With over $100M raised, how can users get involved in the Aztec Testnet launch?

Original Article Title: "Gold Rush Manual | How Aztec, the Ethereum Privacy L2 Disruptor, Is Set Up?"

Original Article Author: KarenZ, Foresight News

In the development process of blockchain technology, the contradiction between privacy protection and transparency has always been a focus of the industry. Ethereum has built a foundation of trust through its strong decentralization and verifiability, but the mechanism of fully public transaction data exposes user privacy to pervasive monitoring.

In this context, the emergence of the Aztec privacy network has brought new possibilities to address this contradiction. On May 1, 2025, Aztec officially launched its public test network and opened permission to developers for the first time, meaning developers could build applications with full privacy protection capabilities based on the Ethereum ecosystem.

As a privacy Layer 2 solution in the Ethereum ecosystem, Aztec utilizes zero-knowledge proof technology to provide users and DApps with a programmable privacy solution and low-cost transaction processing. This article will introduce the project from the dimensions of project overview, core team and funding history, project development trajectory, and user interaction guide.

What is Aztec's Background?

Aztec was developed by Aztec Labs and founded in 2017. Aztec Labs operates in a fully remote mode, with the official website currently listing 67 team members. Some key members of the leadership team are as follows:

· Co-Founder and CEO Zac Williamson: Co-inventor of the PLONK zero-knowledge proof system, holds a Ph.D. in Particle Physics from the University of Oxford.

· Co-Founder and President Joe Andrews: EF9 Cohort member, holds a Bachelor's degree in Materials Science from Imperial College London, and was previously the CTO of a Silicon Valley food tech company, Radish.

· Co-Founder Tom Walton Pocock: Former CEO of Aztec, currently not listed on the Aztec official website's team roster.

· CTO Charlie Lye: Holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Heriot-Watt University with 20 years of experience. Previously served as Chief Engineer at Triptease, Bloomberg C++ Engineer, and BetFair C++ Engineer.

· COO Lisa Cuesta Bunin: Harvard MBA, UPenn Wharton BS. Former Head of NextGen Venture Partners, acquired by Brown Advisory.

· CMO Claire Kart: Previously at RISC Zero, Mina Foundation (Founder), O(1) Labs, Ripple, SoFi, among others.

· CFO Scott Siversen: Former CFO at ShapeShift.

On the funding side, Aztec has attracted significant capital, with total funding exceeding $119 million.

· November 2018: Aztec completed a $2.1 million seed round with Consensys Labs leading.

· December 2021: Aztec closed a $17 million Series A with Paradigm leading, a_capital, Ethereal Ventures, Libertus Capital, Variant Fund, Nascent, IMToken, Scalar Capital, Defi Alliance, IOSG Ventures, ZK Validator, and angel investors including Anthony Sassano, Stani Kulechov, Bankless, Defi Dad, Mariano Conti, and Vitalik Buterin.

· December 2022: Aztec raised a $100 million Series B with a16z crypto leading, and participation from A Capital, King River, Variant, SV Angel, Hash Key, Fenbushi, and AVG.

What is Aztec?

Aztec is a privacy-focused Ethereum L2 scaling solution, aiming to bring user privacy to Ethereum while supporting programmable smart contracts. How does Aztec enhance privacy? Aztec encodes additional checks in zk-SNARK circuits within zk-Rollup, introducing the concept of private state and private functions to fundamentally secure the privacy of each transaction.

Specifically, Aztec adopts a model where private and public functions work together. Private functions are executed on the user's local device to protect privacy and generate proofs, while public functions are executed on Aztec's own Aztec Virtual Machine (AVM) by the prover, operating on public state visible to everyone. A transaction can contain both private and public function calls simultaneously, following a strict order of first locally executing private functions and then executing public functions on the AVM.

It is worth noting that due to Aztec's privacy mechanism heavily relying on client-side proof generation and encrypted data, and being incompatible with the EVM architecture, it is not EVM-compatible. Additionally, Aztec has created its own new virtual machine—the AVM (Aztec Virtual Machine). AVM contracts are written in Noir (designed for zero-knowledge applications and privacy contracts), compiled into ZK circuits, with each function acting as a ZK SNARK verification key.

In terms of the state model, Aztec adopts a mixed model of private and public states. The public state is stored and updated by the prover, which performs state transitions, generates proofs of correct execution (or delegates proof generation to a proof network), and publishes relevant data to Ethereum.

