Space Summary
The Twitter Space Road to Mainnet hosted by aztecnetwork. Embark on the journey of creating the first privacy network on Ethereum with @NoirLang. This space delved into the importance of privacy, security, and community engagement in building a robust infrastructure for secure transactions. Collaborating with experts, testing, and auditing processes were highlighted as essential steps towards a successful Mainnet launch. Transparency, accountability, and innovation were emphasized as key pillars for the network's sustainability and growth. Learn about the roadmap to Mainnet launch and the significance of DEX integration in enhancing privacy. Education, partnerships, and continuous innovation were underscored as crucial elements for the network's future success.
For more spaces, visit the Infrastructure page.
Space Statistics
For more stats visit the full Live report
Questions
Q: Why is privacy crucial in a network built on Ethereum?
A: Privacy ensures secure transactions and protects user data from unauthorized access.
Q: How does community engagement contribute to the success of Mainnet launch?
A: Engaging the community fosters support, feedback, and adoption of the privacy network.
Q: What role do decentralized exchanges play in enhancing privacy on the network?
A: DEX platforms offer secure, non-custodial trading options that align with the privacy-focused ethos of the network.
Q: Why is innovation important for the sustainability of a privacy network?
A: Continuous innovation keeps the network competitive, adaptable to changing threats, and appealing to users.
Q: How can transparency and accountability benefit the development process?
A: Transparent practices build trust, while accountability ensures that the project adheres to its stated goals.
Q: Why are roadmaps crucial for the success of launching a privacy network?
A: Roadmaps provide a structured plan, clear objectives, and accountability for achieving milestones.
Q: What are the key considerations for testing a privacy-focused network?
A: Thorough testing and auditing are essential to identify and address vulnerabilities that could compromise privacy and security.
Q: How can educational campaigns increase adoption of a privacy network?
A: Educational initiatives help users understand the value proposition of privacy features and encourage adoption.
Q: What expertise is needed to ensure a successful Mainnet release?
A: Collaboration with skilled developers, security experts, and blockchain professionals is crucial for a seamless Mainnet launch.
Q: What are the benefits of collaborating with experts in privacy technology?
A: Partnering with privacy technology experts can provide insights, best practices, and validation for the network's privacy features.
Highlights
Time: 00:15:42
The Significance of Privacy in Blockchain Exploring the critical role of privacy in maintaining data integrity and user confidentiality.
Time: 00:30:19
Engaging the Community for Success Discussing strategies to involve the community in the development and launch process.
Time: 00:45:55
Innovative Solutions for Privacy Unveiling cutting-edge technologies and approaches to enhance privacy measures on the network.
Time: 01:05:10
Roadmap to Mainnet Launch Detailed insights into the milestones and steps leading to the successful launch of the privacy network.
Time: 01:25:36
Transparency and Trust in Development Emphasizing the importance of transparent practices and accountability in building community trust.
Time: 01:40:21
Testing and Auditing for Security Highlighting the critical role of rigorous testing and auditing in ensuring the network's security and privacy features.
Time: 01:55:48
Education for User Adoption Addressing the significance of educating users about the benefits and functionality of a privacy-focused network.
Time: 02:10:05
Partnerships and Collaborations Exploring the synergies and advantages of partnering with experts in privacy and blockchain technology.
Time: 02:25:30
DEX Integration for Enhanced Privacy Examining how integrating decentralized exchanges can bolster the privacy and security aspects of the network.
Time: 02:40:17
Innovation for Future Growth Looking ahead at the role of innovation in sustaining the network's competitiveness and appeal in the market.
Key Takeaways
- Privacy and security are paramount in developing a privacy network on Ethereum.
- Emphasize the importance of building a robust infrastructure for secure and private transactions.
- Community engagement plays a vital role in the success of launching a privacy-focused network.
- Collaboration with developers and experts is crucial for a successful Mainnet release.
- Testing and auditing are essential steps to ensure the reliability and privacy features of the network.
- Innovation in privacy technology is key to staying ahead in the competitive landscape of blockchain networks.
- Utilizing decentralized exchanges (DEX) can enhance privacy and security for transactions on the network.
- Education and awareness campaigns are necessary to educate users on the benefits of a privacy-focused network.
- Roadmaps and milestones provide a clear direction for the development and launch of a privacy network.
- Transparency and accountability are foundational principles for building trust within the community.
Behind the Mic
Welcome and Introductions
Okay, everybody, welcome. I'm Claire Cardam, the CMO at Aztec, and I'm going to be hosting Joe and Zach, our co-founders today. And we're going to give everybody just a couple of minutes to sort of filter in and join us before we kick off the conversation, definitely feel free to drop an emoji on kind of how you're feeling today. I'm feeling excited for this, but a little bit tired because I traveled yesterday. But, yeah, really excited you guys are all here. Welcome. Hello. Zach just joined. Hey, Zach, how's it going? Hey. Hey. Good. Life is good. Nice. I told everybody we're gonna let people kind of filter in. We'll just sort of chill for a little bit. I'm gonna put you on the spot. I know you're in Lisbon. I know you went to the first techno party last night. How was it? Was it good? Did everybody have fun?
Techno Party Experience
Oh, yeah, it was great. Yeah. Great time, you know, a lot of cool people, good music, you know, great technology. I saw the photos. I was a little bit jealous. I love glow sticks and stuff. I felt jealous. It looked fun. It was a lot of fun, actually. Yeah. It's nice to, you know, nice to work hard and play hard. Nice. That's awesome. Cool. All right, well, we're still having people join us. Everybody who's joining, welcome. I'm Claire. I'm the CMO at Aztec. We're going to be joined today by Zach and Joe, our co-founders. And we are going to be getting into the interactive product roadmap that we shared today and just discussing kind of like our road to mainnet and what this big milestone looks like for Aztec.
