Why Aztec's Approach is a Blueprint for Mainstream Adoption

Early privacy chains like Zcash and Monero are isolated, high-latency environments. Their ~1-2 TPS throughput and lack of composability with DeFi make them unsuitable for mainstream apps.

• Isolated Liquidity: Assets are trapped in a privacy silo.
• High Latency: Proof generation creates ~30-60 second finality.
• No Composability: Cannot interact with Uniswap or Aave.

Pioneers like Zcash and Tornado Cash required a trusted ceremony, creating a permanent security liability and governance bottleneck. This is antithetical to decentralized, credibly neutral infrastructure.

• Permanent Risk: A compromised setup breaks all future privacy.
• Governance Attack Vector: Upgrades require contentious hard forks.
• Institutional Skepticism: Unacceptable for regulated asset adoption.

Wallets like MetaMask expose every transaction detail. Mixers like Tornado Cash require manual, multi-step processes, creating UX friction and regulatory flags that deter average users.

• All-or-Nothing Privacy: You must exit the public ecosystem entirely.
• Manual Batching: Users manage notes and nullifiers manually.
• Regulatory Blast Radius: Entire protocol can be sanctioned.

Aztec is an Ethereum L2 that processes private and public logic in a single rollup. This bridges the privacy and public ecosystems, enabling private interactions with Uniswap or Aave via its public function circuit.

• Native Composability: Private assets can call public DeFi contracts.
• Ethereum Security: Inherits L1 settlement and data availability.
• Selective Privacy: Users choose what data to reveal, per transaction.

Aztec uses the PLONK proof system with a universal, updatable trusted setup. Its recursive proof aggregation (Proof Compression) batches thousands of private transactions into a single L1 verification, achieving ~100-1000 TPS for private compute.

• Scalable Verification: Single proof verifies an entire block.
• Upgradable Setup: The 'Aztec Ignition' ceremony can be re-run safely.
• Cost Amortization: Drives private transaction costs toward <$0.01.

Aztec provides a TypeScript SDK and noir language, allowing developers to build private smart contracts with familiar tools. This abstracts away cryptographic complexity, enabling private DeFi, voting, and gaming with a Web2-like developer experience.

• Developer Familiarity: Use TypeScript, not custom circuit languages.
• Wallet Integration: Native support in MetaMask via Snap.
• Application-Specific Privacy: Logic is hidden, not just asset flows.

Large trades on Uniswap or Aave leak intent, causing front-running and massive slippage. This forces institutions into inefficient, manual OTC desks.

• Solution: Private smart contracts enable dark pool DEXs with on-chain settlement.
• Impact: Enables $10B+ institutional liquidity to enter DeFi without moving markets, competing directly with traditional finance giants like Citadel Securities.

RWAs like private credit or real estate require KYC/AML and investor accreditation, which are impossible to enforce transparently on public chains like Ethereum without doxxing all participants.

• Solution: Aztec's privacy allows for selective disclosure. Regulators see everything, the public sees nothing.
• Impact: Unlocks the multi-trillion dollar RWA market by making blockchain compatible with existing financial law, enabling protocols like Centrifuge to scale.

From sandwich attacks on Uniswap swaps to arbitrage on Aave liquidations, Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) drains $1B+ annually from users, making DeFi predatory for the average person.

• Solution: Private transactions hide mempool intent, making front-running and generalized MEV extraction computationally impossible.
• Impact: Creates a fairer financial system where value accrues to users, not validators and searchers, fundamentally altering the economics of networks like Ethereum and Solana.

Paying employees or contractors with stablecoins like USDC publicly reveals salary information. DAO treasury management exposes negotiation and strategy.

• Solution: Private payments and confidential DAO voting via smart contracts.
• Impact: Enables enterprise adoption of crypto payroll and compliant, strategic treasury management for organizations managing $100M+ in assets.

Bridges like Wormhole and Multichain hold billions in centralized, auditable pools, making them prime targets. $2B+ has been stolen from bridges to date.

• Solution: Private, atomic cross-chain swaps. Move assets from Ethereum to Aztec to another chain without a centralized vault.
• Impact: Eliminates the bridge hack vector by removing the custodial middleman, enhancing security for ecosystems like Arbitrum and Polygon.

Lending protocols like Aave and Compound require over-collateralization because they cannot assess creditworthiness. This locks away capital and limits economic activity.

• Solution: Private credit scoring and underwriting. Build a verifiable, private history of on-chain behavior without exposing personal data.
• Impact: Unlocks under-collateralized lending, the cornerstone of modern finance, creating a $100B+ market for private, on-chain credit.

Aztec's sequencer-prover model creates a bottleneck. If the centralized prover fails or is censored, the entire network halts. This is a fundamental regression from Ethereum's decentralized validator set.

• Single Point of Failure: Network liveness depends on Aztec's prover infrastructure.
• Censorship Vector: A malicious or compromised prover could selectively exclude transactions.
• Cost Scaling Risk: Proving costs must remain low to enable ~$0.01 private transactions; a spike breaks the economic model.

Aztec posts only state diffs and proofs to L1, not full transaction data. This relies on users or watchtowers to store data off-chain and dispute invalid state transitions.

• Weak Data Guarantees: Compared to Ethereum blobs or Celestia, user-enforced DA is fragile and untested at scale.
• Mass Exit Problem: In a crisis, coordinating data retrieval for $1B+ TVL could be impossible, freezing funds.
• Regulatory Target: Opaque data posting could be flagged as non-compliant, unlike zkSync or Scroll's explicit calldata.

Aztec's hybrid public/private state and external nullifiers create a complex interface. This fragmentation could stifle developer adoption and composability.

• Developer Friction: Building apps requires mastering two state models, unlike Aleo's uniform privacy.
• Composability Breaks: Private and public smart contracts cannot interact seamlessly, creating walled gardens.
• Bridge Vulnerability: Connecting to Ethereum DeFi via LayerZero or Axelar requires trusted relays, negating privacy benefits and creating new attack surfaces.

The system's economics depend on high, stable L1 gas prices and efficient proof generation. A shift in either variable collapses the model.

• L1 Gas Dependency: If Ethereum gas falls below ~10 gwei, the cost savings versus a zkEVM like Starknet disappear.
• Prover Collusion: A single prover has no market pressure to keep fees low, unlike competitive EigenLayer AVS markets.
• MEV Redirection: Privacy obscures transaction intent, but sequencer/prover can still extract value via ordering, a problem also faced by Flashbots SUAVE.