On the other hand, private state is stored in the form of Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs), referred to as Notes by Aztec, which can only be decrypted by the owner. The hash values of Notes are stored in a Merkle tree (note hash tree). When you "spend" a note, Aztec marks the original note's commitment as "nullified" and creates a new note, assigning it to a new owner, achieving a similar effect to cash change. External observers cannot trace the flow of funds.

Using an example provided by Aztec, Notes are similar to cash but with subtle differences. In real life, when you want to spend $3.50, you hand a $5 bill to the cashier, who keeps $3.50 and returns $1.50 to you. When using private notes on Aztec, if you want to spend a $5 note, you nullify it and create a $1.5 note (owned by you) and a $3.5 note (owned by the recipient). Only you and the recipient know about this $3.5 transaction; they are unaware that you "split" the $5 bill.

Aztec Development Timeline and Milestones

The original goal of Aztec Labs was to build an on-chain debt platform called CreditMint. However, the team later realized in practice that a public blockchain lacking privacy protection could not widely gain user trust. This insight prompted Aztec to decisively shift towards privacy technology development.

· In 2019, the Aztec team released the zero-knowledge proof system PLONK, significantly reducing the cost of proof generation and verification.

· In 2021 and 2022, Aztec successively launched zk.money and Aztec Connect (Ethereum privacy DeFi solution Aztec Connect).

· By the end of 2022, Aztec released the open-source zero-knowledge programming language Noir (based on Rust), simplifying privacy smart contract development and lowering the entry barriers for developers.

· In 2023, Aztec strategically discontinued zk.money and Aztec Connect, fully transitioning to a fully decentralized ZK Rollup, focusing on the Noir language and next-generation encrypted blockchain development.

· In February 2025, Aztec launched the Aztec Foundation, which will conduct foundational research in enhancing the field of free cryptography, provide support to developers to help them build innovative applications, protect user privacy, ensure compliance, and maintain the universal language of zero-knowledge proofs, Noir.

· On May 1, 2025, Aztec introduced the Aztec Public Testnet, designed to rigorously test decentralization aspects such as ordering, proofs, and governance before the mainnet release.

Aztec Public Testnet

Aztec aims to be a fully decentralized, permissionless, and privacy-focused Layer2 network on Ethereum. The Aztec Public Testnet is a platform for developers, node operators, and regular users to explore the privacy blockchain together, focusing on three decentralized requirements: decentralized ordering, decentralized proofs, and decentralized governance mechanisms.

Regarding decentralized ordering, anyone can run an ordering node to participate in transaction ordering, block proposing, and validating blocks generated by other ordering nodes. The ordering network employs a PoS mechanism similar to Ethereum, but block validation is done by a randomly selected set of 48 sequencers, with a two-thirds vote required for block confirmation, achieving rapid pre-finality and leveraging Ethereum for ultimate settlement security.

For decentralized proofs, provers generate cryptographic proofs to validate the correctness of public transactions, ultimately forming a Rollup proof submitted to Ethereum. The proof client developed by Aztec Labs consists of three components: proof nodes identify unproven periods (a collection of 32 blocks) and create individual proof jobs; proving brokers add these proof job requests to a queue and assign them to idle proof agents; proof agents perform the actual proof computation. Once the proof computation is completed, proof nodes send the proofs to L1 for verification. The Aztec network distributes proof rewards to all users who submit proofs on time, thereby reducing the centralization risk of entities with significant computing power dominating the network.

How to Get Involved?

1. For Developers: Visit the developer portal (https://aztec.network/developers) to customize and deploy contracts using public and private components.

2. For Node Operators:

· Sequencer nodes can participate using standard consumer-grade hardware.

· Prover nodes require higher computational power to generate zero-knowledge proofs. (According to Aztec's official statement, running a prover node requires more robust hardware, approximately 40 machines, each expected to have 16 cores and 128GB of memory.)

It is important to note that running a prover can be costly, and the costs are the same on the testnet and mainnet. Consequently, Aztec's public testnet limits transaction speed to 0.2 transactions per second (TPS). However, Aztec emphasizes that they "don't do airdrops, they don't do marketing gimmicks. They just want to create a community of highly skilled operators." Nevertheless, Aztec states that running nodes can obtain a Discord role.

3. For Regular Users: Engage with the Aztec ecosystem:

1. Create an Obsidian or Azguard wallet;

2. Engage in Human Tech Cross-Chain: Move Ethereum testnet tokens cross-chain;

3. Engage in NEMI Redemption (currently requires access to code);

4. Interact with the Raven House NFT marketplace.

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