Interactive Product Roadmap Discussion
So we'll start at 09:05 let people have some more time to join and, yeah, just welcome people along the way. So thanks for tuning in. Hey, everyone. Happy to be here. Amazing. Welcome. Joe. Where in the world are you? I am in London. We've got engineering on-site at the moment, so we've got a load of people building away in the office behind me. Okay. Amazing. How's the energy? Yeah, it's great. Got validators running. People building really cool things. So. Yes, it's great. That's awesome. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for taking time away. I know you guys are really cooking over there. It's a week long, right? Yeah, we've been here since Monday, so we've got two days. Well, tomorrow left and rest is a day. Nice. Very cool. Cool.
Preparation for the Kickoff
Well, people are still filtering in. We'll just give it one more minute and then we'll officially kick off, so hang tight if you've joined. And yeah, feel free to ping any friends that you don't see in here. It's not too late to join. We haven't kicked off quite yet. Okay. It looks like we have a pretty good crew here, so let's think about kicking off. So to everybody who just joined, welcome. I'm Claire Cardam. I'm the CMO at Aztec. Was fortunate enough to join just a few months ago, so still getting my feet wet, but absolutely loving it and super excited to talk about what we're here to celebrate today, which is Aztec's road to mainnet and the product roadmap that we shared this week, which is interactive.
Co-founders Introduction
If you haven't had a chance to check it out, it's really cool. And I think the link is pinned here somewhere in the comments, so definitely check that out. But more importantly, today I am joined by the co-founders of Aztec, Joe and Zach. I want to pass the mic over to them to introduce themselves and then we'll get into some questions about how we got here, the road to mainnet, what to expect for everybody in the community. And then we're going to leave time at the end for community questions. Do have a question? Definitely get ready. We'll be unmuting people and welcoming them up to ask their question. But yeah, without further ado, Joe. Zach, who wants to go first? Introducing yourself.
Founders' Introductions
I can go first. Hello, I'm Zach, one of the co-founders of Aztec. So what am I? I am a cryptographer and an engineer and an ex-scientist and somehow a CEO now. So, yeah, you know, it's been a long road. Been doing this for seven years and originally was pioneering the cryptography and the research and now moved into a more general role, wearing many hats, trying to get this thing to mainnet, trying to light this rocket. Amazing. Joe, take it away. Yeah, so I'm not many of those things, but I do a lot more of our kind of, like, protocol design on the decentralization side, thinking about all of the things you can build with Aztec and putting that amazing cryptography and execution environment to work.
Collaboration and Contributions
Yes, I'm Zach's co-founder and yeah, I've been doing this with Zach for seven years now. So it's been a long, fun road. Yeah, you're underselling yourself there. You're the one that kind of pulls everything together and actually makes it all work and makes it function. I just turn up and I'm like, oh, yeah, wouldn't it be nice if you know, like, and I just sketch some weird math on the board and whiteboard, and then you've got to somehow turn it into a product. So, yeah, Chinese whispers all the way down. Because then I take that and tell that to the people behind us, and they're like, okay, it's a good fun. It's a good combination.
Humble Founders and Team Achievements
It works well. I was also going to jump in and say one thing I've learned about you guys since I joined the project is you are both incredibly humble, and I think you're constantly sort of underselling yourself. At least that's the American in me. And I know you guys are both very British, so, yeah, really, like, just incredible founders here and incredible what the team's been building, obviously, like, getting into that interactive product roadmap. So we want to talk about it more. We want to talk about, like, what these past seven years have been, like, upcoming milestones, as well as how to get involved as people know. Or maybe if you're new to Aztec, right.
Mission and Privacy Solutions
We are really on this mission to solve one of the biggest problems and one of the biggest barriers to mass blockchain adoption, which is privacy. And to do this, like, we are working towards a fully decentralized, privacy-preserving network. As Joe and Zak mentioned, this has been a seven year journey. When I first really learned about Aztec from them, I sort of thought about it almost as this onion. They started out thinking, okay, yeah, here's this onion. And then realized, all right, in order to get to this, in order to actually do this fully decentralized, privacy-preserving network, peeling back all these layers, like, okay, well, now we need to build this.
Building Towards Solutions
Wait a second. Now we need to build this. And kind of ended up building things, really from the ground up. So it's really kind of like a soup to nuts privacy solution, which is incredible. And then bringing us today, in August, we launched in Aztec Devnet. So that has been running really exciting. Some of the folks in our alpha build program have been actually deploying smart contracts on it and seeing how it works. And that's been a lot of learnings for us, a lot of learnings for our community. And then in September, we launched an early provernethe. So just getting our network of decentralized provers in there and making sure that works again, getting ready for Testnet and Mainnet.
Upcoming Product Roadmap
And we're really at this point now where Testnet is in sight and Mainnet is in sight, and the product roadmap is how all of this comes together. You guys see there's five tracks and there's quite a lot to ingest. So I think in order to pull this apart, we want to dive into some questions for the founders. And so, guys, if you don't mind, we're going to kind of. We're going to kind of get into it first. I just want to understand a little bit more about, like, what inspired you to build Aztec? Like, what problems were you trying to solve? What was the thing you saw in the world that you really wanted to change?
Inspiration Behind Aztec
You should go first. I'll take a stab. And then, and then we can talk a bit more about kind of, like, what this means. But I think we really kind of, we came about on this problem out of necessity. So we all met back in 2017, and were trying to do something a little bit different. We're trying to put corporate debt onto Ethereum and give large bank loans a place to trade away from a bank's trading desk. Naivety back then was like, oh, this will be a fun project. Let's dive in. And we only realized after we started peeling back that first layer of the onion that we needed strong privacy guarantees to do something like that.
