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The First Feature Complete Privacy Stack is Here
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.
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.
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.
Aztec’s Public Testnet launched in May 2025.
Since then, we’ve been obsessively working toward our ultimate goal: launching the first fully decentralized privacy-preserving layer-2 (L2) network on Ethereum. This effort has involved a team of over 70 people, including world-renowned cryptographers and builders, with extensive collaboration from the Aztec community.
To make something private is one thing, but to also make it decentralized is another. Privacy is only half of the story. Every component of the Aztec Network will be decentralized from day one because decentralization is the foundation that allows privacy to be enforced by code, not by trust. This includes sequencers, which order and validate transactions, provers, which create privacy-preserving cryptographic proofs, and settlement on Ethereum, which finalizes transactions on the secure Ethereum mainnet to ensure trust and immutability.
Strong progress is being made by the community toward full decentralization. The Aztec Network now includes nearly 1,000 sequencers in its validator set, with 15,000 nodes spread across more than 50 countries on six continents. With this globally distributed network in place, the Aztec Network is ready for users to stress test and challenge its resilience.
We're now entering a new phase: the Adversarial Testnet. This stage will test the resilience of the Aztec Testnet and its decentralization mechanisms.
The Adversarial Testnet introduces two key features: slashing, which penalizes validators for malicious or negligent behavior in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, and a fully decentralized governance mechanism for protocol upgrades.
This phase will also simulate network attacks to test its ability to recover independently, ensuring it could continue to operate even if the core team and servers disappeared (see more on Vitalik’s “walkaway test” here). It also opens the validator set to more people using ZKPassport, a private identity verification app, to verify their identity online.
The Aztec Network testnet is decentralized, run by a permissionless network of sequencers.
The slashing upgrade tests one of the most fundamental mechanisms for removing inactive or malicious sequencers from the validator set, an essential step toward strengthening decentralization.
Similar to Ethereum, on the Aztec Network, any inactive or malicious sequencers will be slashed and removed from the validator set. Sequencers will be able to slash any validator that makes no attestations for an entire epoch or proposes an invalid block.
Three slashes will result in being removed from the validator set. Sequencers may rejoin the validator set at any time after getting slashed; they just need to rejoin the queue.
In addition to testing network resilience when validators go offline and evaluating the slashing mechanisms, the Adversarial Testnet will also assess the robustness of the network’s decentralized governance during protocol upgrades.
Adversarial Testnet introduces changes to Aztec Network’s governance system.
Sequencers now have an even more central role, as they are the sole actors permitted to deposit assets into the Governance contract.
After the upgrade is defined and the proposed contracts are deployed, sequencers will vote on and implement the upgrade independently, without any involvement from Aztec Labs and/or the Aztec Foundation.
Starting today, you can join the Adversarial Testnet to help battle-test Aztec’s decentralization and security. Anyone can compete in six categories for a chance to win exclusive Aztec swag, be featured on the Aztec X account, and earn a DappNode. The six challenge categories include:
Performance will be tracked using Dashtec, a community-built dashboard that pulls data from publicly available sources. Dashtec displays a weighted score of your validator performance, which may be used to evaluate challenges and award prizes.
The dashboard offers detailed insights into sequencer performance through a stunning UI, allowing users to see exactly who is in the current validator set and providing a block-by-block view of every action taken by sequencers.
To join the validator set and start tracking your performance, click here. Join us on Thursday, July 31, 2025, at 4 pm CET on Discord for a Town Hall to hear more about the challenges and prizes. Who knows, we might even drop some alpha.
To stay up-to-date on all things Noir and Aztec, make sure you’re following along on X.
Preventing sybil attacks and malicious actors is one of the fundamental challenges of Web3 – it’s why we have proof-of-work and proof-of-stake networks. But Sybil attacks go a step further for many projects, with bots and advanced AI agents flooding Discord servers, sending thousands of transactions that clog networks, and botting your Typeforms. Determining who is a real human online and on-chain is becoming increasingly difficult, and the consequences of this are making it difficult for projects to interact with real users.
