Ethereum L2 Aztec Launches Public Testnet to Make Privacy ‘the Norm, not the Exception’

Blockchain developer Aztec Network officially launched its public testnet yesterday, May 1, for its Ethereum-based Layer 2 (L2), introducing what the team calls the “first fully programmable privacy solution” for blockchain.

The testnet lets developers begin building decentralized applications (dApps) with customizable privacy features that integrate directly with Ethereum’s infrastructure, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

This milestone follows eight years of development, a $100 million Series B led by a16z crypto, and successful trials involving over 100 sequencers across Aztec’s DevNet and ProverNet.

The launch, which the team says it hopes will set the stage for a fully decentralized mainnet release, represents a turning point in Aztec’s years-long mission to bridge the gap between privacy and blockchain transparency.

How it works

Joe Andrews, the president and co-founder of Aztec, explained to The Defiant that Aztec’s decentralized upgrade process begins with sequencers — network participants responsible for producing blocks — signaling support for an upgrade.

They do this by including a specific upgrade address as a flag in the blocks they produce. Once a majority of blocks (such as 501 out of 1,000) contain this signal, the upgrade proposal advances to the next phase: ratification by the network.

“The network remains secure via a proof-of-stake model and censorship-resistant via wide geographic distribution,” Andrews added. “We have nodes on most continents on the testnet.”

Looking ahead

Aztec’s long-term vision is to make privacy not just an optional feature, but a default standard for blockchain applications.

“Without Aztec, private dApps require devs to generate zero-knowledge circuits which are nontrivial,” Zac Williamson, CEO and co-founder of Aztec, told The Defiant. “With our programming language, Noir, writing a private smart contract is like writing a regular computer program.”

Williamson explained that managing private data onchain can be complex, as it involves working with encrypted objects and navigating unique state models. “Aztec and Noir both work together to create abstraction layers that make this process much easier and more intuitive,” he added.

In the future, Williamson noted that “privacy will be the norm, not the exception.”

“We want to create a global distributed ledger that is the natural home for both real-world and on-chain assets,” he concluded.