Concerns About Privacy in a Digital World
But I think, like, you know, there's this sense that, like, people will just sort of accept this lack of privacy. I'm not talking about probably, like, us or the people on this call. Right? Like, I think the people on this call really care about this, but I talked to a lot of other people who just somehow are like, okay. That all of their information is on chain. I find this, like, so surprising. I guess I always think back to, like, the Internet, right? Like, the actual Internet. And I guess I'm curious if you guys think, like, would it have ever gained mass adoption if all the information sent over, it was unencrypted? Like, can we see a world where that would have happened? Because when I think about onboarding the next wave in crypto, I'm like, people will not accept this. And, yeah, I'm just curious what you guys think. Is this necessary? Do you think maybe we're in a different kind of post-privacy world?
The Evolution of Privacy
Yeah, maybe. I can take a stab. I think we've seen this play out before the Internet, before SSL certificates had kind of. It had usage. It had a certain type of application that was being used. But if you compare it to kind of like the Internet, post-something like the SSL certificate, there was a huge boom in the types of things you could do. You could suddenly start doing commerce. Like, things like PayPal were created, kind of online card payments were created. And then the second wave of being able to send things like your location via Ubere and request a taxi, all of that requires an inherent level of privacy. It doesn't solve the issue of large platforms gathering up that data. That came about because of how the model existed. But we definitely saw a step change in the Internet, pre kind of encryption through SSL certificates and post encryption. My mental model is that's kind of what we're seeing with.
Current State of Cryptography
With ethereum today and public blockchains. There is activity. People are using it. We've seen a lot of growth in the crypto space, but it's the tip of the iceberg to what's possible once we have strong privacy guarantees. And that's where I'm excited about where the puck's going, because I think the next wave of things, you can't imagine what they'll look like, because they won't look like the things we have today on a blockchain. They'll require very different primitives that Aztec enables. Yep, totally agree with that. Maybe another way of thinking about it is pre-encryption, pre-SL. The Internet was fun, and then post-encryption. The Internet was useful, but serious. I do think we're in a slightly different era, though, where people were much more data conscious, information conscious. In the early days of the Internet.
User Behavior Shifts Over Time
There was the regular mantra do not reveal any information about yourself online. Always use a pseudonym. Don't use a real name. Don't let anybody know about your real address. And God forbid, do not put any card details, credit card details on the Internet. Nowadays, people are much more accustomed to basically just signing some disclaimer form they don't read and then forking over all their data to basically, whoever asks for it. And to kind of like to slightly expand on your point, Claire. So I was at a talk the other day, you know, giving a talk, holding a bottle of water, and somebody was asking me something similar. And I think I said, if Aztec is relying, if Aztec was going to rely on people to pay for privacy to succeed, I wouldn't be drinking water. I'd be drinking pure grain alcohol, because that's a bad bet to make.
Challenging Perspectives on Privacy
I think it's pretty clear these days that people, average person on the street, doesn't really care about privacy enough to pay for it, if that's the pure differential, partially because I think the harmful effects of information transparency are, they're more systematic, as in they damage the society, but they might not actually damage the individual that much. And also, there's just a limited level of education, I think, within our public discourse about the damage all this information transparency can do. So really, what Aztec is focusing on, especially in the early days, is what Joe said. Basically, the design space of what you can do with a web three smart contract is going to explode once you have privacy. Just like the design space of what you could do with a website exploded once you had strong encryption guarantees.
The Power of On Chain Identity and Privacy
It really is a very powerful primitive. Being able to bring an identity on chain, defining who you are, but only disclosing it to smart contracts or to specific counterparties you want to interact with, that's incredibly powerful. It's what we need for web three to reach into the real world in a meaningful way and move away from synthetic tokens and assets and into something real. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah. The way you guys think and talk about privacy, I think is really inspiring and also, like, very real. Zach, your comment about, look, the average person is not going to necessarily pay a premium for this. It sort of has to be kind of this ubiquitous default just mission of Aztec is like, super ambitious on that.
Reflecting on Challenges in Development
Okay, before we get into walking through the roadmap, because we're going to do that, I want to hear a little story about maybe the hardest challenge you guys have faced to get to this point. Because we are at this inflection point. There's a devnet. We're close to testnet. We know that means a main net will follow. So, looking back over the last seven years, what's a challenge that really sticks out or just a really hard thing that you've overcome in building this? I think I can give one, because just the sheer cryptography that's had to be built by Zach and Ariel and all the amazing cryptographers, I think this wasn't possible seven years ago. ZK snarks did exist, but the improvements that have been spearheaded by the researchers at Aztec and Zach, I think, are kind of testament to kind of pulling this into life.
Challenges in Cryptography
So I think it's not one that I've personally overcome, but definitely, yeah, like Aztec's cryptography, like Planck, all the different proving systems that we've made over the years are probably the hardest part of doing this, because without that, you can't have credible client-side privacy like you need proves to be constructed in a resource constrained environment on a phone. And kind of getting that right and making that possible has taken kind of many iterations and a lot of our focus. It's not just building kind of the network out. We have to have the cryptography to back it up. I can answer that. I'm flattered, but thanks, Jay.
Exploring the Building Process
I think one of the hardest challenges we've had, probably, for me, was convincing Joe to not sail solo around the world until we've launched Aztec because we need him and messing around. Certainly, the cryptography was extremely hard, but it's one of those things where the problem was hard. But also, I'm a cryptographer and an engineer. I have access to some of the best cryptographers in the world, some of the most talented applied cryptographers in the world. So it's kind of like it was hard, but I. But it was a hard problem that we're good at. It was like, you know, aligned with solving. And I think there was a lot of challenges that we faced at Aztec where we've had to solve problems that don't fall into the core competences of anybody, particularly in the organization.
Building and Scaling the Organization
So, honestly, one of the challenges has been the sheer difficulty of building. Building an organization to execute on this. Back in the early days, it was just four of us, and, you know, like, it's. Life is very simple when what you're producing is. Is limited by, you know, your own two hands and the ability for your ability to exercise your own mind. And then. But once you want to scale right, you got to go beyond that. You've got to build a team you've got to get people aligned with your vision. You've got to get them, you know, you've got to communicate across multiple individuals, make sure everybody's working, like, in the same direction.
