# How Aztec compares

> Who controls your privacy? Aztec beside NEAR, Starknet, Miden, Zcash, Zama, and Tempo: unstoppable or not, backdoors, private contracts, who can take part.

Canonical: https://aztec.network/compare  
Type: Comparison index  
Publisher: Aztec Foundation

## Who controls your privacy?

- **Unstoppable network**: Is the network unstoppable? Check who produces blocks, who can admit or remove operators, and whether anyone can halt, reset, or censor the chain. A public base chain and its privacy service may have different answers.
- **Privacy backdoor**: Is there a privacy backdoor? Check whether an operator, a validator group, a co-signer, or a key holder can read private data now or decrypt it later, and whether the application rules add a backdoor of their own.
- **Private smart contracts**: Do they have private smart contracts? Check whether builders can write contracts with private state and private logic alongside public logic, or are limited to a particular payment or token design.
- **Participation**: Who can build and participate? Deploying an application and operating infrastructure are different permissions. Check the requirements for each role.

## Comparisons

- [Aztec vs NEAR](https://aztec.network/compare/near) — A sharded proof-of-stake Layer 1. Compare the private service as well as the base chain: who operates it, how data crosses its bridge, and which disclosure rules an application can define. NEAR and Aztec do two fundamentally different things. In fact, NEAR could be utilized to confidentially bridge into Aztec.
- [Aztec vs Starknet](https://aztec.network/compare/starknet) — A validity rollup on Ethereum. For STRK20, disclosure runs through a designated audit-key operator and there are no smart contracts with private logic. On Aztec, the application defines disclosure without a protocol-wide audit key and the platform supports smart contracts with private logic.
- [Aztec vs Miden](https://aztec.network/compare/miden) — A client-side-proving rollup, spun out of Polygon. Both designs prove privately on the user's device. The difference is who else is in the path: on Miden, encrypted transaction data goes to a validator group that can decrypt it together, a Guardian sees the state of every account it backs, and Miden runs the validators. On Aztec, no one sees that data, and no one can stop the network: permissionless sequencers and provers run it.
- [Aztec vs Zcash](https://aztec.network/compare/zcash) — A proof-of-work Layer 1 for private money. The distinction is the application design space: Zcash is private money, while Aztec supports contracts that combine private and public state.
- [Aztec vs Zama](https://aztec.network/compare/zama) — An FHE confidentiality layer for public EVM chains. Both let applications define disclosure. Compare the underlying trust assumptions: threshold key management for Zama, client-side private execution for Aztec.
- [Aztec vs Tempo](https://aztec.network/compare/tempo) — A payments-first Layer 1, incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. Tempo privacy is a private ledger run by a business, which that business, and in a hosted Zone Tempo as well, can read in full. Aztec privacy holds against the operator as well as the public, and applies to contracts, not only to transfers.

---

Markdown representation of https://aztec.network/compare. Published by Aztec Foundation.