When the Aztec Testnet launched last month, we wrote about the challenges of running a proof-of-stake testnet in an environment where bots are everywhere. The Aztec Testnet is a decentralized network, and in order to give good actors a chance, a daily quota was implemented to limit the number of new sequencers that could join the validator set per day to start proposing blocks. Using this system, good actors who were already in the set could vote to kick out bad actors, with a daily limit of 5 new sequencers able to join the set each day. However, the daily quota quickly got bottlenecked, and it became nearly impossible for real humans who are operating nodes in good faith to join the Aztec Testnet.
In this case study, we break down Sybil attacks, explore different ways the ecosystem currently uses to prevent them, and dive into how we’re leveraging ZKPassport to prevent Sybil attacks on the Aztec Testnet.
With the massive repercussions that stem from privacy leaks (see the recent Coinbase incident), any solution to prevent Sybil attacks and prove humanity must not compromise on user privacy and should be grounded in the principles of privacy by design and data minimization. Additionally, given that decentralization underpins the entire purpose of Web3 (and the Aztec Network), joining the network should remain permissionless.
Our goal was to find a solution that allows users to permissionlessly prove their humanity without compromising their privacy. If such a technology exists (spoiler alert: it does), we believe that this has the potential to solve one of the biggest problems faced by our industry: Sybil attacks. Some of the ways that projects currently try to prevent Sybil attacks or prove [humanity] include:
Both zkEmail and ZKPassport are powered by Noir, the universal language of zk, and are great solutions for preventing Sybil attacks.
With zkEmail, users can do things like prove that they received a confirmation email from a centralized exchange showing that they successfully passed KYC, all without showing any of the email contents or personal information. While this offers a good solution for this use case, we also wanted the functionality of enabling the network to block certain jurisdictions (if needed), without the network knowing where the user is from. This also enables users to directly interface with the network rather than through a third-party email confirmation.
Given this context, ZKPassport was, and is, the perfect fit.
For the Aztec Testnet, we’ve integrated ZKPassport to enable node operators to prove they are human and participate in the network. This integration allows the network to dramatically increase the number of sequencers that can be added each day, which is a huge step forward in decentralizing the network with real operators.
ZKPassport allows users to share only the details about themselves that they choose by scanning a passport or government ID. This is achieved using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) that are generated locally on the user’s phone. Implementing client-side zk-proofs in this way enables novel use-cases like age verification, where someone can prove their age without actually sharing how old they are (see the recent report on How to Enable Age Verification on the Internet Today Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs).
As of this week, the ZKPassport app is live and available to download on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
Most countries today issue biometric passports or national IDs containing NFC chips (over 120 countries are currently supported by ZKPassport). These chips contain information on the full name, date of birth, nationality, and even digital photographs of the passport or ID holder. They can also contain biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans.
By scanning the NFC chip located in their ID document with a smartphone, users generate proof based on a specific request from an app. For example, some apps might require only the user’s age or nationality. In the case of Aztec, no information is needed about the user other than that they do indeed hold a valid passport or ID.
Once the user installs the ZKPassport app and scans their passport, the proof of identity is generated on the user's smartphone (client-side).
All the private data read from the NFC chip in the passport or ID is processed client-side and never leaves the smartphone (aka: only the user is aware of their data). Only this proof is sent to an app that has requested some information. The app can then verify the validity of the user’s age or nationality, all without actually seeing anything about the user other than what the user has authorized the app to see. In the case of age verification, the user may want to prove that they are over 18, so they’ll create a proof of this on their phone, and the requesting app is able to verify this information without knowing anything else about them.
For the Aztec Testnet, the network only needs to know that the user holds a valid passport, so no information is shared by the user other than “yes, I hold a valid passport or ID.”
This is a nascent and evolving technology, and various phone models, operating systems, and countries are still being optimized for. To ensure this works seamlessly, we’ll be selecting the first cohort of people who have already been running active validators on a rolling basis to help test ZKPassport and provide early feedback.
If someone successfully verifies that they are a valid passport holder, they will be added to a queue to enter the validator set. Once they are in line, they are guaranteed entry. The queue will enable an estimated additional 10% of the current set to be allowed in each day. For example, if 800 sequencers are currently in the set, 80 new sequencers will be allowed to join that day.
This allows existing operators to maintain control of the network in the event that bad actors enter, while dramatically increasing the number of new validators added compared to the current number.