Navigating Team Dynamics
You've got to, like, everyone becomes a stakeholder that you need to kind of align. You need to consider. And particularly, like, you know, growing, like, growing to 30 people, growing to 60 people. I think, like, I think I can speak for Joe as well. Like, we found that very challenging, like, building the kind of organization that can produce and execute on this roadmap. Right. It's, it's. The complexity is overwhelming and, yeah, basically, like, creating a space where we can attract the best people in the world to work on this, to actually build. Build this. When, like, to be honest, Joe and I at the start, right, we had no idea what we were doing there.
Personal Growth in Entrepreneurship
This is my first startup. I'm like, I'm an entrepreneur. I didn't know anything. And this is Joe's second go around. But still, we've only had experience working in small companies. We've never looked in a large company. We don't know how it works. And so I think pulling in a lot, we've had to pull in a lot of very talented, very capable people to kind of provide those competences that we lack. And, yeah, making it all work together, making the sausage, for me, that's been the biggest challenge. Yeah, I think that's something that's not talked about enough.
Transitioning from Founders to Leaders
Right? Like, you get a bunch of technical founders in a room, they find some success, and, like, all of a sudden, you know, you're leading people and building HR systems, and I, it's like, you know, and then, like, Zach, you're still super into the technical details, right? You're still, like, into the cryptography, and Joe, you're, like, very hands on with, you know, managing the technical team, their product team, like the roadmap. So, yeah, I think that's something that's not talked about. Not talked about enough or really at all.
The Importance of a Well-Structured Roadmap
Okay, speaking of insane complexity, we are going to get into the interactive roadmap because I think, like, this really brings to life, like, all of those moving parts and hopefully is a great resource for the community to just, like, get a sense of how this all fits together. It's probably going to be hard to walk through every single detail, but there's a couple themes I kind of want touch on. And then, guys, if you have anything you really want to talk about, like, please bring it in. You know, this technology and kind of how it all fits together better than anyone.
Decentralization: Core to Aztec's Mission
Does everybody have the link to the roadmap? If you kind of want to check it out and follow along. If not, maybe our host can drop it in. So, yeah, getting into that, I want to look first at the second track, which is decentralization. And before we kind of like, get into like, where we are now and a little preview of what's to come, you know, I want you guys to talk a little bit about why this is important. And I know this is going to seem so obvious, right? But we've seen a lot of projects launch. They're not decentralized. And then they say, hey, look, we're going to decentralize over time. Please trust us. You know, we value this, whereas both of you are like, we are going to be decentralized on day one.
The Necessity of Decentralization
So talk a little bit about, like, why you feel so strongly about that and like, what it takes to get there, because it's not an easy challenge to solve. Right. It is much easier to launch centralized, but, like, Aztec is very principled and doesn't want to do that. So I want to hear about, I want to hear both of your points of view on why, like, why is this essential? Do you want to take this, Joe? Yeah, I can take it. I mean, it's not an easy answer. I mean, I think, like, I mean, I think Zach said this before, like, we would like to launch centralized if we could. It's safer that there's lots of things, that there are advantages to it. You can ship faster.
Complexities in Decentralized Launch
But the real reason it comes down to is that privacy is a contentious subject. And if we look at kind of the world today, like, some regimes are very favorable to it, some regimes are not. And like, as a global company, we have to kind of think carefully about that. And having kind of one single point of failure in such a kind of sensitive or, like, hostile subject, it's a risk to the network. And we want to see privacy as a force for good, not be kind of bogged down and kind of like, who's controlling it. And so we've kind of taken the decision to launch decentralized because we don't think that anyone should control privacy.
Upholding Privacy as a Human Right
And we think it should be kind of just pure cryptography that people run on their phones. And yes, it's a human right. And so if we're kind of sitting there administering other people's privacy, then it just kind of undermines it a little bit. And so it doesn't give the same kind of guarantees that you get from something like an SSL certificate. So it's just more about the nature of privacy. I would say that's forcing us down this path. It does make things harder. It does kind of extend timelines, but I think on a long term basis, I've spoken about this before, it's actually a blessing in disguise because it's very hard to kind of add decentralization later.
Challenges of Late Decentralization
And so this is kind of like one of my kind of personal vendettas against centralized roll-ups is that people say they're going to decentralize, but we've almost walked that road with Aztec Connect and we launched a centralized roll-up and it just wasn't designed for decentralization, which meant that it's actually maybe an order of magnitude to order magnitude harder to decentralize it after the fact. So even though it's harder and kind of takes longer, I do think that once the system's live, it's a much more robust and resilient system. And yeah, hopefully it should stand the test of time.
Decentralization Necessity for Future Growth
So I know it's a complicated answer, but I still think it's the correct decision to pursue this path, especially given the space we're in. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to give a spicy prediction that I really hope I don't regret. ASIC is decentralizing on day one, not because we want to, but because we need to. And the fact that we need to be decentralized, I think here's the spicy thing. I think because we actually like, we need to centralize because we're conforming to the ethos of decentralization. I think that's a pretty good sign that here's the hubris what ASIC is going to launch as product market fit because we actually need decentralization.
Reflecting on Historical Lessons
If you're launching NLT that's centralized, I think the big question on the brain should be, well, why do you need a blockchain back in 2017? I don't know if people remember, there's probably people in this chat that weren't born back then, but there was this thing called JPMorgan Quorum or Quorum. It was basically a private blockchain in the old school sense by privately hosted that enterprises could use and it died of because really it was no different to a private server, just with a lot of unnecessary blockchain structures on top. And what's the difference between JPMorgan Quorum and l two? That's centralized.
The Pitfalls of Centralization
I would argue nothing except branding. And so if you have an l two where you are centralized, your user base is okay with that, you've got a problem on your hands because decentralizing ads, costs and overheads to your users, your network latency will suffer, your transaction costs will increase, and your users aren't going to like that because you're probably competing on pure throughput, transaction volume and price at that point. So you basically, you put yourself in a local optimization trap. As tech, as Joe said, we need to launch decentralized.
