Aztec Network

On May 29th, 2025, the Aztec Labs team observed a sharp slowdown in block production starting around 1:30 PM UTC. An emergency update was shipped and adopted by node operators, which resolved the issue and restored the network to full capacity. In this blog, we break down what went wrong and how we fixed it. 

Comparative 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.

Within the first 24 hours, over 20k users visited the Aztec Playground and started to send transactions on testnet. Additionally, 10 apps launched live on the testnet, including wallets, block explorers, and private DeFi and NFT marketplaces.

In this post, we’ll explore what full decentralization means, how the Aztec Foundation is testing each aspect in the Public Testnet, and the challenges and limitations of testing a decentralized network in a testnet environment.

Earlier this month, we announced the successful testing of the first decentralized upgrade process for an L2, with over 100 sequencers participating. Now, with the mission to bring programmable privacy to the masses, the Aztec Public Testnet is here and, for the first time ever, open to developers to build fully private applications on Ethereum. 

Aztec from 2017 to 2024 can be seen as a methodical journey toward building a fully private, programmable, and decentralized blockchain network. Aztec mainnet will mark the emergence of applications that weren't possible before – applications that combine the transparency and programmability of blockchain with the privacy necessary for real-world adoption. 

Introducing the Aztec Foundation, a nonprofit organization to support the growth and development of open-source programmable privacy. The launch of the Aztec Foundation marks a significant milestone for the Aztec Network, bringing us closer to the launch of a fully decentralized, privacy-preserving network.

In this article, we’ll talk about one of the core components unlocking privacy on Ethereum: state management. We’ll shed some light on programmable and composable privacy which allows dApp developers to choose what they want to make private and what to leave public. That allows for an ecosystem of privacy-preserving dApps that can communicate with each other as well as Ethereum.

We are constantly striving to make the Aztec Network more secure by developing internal tooling and seeking external expertise. ‍To prepare for a barrage of future audits before the mainnet launch, we ran a test exercise with three well-established auditing companies including ZKSecurity, Zellic, and Spearbit. 

Since Aztec's launch seven years ago, we’ve been on a mission to solve one of the biggest barriers to mass blockchain adoption – privacy. Imagine a world where developers can write programs that protect user data but take full advantage of a trustless, permissionless system – all backed by the security. This is what we’re working towards, and this product roadmap is how we get there. 

After 7 years of building in the open, last month we announced that Devnet is now live. To celebrate we launched Alpha Build, a series of three developer sprints with up to US$100,000 in prizes and the opportunity to deploy on the Aztec for the first time. Starting October 8th - October 29th, 2024, the second sprint, Alpha Build 2 (AB2), will focus on identity and social.

Over the last month, to celebrate a live DevNet, we championed builders to help shape the future of payments through Alpha Build One (AB1). From wallets using Ethereum signatures to cloud-based wallet features and beyond, we had 50 participants, 6 teams, and a total of 13 projects submitted.

In this blog post, we explore zero-knowledge (ZK) property, investigate if ZK-rollups have any ZK, and differentiate between ZK as a technology and as a marketing term.

In this article, we revisit the topic of Account Abstraction (AA): its meaning, history, and current landscape. We explore the possibilities that AA opens for developers and figure out which Account Abstraction is the most abstract one.

Worldwide, the average person’s daily screen time is 6 hours and 58 minutes. This is approximately 41% of waking time. Does it mean that a modern human is 41% digital?

What do we mean by “decentralization”? Why Aztec takes decentralization seriously? In this post, we explore Aztec’s efforts around protocol decentralization: sequencer, prover, and upgrade mechanism.

Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum provide humanity with programmable digital money. Aztec is a privacy-first Layer 2 on Ethereum. It enables a critical dimension of programmable digital money that has heretofore been ignored: privacy.

"Sidecar" wins Aztec's prover coordination protocol RFPs, and comments invited on essential sequencer selection and prover coordination protocols for block production.

This post delves into the unique structure of transactions within Aztec's network, highlighting their distinct features and the underlying technology.

Aztec.nr is a breakthrough in private smart contract frameworks, focusing on elevating privacy and functionality in blockchain.

An in-depth look at the intricate network structure within the Aztec ecosystem, detailing its components and functionalities.