps or chains with varying degrees of privacy. You'd lose access to the DeFi ecosystem as you know it now, the liquidity you depend on, and the community you're part of.
What if you could keep using Uniswap, Aave, Yearn, and every other app you love, but with your identity staying private? No switching chains. Just an incognito mode for your existing on-chain life?
If you’ve been following Aztec for a while, you would be right to think about Aztec Connect here, which was hugely popular with $17M TVL and over 100,000 active wallets, but was sunset in 2024 to focus on bringing a general-purpose privacy network to life.
Read on to learn how you’ll be able to import privacy to any L2, using one of the many privacy-focused bridges that are already built.
Aztec is a fully decentralized, privacy-preserving L2 on Ethereum. You can think of Aztec as a private world computer with full end-to-end programmable privacy. A private world computer extends Ethereum to add optional privacy at every level, from identity and transactions to the smart contracts themselves.
On Aztec, every wallet is a smart contract that gives users complete control over which aspects they want to make public or keep private.
Aztec is currently in Testnet, but will have multiple privacy-preserving bridges live for its mainnet launch, unlocking a myriad of privacy preserving features.
Now, several bridges, including Wormhole, TRAIN, and Substance, are connecting Aztec to other chains, adding a privacy layer to the L2s you already use. Think of it as a secure tunnel between you and any DeFi app on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, or other major chains.
Here's what changes: You can now use any DeFi protocol without revealing your identity. Furthermore, you can also unlock brand new features that take advantage of Aztec’s private smart contracts, like private DAO voting or private compliance checks.
Here's what you can do:
The apps stay where they are. Your liquidity stays where it is. Your community stays where it is. You just get a privacy upgrade.
Let's follow Alice through a real example.
Alice wants to invest $1,000 USDC into a yield vault on Arbitrum without revealing her identity.
Alice moves her funds into Aztec's privacy layer. This could be done in one click directly in the app that she’s already using if the app has integrated one of the bridges. Think of this like dropping a sealed envelope into a secure mailbox. The funds enter a private space where transactions can't be tracked back to her wallet.
Aztec routes Alice's funds to the Yearn vault on Arbitrum. The vault sees a deposit and issues yield-earning tokens. But there's no way to trace those tokens back to Alice's original wallet. Others can see someone made a deposit, but they have no idea who.
The yield tokens arrive in Alice's private Aztec wallet. She can hold them, trade them privately, or eventually withdraw them, without anyone connecting the dots.
Alice is earning yield on Arbitrum using the exact same vault as everyone else. But while other users broadcast their entire investment strategy, Alice's moves remain private.
The difference looks like this:
Without privacy: "Wallet 0x742d...89ab deposited $5,000 into Yearn vault at 2:47 PM"
With Aztec privacy: "Someone deposited funds into Yearn vault" (but who? from where? how much? unknowable).
In the future, we expect apps to directly integrate Aztec, making this experience seamless for you as a user.
While Aztec is still in Testnet, multiple teams are already building bridges right now in preparation for the mainnet launch.
Projects like Substance Labs, Train, and Wormhole are creating connections between Aztec and major chains like Optimism, Unichain, Solana, and Aptos. This means you'll soon have private access to DeFi across nearly every major ecosystem.
Aztec has also launched a dedicated cross-chain catalyst program to support developers with grants to build additional bridges and apps.
L2s have sometimes received criticism for fragmenting liquidity across chains. Aztec is taking a different approach. Instead, Aztec is bringing privacy to the liquidity that already exists. Your funds stay on Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, wherever the deepest pools and best apps already live. Aztec doesn't compete for liquidity, it adds privacy to existing liquidity.
You can access Uniswap's billions in trading volume. You can tap into Aave's massive lending pools. You can deposit into Yearn's established vaults, all without moving liquidity away from where it's most useful.
We’re rolling out a new approach to how we think about L2s on Ethereum. Rather than forcing users to choose between privacy and access to the best DeFi applications, we’re making privacy a feature you can add to any protocol you're already using. As more bridges go live and applications integrate Aztec directly, using DeFi privately will become as simple as clicking a button—no technical knowledge required, no compromise on the apps and liquidity you depend on.