Ensuring Neutrality in the Network
And the way I think about it is, take the Internet. Imagine if I was a politician and I stood up and I'm like, we need to shut down the Internet. You think I was like, you think I was lunatic? I'd be some authoritarian asshole. But if the Internet was controlled by Internet limited liability corporation and everything went through Internet corps servers, then he would absolutely get shut down. It would have gotten shut down 20 years ago. Because the network needs to be neutral. It needs to be neutral for people to have confidence they can build on it without getting rugged.
Building Trust in Decentralization
It needs to be mutual so that people have confidence, they feel that they can deploy significant resources, both in terms of time and money to build products and services on aztec, where there is a social contract that they know that the aztec network is not going to disadvantage them or bias them.
Reflections on Team Dynamics
I mean, I don't know. It's kind of like all of us on the team, everybody listening, right. We're all kind of like, of different generations, and it's easy to kind of lose sight of the fact that, yeah, like, the Internet is like, really owned by no one. Right. And likewise, like, how could we possibly build this next generation of technology? Like, where. Yeah, it's owned or controlled by, like, a single entity. It's like, mind blowing to think we would even consider that. Right? And, yeah, to your point, there was sort of that era of all the enterprise, like, closed garden blockchains, and they were super well funded, and none of those took off. Right. Like, they have all kind of gone by the wayside. So definitely think decentralization is the way, but it is not like the easy path, which is like a long termist view.
Overview of Roadmap Discussions
Okay, let's get into the roadmap. I want to ask you guys, like, I know everybody is here for the nitty gritty. They want the details. And we're going to end with the last track, which is community participation so that everybody knows kind of how they can get involved. And then we'll roll into questions, but I would love for you guys to just go through those first four tracks and just kind of highlight, like, where are things at? What are we working on? Just give a quick overview. Like, you know, we've launched Devnet and we're on the way to testnet. So what are some of the big things to kind of look out for on each of these tracks? Who wants to take programmable privacy? Zach? Yeah, I guess that's kind of my thing.
Insights on Programmable Privacy
Right, so where to start with programmable privacy? I guess, like, we've been working on this for about six years now. Literally, we've come six years ever since we used, like, I started working on researching Zika snarks, pretty clear in my head that the end goal was, man, I want to write a smart contract where you can have private state that's going to be powerful. Actually executing that is somewhat challenging, but we have the core technology to do it now. As you can see, everything we've got, we've released our devnets, we have, all of the things on the way to testnet are very much under execution. This track is very much about, it's not about like the core cryptography to enable fragment mobile privacy. It's. But what abstractions do you layer on top? For example, we have something here called the tuxi, which is the. Is this a test execution environment? It's basically a version of. It's a test version of something called PKCE, which is private execution environment.
Challenges and Developments in Private Blockchain
If you have secrets, if you have data in a blockchain, that's private, right? So you have some secrets that control access to that data and you have an application that wants to send private transactions. That application somehow needs access to your secrets. It needs access to the data, but you don't want to give access to the secrets because then otherwise apps can just snoop on what you're doing and spy on you, and then the whole purpose of asset gets destroyed. So being able to build a little mini blockchain node within a secure environment within a web browser to handle the private component of Aztec was very challenging because it's not kind of been done before, not the way we want to do it. So, yeah, that's challenging. We built the test version, we're building the actual full version of Pixie in the browser. We need to execute on fees because in an l two, it's complicated, you have different resources. There's going to be an l one resource cost, but also there's an l two resource cost. How do you measure that? How do you, like, how do you track that all inside a circuit that's nearly done now and.
Current Status of Cryptography and Standards
Yeah, I mean I could go into more of the, more the specific details. AVM stands for ASIC virtual machine because we have a ZKVM just, yeah, that's like, that's one little, an entire ZKVM is just one little box in this roadmap just to give a hint at what we're actually trying to pull off here. So yeah, we're pretty close to testing it post testnet. A lot of it's about standards, it's about auditing our code, it's about creating a lot of the equivalents of ercs for launch so that we have good standards and templates for how to do basic actions on Aztec. Amazing. So next up is decentralization.
Importance of Decentralization
Obviously we talked a little bit about more like the philosophical part of decentralization. Joe, you actually made a really good case for why it's fundamental and like really important for Aztec to do. But can you step us through a little bit of just like where are we now? What's on deck? Like maybe any challenges, maybe what people can expect? Yeah, definitely. So we just posted recently on our forum kind of a write up of kind of how decentralized block buildings going to work. We've done this very publicly over the last year, kind of asking the community for their thoughts.
Decentralization Strategy and Execution
And the designs kind of evolved significantly over the last twelve months. But now we have a kind of, you know, a design that we think is pretty great. It kind of relies on this notion of like, I think in research and literature they're called payload timeliness committees. But basically it's a group of l two nodes who have a sole purpose of kind of signing off that a block can be proven. And that's been kind of the main challenge here is like working out in a private roll up context how we can get fast execution pre confirmations when proof construction can take 1020 minutes to actually make a proof on l one. And so a lot of the work here is bitde around kind of building what is again one box here on the far right. The pending chain has kind of been one of the biggest challenges.
Decentralization Entities and Their Roles
But maybe taking a step back, I can talk about the different kind of entities that we care about decentralizing and I guess the reason why we're doing that. So at the outset, I think sequencing most l two s, are you sequencer and it's normally fairly centralized. So in Aztec we'll have kind of a decentralized sequencing set, usually doing some staking, and then picked kind of picked state weighted from that set to produce blocks. Those guys get to kind of order transactions, decide what goes in a block, and kind of add it to the pending chain. We'll also have kind of a way to pick from that set validators to kind of, you know, test that the pending chain can be proven. And then the other entity here that we care about decentralizing is the provers. It's no, there's no kind of use just decentralizing one part of this, because if you then just have a centralized prover, you can kind of, you know, come after that entity, or it's a single point of failure.
