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Introduction

Aztec Network is building the first private, programmable ZK-rollup on Ethereum, enabling decentralized applications to access privacy and scale.

At Aztec we believe decentralization is premised on individual rights. Without widely accessible privacy, we compromise our ability to choose how we live our lives and earn our livelihoods.

That’s why we’re building Aztec Network to deliver privacy without compromise:

  • Private. Aztec is the only zero-knowledge rollup built with a privacy-first architecture from the ground up, allowing developers to build privacy preserving applications on the Aztec rollup with the option to integrate favorite apps on Ethereum, completely privately.
  • Accessible. Proving Aztec transaction validity through zero-knowledge proofs on Ethereum significantly reduces transaction costs.
  • Compliant. Our programmable, private system supports opt-in auditability and compliance while fully preserving confidentiality and maintaining credible neutrality at the protocol layer.

“When we started Aztec, the technology to scale blockchains privately didn’t exist. Since then, we’ve assembled a team of world-class cryptographers who continuously redefine the state-of-the-art. Inventing PLONK — the paradigm-defining universal zk-SNARK — showcases our ability to produce technology that matches our ambitions: unlocking an entire universe of blockchain applications that couldn’t exist without privacy.” - Zac Williamson, CEO and Cofounder, Aztec

To realize our vision, we are pioneering the next generation of privacy preserving zk roll-ups by building Aztec 3.

Aztec 3​

What is Aztec 3?

First, some context. A public blockchain utilizes a peer-to-peer network and a consensus protocol to establish the correct record of events, and records this on a shared ledger. Nodes are penalized for lying, and correctness is enforced by other nodes "checking" the work of the current node as the data is public. Ethereum is an example of this, specifically an example that enables the processing of transactions with arbitrary, Turing complete computation.

Aztec 3 is an encrypted blockchain, where the core unit of a transaction is a zero-knowledge proof that proves the correctness of a specific transaction.

The Aztec peer-to-peer network receives these proofs, and an Aztec network sequencer assembles these proofs into a block. They compute a final aggregation zero-knowledge proof with the help of a distributed prover network which prove the correctness of the set of transactions which make up a block. For a transaction to be accepted by the network, it must be provably correct. It is not possible for invalid proofs to be accepted by the network.

The aggregation proof is sent to a smart contract on Ethereum for validation. If the proofs are verified as correct by the smart contract, it will record the new state of the Aztec blockchain as a ledger entry on Ethereum.

Updates to this state can only occur based on proving the correct execution of a block of Aztec transactions. This allows Aztec 3 to rely on Ethereum's consensus for the correct record of events. The Aztec execution environment can be thought of as an extension of Ethereum, but where a subset of transactions can be encrypted.

Read more about Aztec 3 here.