With ZKPassport now live, the Aztec Testnet is better equipped to distinguish real users from bots, without compromising on privacy or decentralization.
This integration is already enabling more verified human node operators to join the validator set, and the network is ready to welcome more. By leveraging ZKPs and client-side proving, ZKPassport ensures that humanity checks are both secure and permissionless, bringing us closer to a decentralized future that doesn’t rely on trust in centralized authorities.
This is exciting not just for Aztec but for the broader ecosystem. As the network continues to grow and develop, participation must remain open to anyone acting in good faith, regardless of geography or background, while keeping out bots and other malicious actors. ZKPassport makes this possible.
We’re excited to see the community expand, powered by real people helping to build a more private, inclusive, and human Web3.
Stay up-to-date on Noir and Aztec by following Noir and Aztec on X.
Imagine an app that allows users to post private messages while proving they belong to an organization, without revealing their identity. Thanks to zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), it's now possible to protect the user’s identity through secure messaging, confidential voting, secured polling, and more. This development in privacy-preserving authentication creates powerful new ways for teams and individuals to communicate on the Internet while keeping aspects of their identity private.
Compared to Glassdoor, StealthNote is an app that allows users to post messages privately while proving they belong to a specific organization. Built with Noir, an open-source programming language for writing ZK programs, StealthNote utilizes ZKPs to prove ownership of a company email address, without revealing the particular email or other personal information.
To prove the particular domain email ownership, the app asks users to sign in using Google. This utilizes Google’s ‘Sign in with Google’ OAuth authorization. OAuth is usually used by external applications for user authorization and returns verified users’ data, such as name, email, and the organization’s domain.
However, using ‘Sign in with Google’ in a traditional way reveals all of the information about the person’s identity to the app. Furthermore, for an app where you want to allow the public to verify the information about a user, all of this information would be made public to the world. That’s where StealthNote steps in, enabling part of the returned user data to stay private (e.g. name and email) and part of it to be publicly verifiable (e.g. company domain).
When you "Sign in with Google" in a third-party app, Google returns some information about the user as a JSON Web Token (JWT) – a standard for sending information around the web.
JWTs are just formatted strings that contain a header (some info about the token), a payload (data about the user), and a signature to ensure the integrity and authenticity of the token:
Anyone can verify the authenticity of the above data by verifying that the JWT was signed by Google using their public key.
In the case of StealthNote, we want to authorize the user and prove that they sent a particular message. To make this possible, custom information is added to the JWT token payload – a hashed message. With this additional field, the JWT becomes a digitally signed proof that a particular user sent that exact message.
You can share the message and the JWT with someone and convince them that the message was sent by someone in the company. However, this would require sharing the whole JWT, which includes your name and email, exposing who the sender is. So, how does StealthNote protect this information?
They used a ZK-programming language, Noir, with the following goals in mind:
The payload and the signature are kept private, meaning they stay on the user’s device and never need to be revealed, while the hashed message, the domain, and the JWT public key are public. The ZKP is generated in the browser, and no private data ever leaves the user's device.
By executing the program with Noir and generating a proof, the prover (the user who is posting a message) proves that they can generate a JWT signed by some particular public key, and it contains an email field in the payload with the given domain.
When the message is sent to the StealthNote server, the server verifies that the proof is valid as per the StealthNote circuit and validates that the public key in the proof is the same as Google's public key.
Once both checks pass, the server inserts the proof into the database, which then appears in the feed visible for other users. Other users can also verify the proof in the browser. The role of the server is to act as a data storage layer.
Stay up-to-date on Noir and Aztec by following Noir and Aztec on X.
The global political discourse around protecting underage internet users is heating up as lawmakers struggle to achieve safe and secure internet access for minors without imposing on civil liberties.
The European Parliament’s global estimates reveal that one in three children is an internet user, and one in three internet users is under 18. As digital consumption by minors grows, policymakers worldwide are pushing for more stringent age verification laws. However, these efforts are increasingly met with legal and constitutional challenges.
This report explores the potential behind zero-knowledge proof (“ZKP”) identities (“ZKIs”) as an innovative solution for online age verification, offering the dual advantage of enabling robust identity verification while safeguarding personal information.
Click here to read the full report.