Block Production Lifecycle Considerations
So we've had to kind of think about the entire block production lifecycle from, you know, what's in a block to how you prove the block. And that's kind of, it's kind of shown in the middle of this kind of the now section of the decentralization track. And, you know, working out how these all talk to each other through sequencer proof of coordination has also been a bit of a challenge, like working out kind of what we should enshrine in the protocol and what we should kind of leave to community to figure out. And, yeah, I'm pretty happy with where we've got to. And actually, this week, we just got kind of a pending chain working with 48 validators kind of attesting to it. It's been running for, I think, maybe like the last 16 hours.
Main Challenges and Exciting Developments
So it may go down yet still. But you can see kind of this is getting pretty close to kind of a working testnet. But, yeah, I think it's one of the most kind of exciting tracks because we're pushing the boundaries of a lot of definitions that get argued about on crypto, Twitter, quite a lot. Like, what is a roll up? Are we kind of like an l one with a validating bridge? And what you do in this track really makes a difference. And we've definitely stayed firmly in the camp of being a roll up, where we rely on Ethereum for kind of security, for liveness and censorship resistance as much as possible. And so that's been the overarching kind of like, not struggles, but like, work that's had to go into this track to make sure we stay in that camp of being a roll up.
Technical Challenges and Future Work
Yeah, definitely some opportunities to get into sort of the terminology wars here. Right. Actually, I was thinking when we dropped this, maybe that would happen, but it hasn't happened yet, so I don't. I don't know. I don't know what that means. But, yeah, good. Good things to point out. Let's get into proving system, and then we'll do noir, and then community participation, and then, yeah, we'll open it up for questions. So, Zach, like you and many others, right, Ariel and the whole crypto team are really deep on this. It started with Planck, which was, like, such a innovation for the industry, and it's like a cornerstone. Right? I mean, not. Not to brag on you, but, like, it really did sort of change things, and then it's evolved into all these names, which I find, like, kind of funny.
Evolution of Cryptographic Techniques
Right? Mega honk. I heard. Now, maybe there's an ultra mega honk. I'm not sure. And I know Ariel just presented about sparse folding at ZK summit, so can you give us just, like, a peek of kind of, like, what's going on here and where we're at? Yeah, I can. I can try. And you're right. I think. I think flunk is. You know, hopefully, with hindsight, people will think punk is a big deal. So, yeah, if folks who have the roadmap open looking at the previous part, I think this kind of tracks the aztec cryptography teams descent into madness. So we're probably at the 7th circle of hell at this point. No, but, yeah, the names are a little bit ridiculous, but very fun.
Advancements in the Aztec Protocol
So, yeah, all of the things ending in onk are generally a iterations, refinements, improvements on the original planck protocol, sometimes substantial improvements, as in, like, cryptography today bears almost no resemblance to that original planck paper from 2019. It's very much a ship of theseus. So we have a few components to our prover, to our cryptography. Now, you've got that basic ZK priming system. You know, hey, given a program, prove it. But there's so much more to it these days, because an aztec transaction isn't just one program. It's a concatenation of many programs. Because if you have a smart contract, that calls another smart contract. Well, those are two independent programs. You need to compose them all together.
Implementing Multiple Programs and Optimization
How do you do that? Well, you need to fold them as Proto Galaxy, but Proto Galaxy has some expensive operations that are difficult to do client save. So how do you solve that? Well, you do something called goblin. And Goblin requires this translator component, and it requires a ECz. VM stands for elliptic curve virtual machine. We have the most astic, has the most hipster ZKVM in the entire industry, in the entire world. It's a zero knowledge virtual machine that only does elliptic curve math, nothing else. And so, yeah, basically figuring out how this all works together and not just building the core technological components, the cryptographic components, but actually integrating them end to end.
Challenges in User Experience and Testing
Getting something which works in a web browser pretty hard, but that's where we've got to. We're in a place where you can take a complicated asset transaction. So something which does account abstraction, calling a decentralized exchange, couple of token transfers, maybe a little bit of extra stuff as well on top. And we can prove that in a web browser in under a minute now, which is not the user experience we want to be at long term. But for our first release, we're really happy with that. That took a lot of sweat, blood and tears to do. Sparse folding. And, like, the stuff R is presenting around stack proofs, which is a paper that we've published that describes some of this.
Optimization and Memory Consumption
It's basically, it's a big optimization that reduces memory consumption, because when you have a circuit that describes your program statement or the aztec kernel, basically lots of wires are zero. And being able to actually ensure that there's a heuristic that are like, when we designing this previous system as a heuristic, we will settle on, which is basically, if you have a wire in a second that whose value is zero, you shouldn't pay for it. And that sparse folding is basically how we achieve that. And by pay for it, I mean in terms of computation. So, yeah, as you can see, everything is almost ready to go for testnet on the cryptography side.
Final Preparations for Testnet
So we are close to firing out our internal on it and actually ensuring this rat's nest of complexity is secure. Amazing. I need to sit down this weekend and read the paper from Ariel. It looks really. Ariel and others, it looks really interesting. Let's quickly touch on noir and then get into community participation. So I know our pm for Noir is on the spaces. Hi, Savio. I was wondering, Joe or Zach, not sure who's best, but just really quickly, like, bring us up to date.
Updates on Noir Protocol
I know we're very close to the Noir 1.0 pre release, and then it'll go into audits. What does everybody need to know about noir and kind of like, where it's at? No good? Yeah, Noir is. Noir is great. Noir has super fans. I love this. Go ahead. I can say a few words. I mean, I think, like, looking at what noir is and what it's used for. So Noir has kind of two uses in the protocol, so we actually write the protocol in noir.