While Aztec is currently in testnet, the infrastructure is rapidly taking shape. With multiple bridge providers building connections to major chains and a dedicated catalyst program supporting developers, the path to mainnet is clear. Soon, you'll be able to protect your privacy while still participating fully in the Ethereum ecosystem.
If you’re a developer and want a full technical breakdown, check out this post. To stay up to date with the latest updates for network operators, join the Aztec Discord and follow Aztec on X.
OTC trading is fundamental to how crypto markets function. It enables better price negotiations than what you'll find on public order books and facilitates trading of illiquid assets that barely exist on exchanges. Without OTC markets, institutional crypto trading would be nearly impossible. But here's the massive problem: every single OTC transaction leaves a permanent, public trace.
Let's say you're a fund manager who needs to sell 1,000 BTC for USDC on Base. In a traditional OTC trade, your Bitcoin leaves your wallet and becomes visible to everyone on Bitcoin's blockchain. Through cross-chain settlement, USDC then arrives in your Base wallet, which is also visible to everyone on Base's blockchain.
At this point, block explorers and analytics firms can connect these transactions through pattern analysis. As a result, your trading patterns, position sizes, and timing become public data, exposing your entire strategy.
This isn't just about privacy; transparent OTC creates serious operational and strategic risks. These same concerns have moved a significant portion of traditional markets to private off-exchange trades.
In TradFi, institutions don't execute large trades on public order books for many reasons. In fact, ~13% of all stocks in the US are now traded in dark pools, and more than 50% of trades are now off-exchange.
They use private networks, dark pools, and OTC desks specifically because:
While OTC trading is already a major part of the crypto industry, without privacy, true institutional participation will never be practical.
Now, Aztec is making this possible.
We built an open-source private OTC trading system using Aztec Network's programmable privacy features. Because Aztec allows users to have private, programmable, and composable private state, users aren’t limited to only owning and transferring digital assets privately, but also programming and composing them via smart contracts.
If you’re new to Aztec, you can think of the network as a private world computer, with full end-to-end programmable privacy. A private world computer extends Ethereum to add optional privacy at every level, from identity and transactions to the smart contracts themselves.
To build a private OTC desk, we leveraged all these tools provided by Aztec to implement a working proof of concept. Our private OTC desk is non-custodial and leverages private smart contracts and client-side proving to allow for complete privacy of the seller and buyer of the OTC.
How It Actually Works
For Sellers:
For Buyers:
The Magic: Partial Notes are the technical breakthrough that make collaborative, asynchronous private transactions possible. Sellers create incomplete payment commitments that buyers can finish without revealing the seller's identity. It's like leaving a blank check that only the right person can cash, but neither party knows who the other is.
Privacy guarantees include:
Private Contract Deployment: Unlike public decentralized exchanges where smart contracts are visible on the blockchain, the escrow contracts in this system are deployed privately, meaning that only the participants involved in the transaction know these contracts exist.
Partial Note Mechanism: This system uses cryptographic primitives that enable incomplete commitments to be finalized or completed by third parties, all while preventing those third parties from revealing or accessing any pre-existing information that was part of the original commitment.
Privacy-Preserving Discovery: The orderflow service maintains knowledge of aggregate trading volumes and overall market activity, but it cannot see the details of individual traders, including their specific trade parameters or personal identities.
Atomic Execution: The smart contract logic is designed to ensure that both sides of a trade occur simultaneously in a single atomic operation, meaning that if any part of the transaction fails, the entire transaction is rolled back and neither party's assets are transferred.
Our prototype for this is open-sourced here, and you can read about the proof of concept directly from the developer here.
We're inviting teams to explore, fork, and commercialize this idea. The infrastructure for private institutional trading needs to exist, and Aztec makes it possible today. Whether you're building a private DEX, upgrading your OTC desk, or exploring new DeFi primitives, this codebase is your starting point.
The traditional finance world conducts trillions in private OTC trades. It's time to bring that scale to crypto, privately.
To stay up to date with the latest updates for network operators, join the Aztec Discord and follow Aztec on X.