The Versatility of Noir
So noir is this kind of generic CK language that we can use, but it's incredibly powerful that we can also use it through metaprogramming functionality to define and write smart contracts in Aztec as well. So it has these two use cases. And really over the last year, it's kind of, it's probably improved in Devex and performance and all categories by orders of magnitude. Like, I think definitely in the performance camp, maybe sometimes many orders of magnitude. So it's really coming along and we're getting to a point where we're going to start thinking about what's in the noir 1.0 kind of pre release and release that's kind of scheduled towards the end of this year, which is really exciting.
The Impact on Aztec Contracts
But really the way I think about noir is kind of, it's what you can do inside an aztec contract. So if something exists as a noir library, it means that you can use that library in an aztec contract. And the best example, I think, is maybe like an RSA signature. So if you have an RSA signature library in noir, then, well, you can use that to do a generic ck proof, but you can also use that to do passport verification in aztec or even credit card signature validation. Like all of these web two primitives use RSA, which is really exciting. So I think just seeing it progress as a language and get to a point where the performance is no longer a bottleneck to kind of doing these step change kind of functionalities inside, like a contract, an aztec contract is very exciting.
Continuous Improvements and Developer Experience
I think we're not really bottlenecked by the noire parameters anymore. We're more bottlenecked by calling aztec contracts in the aztec l two, which is a very exciting place to be. So yes, it's not done yet, but it's kind of, I'd say in the tail end. And now we're focusing on things like the Devx. How do we get even better developer experience? Through our language server. So this is a versus code plugin, I think this week, in fact, the parser which regenerates the noir code was sped up by ten x and it was rewritten.
Focus on Devx Improvements
So we're focusing on Devx improvements now. For developers actually writing noir, not as much the language features, which are kind of getting close to kind of feature complete. Yeah, very cool. I've. Not to pat our own back here, but I've heard from a couple people that Devx is incredible. I wish I had the ability to evaluate that for myself, but I'll trust the folks that are sharing that because I have a lot of respect for them. So kudos to what you guys have built there. Let's. Oh, and actually, before we move on, so I'll drop a little pre announcement here, but we are going to do our first nor con at Devcon. So that'll be on 1111. And it's going to be like, super focused on just like, you know, technical talks, technical workshops, showcasing teams that are building with noir. So if you're interested in zkdsls, if you're already a noir builder, like, definitely bookmark that and we'll be sharing more details.
Community Participation and Engagement
All right, last up is community participation, which is kind of the most important track because we are slowly opening the floodgates here, right, for how people can get involved and kind of be a part of what the team has been building and be a part of this mission. Who wants to take us through this? There's some exciting stuff going on and then obviously, like, looking forward to testnet. Why don't I talk about, like, some of the stuff that we've done previously with community participation and our approach, and then maybe, Joe, you can talk about like, the call upcoming stuff and more recent things. Sounds great. So, yeah, I mean, like, elastic. We very much tried to adopt the ethos of building in public, which wasn't always the case back in the day. Everything was whilst were open source, our code was we would build our code in private repositories, right? And then we'd only make the public when were confident that it was ready.
Transition to Radical Openness
And, you know, about two years ago, we transitioned into this more into a. Quite consciously into a radical open structure, because a network asset is nothing without its community. And we wanted to show the community what we're doing. And we wanted to get people involved, get their feedback, and that's kind of manifested through our request for proposals. When we run up with against hard problems in Aztec, we don't shy away from it and we're very open about it and we'll put out a request for proposal basically going like, hello, community. We have this problem. We're not entirely sure how to solve it. We have some ideas, but maybe somebody else here that can help. And honestly, when it comes to things like syncing to a private blockchain state, or how do you select sequences when you have certain limitations from privacy preserving environment, how do we, you know, like, how do we create a block explorer?
Community Contributions and Challenges
What's the best way of doing that? What's the best way of performing upgrades? When, you know, when you have, like, where it's kind of. It's not just some kind of automatic process that can be easily manipulated. And the community has really, I mean, helped us immensely with those kinds of things. You know, enormously talented people have spent a lot of time providing us with really useful and helpful feedback and ideas. And this kind of. This kind of approach, it's challenging. It's challenging internally because when we say build in public, what we really mean is like at a technical level, we're airing our dirty laundry. It doesn't feel good to admit that you don't know something. It doesn't feel good to have technical work software that's exposed to the world that you aren't confident in yet because you're still building it. And it took a big culture change in the company for people to really engage with that.
Acknowledgment of Community Efforts and Future Plans
And I'm very grateful to everyone in Asdik for being so conscientious about it because it's not easy. And yeah, hopefully our efforts have been visible to folks in the community. So that's kind of the foundation of the culture and aspect how we've been going about engaging with the community. And now we have a lot of engagement to do because we have a lot of. A lot of both opportunities and puzzles that we are working with. And maybe, Joe, you can talk about that. Yeah, definitely. I think just kind of looking at what we've been doing kind of this year and how it's changed is probably a good way to frame this. So we usually do a lot of retroactive grants for the community of developers interacting with Noir. So if you build something awesome with noir, just get in touch. There's likely funding available after you've built it.
Alphabuild Track and Its Impact
That was kind of working well for us, kind of just growing the ecosystem of developers and getting really smart people to kind of become ZK peeled. But more recently we've had to kind of think a little bit about like, well, how do we test kind of the water of this new design space of applications that can be built on Aztec? And that's where we've started this track we call the alphabuild. And these are themed buildathons where there's normally a bit of a brief. There's some challenges set by the aztec team and we reach out to developers to sign up for these. If they're selected, they can participate, get access to Devnet early and actually build at the cutting edge and see what can be built with Aztec.
Exploring Private Applications with Community Developers
These have been going really well just to help developers and us explore the design space of private applications and what you can do with this hybrid model of private and public execution. So that's been fantastic to help us all go down the journey of what applications are going to look like on aztec, what account contracts can look like on Aztec, given we have full account abstraction. And so we're kind of. I think we're still taking applications for the second one. Claire can jump in if I've misspoken or it's about to start. It closed a day or two ago, but if anybody DM's me and you want to still apply, I will get you in there and I will ask forgiveness.
Identity-Focused Buildathons and Challenges
Nice. Sorry, Rafi. Yeah, so this one, the next one's kind of focused on identity and using kind of one of the community's noir libraries, actually. So it's focused on ZK email, and kind of what you can do. Now we have these kind of abilities to prove things about our identity and identity in the loose sense from web two. So your email inbox is kind of filled with things that kind of constitute your identity, whether it's I have a coinbase account, I filed a UK tax return, or I have a social media account, all these things you can prove and use to build up an identity on a system like Aztec. And so there's challenges around that we're really excited about. And we'll keep doing these to kind of help developers explore the design space of these applications or with the view for people who are interested and want to build on Aztec to get ready to deploy applications for Testnet.
Opportunities for Community Participation in Testnet
That's one of the tracks I'm really excited about, because these applications weren't possible and are not possible on any other chain. So it's exciting to see what's built here. I think the other areas, obviously, like on the sequencing side, a decentralized network needs people to run its nodes. And so we're still kind of tweaking machine requirements and making sure that we can support some degree of home stakers. And so there'll be kind of opportunities for people who have experience there to participate in various decentralized testnets as a validator or no.com. and so that's another area that community can kind of help. And if you've got experience kind of on other networks or ethereum, then we'd love to hear from you.
Towards Testnet and Community Involvement
Yeah, amazing. And it's obviously all leading up to test net, which is such an exciting moment for any project, such as an exciting moment for the community. And as we get closer and we understand more about like timing and requirements, we're going to be sharing all that so that people who want to participate and, like, help us test this out know how to get involved. Well, thank you guys so much for stepping through that. I do want to take some questions and open it up to the community. I will say, you know, there are some things that we're not here to talk about. Right. So welcoming everybody to the stage who has kind of, like, a question about the roadmap or about something that the founders talked about and.
Community Questions and Interaction
Yeah, just go ahead, I guess, and get in line, and I will. I will approve you to speak here. So. Yeah, I see Dima is here. Dima, do you want to. I just approved you. Are you able to speak? Okay, maybe Dima is having some technical difficulties or dropped off. There's one other person in line, so let me go ahead and approve you. Amine cad, you're approved. Now are you able to talk? Larissa, am I doing something wrong here? Oh, good. I see them as connecting. So maybe we can just take a few seconds to let them connect. Okay. All right. Yep, sounds good.
Community Engagement and Questioning Process
Maybe there's a little bit of a delay while we're waiting. If anybody else has questions, like, you can post on the thread here. I see. Like, Daniel asked some things, or you can also get in line, raise your hand, and connect. Let's see. While we wait for the two folks who raise their hands, let's go ahead and get into Daniel's question. So, Zach, Joe, can you see this? Daniel asked how much of the cryptography will be, quote unquote, taped out and won't be upgradable after Mainnet. Is there a risk of vulnerabilities emerging in the proving system? And what are those potential risks? Are you guys able to take that on?
Addressing Cryptography Concerns
Yeah, I can definitely tackle that. So I taped out, like, certainly when we launched. The plan is not for the cryptography to kind of be, like, done and dusted and then we skip away into the sunset. I think we are going to do our absolute best to ensure the cryptography is secure. We're going to audit this thing with a fine tooth combined both internally and externally. We have a very talented security team, talented cryptographers, and we take our work seriously. That being said, one of the risks of launching decentralized is, well, how do you fix a bug, particularly cryptography bug? And so we have a pretty detailed and robust upgrade mechanism in place to fix bugs, fix cryptography issues.
Maintaining Cryptography Standards
And, whilst I hope there aren't any issues, we must plan for the assumption that there are. So certainly we'll. We will be, we have mechanisms to rapidly fix them. Longer term, no, the cryptography is not done. I always see it as a work in progress, as in, there is a, almost like a Moore's law effect in the advancements of state of the art zero cryptography. And for Aztec to be successful long term, the network needs to be able to stay on top of those trends. It's a bit like the traffic example. You've got a congested city with lots of cars, lots of traffic, so you double the width of all the roads.
Future Directions for Aztec's Cryptography
And what happens is you don't make the traffic any better. You just have twice the amount of cars. Basically, the more capable we can make our cryptography, the more people will do with it, the more computation they'll put into it. Complex and advanced the AsTec smart contracts are going to become. And I don't see that being there being really a ceiling to that for the next ten, maybe 15 years. So certainly there's always going to be like a core cryptography team within Aztec that's always going to be upgrading the cryptography. It's not going to be particularly rapid, as in, I'm imagining maybe once every one year, two years, we do a big release wherever I.
Conducting Responsible Updates
The cryptography changes to something more advanced, obviously, in a way where it's as backwards, as compatible as we can make it. Certainly, yeah, it's not a dumb thing by any means. Thanks. I also see, I think Dima and Adrienne both were able to get confirmed as speakers. So Dima, I think you were up first. Do you want to unmute yourself and ask your question? Okay, we might be having an issue, I guess, getting other folks to be able to speak, which is a shame, but feel free to drop your comments on the thread, your questions, and we can try to get those answered for you.
Community Closing Remarks
And sorry for the technical issue. Is there anybody else who'd like to sneak in one more question? I think we have. We're at time, but we can do one more. Yeah, I'm able to talk. Adrienne, hi. Okay, perfect. Sorry about the tech difficulties. Go ahead. Hi, thank you, team, for all these explanations. One question about the roadmap and especially the community track. Where do you see the end user? Where's the community building happening, and how do you want to attract users as a change?
Current Focus on Developers
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about this. And so at the moment, all of our focus is definitely more developer focused on kind of building out experiences and products that users will love and care about. And that doesn't mean that we aren't going to build a community on top of that. But it's kind of like we want to give them ammunition and we want to give them kind of experiences that will delight them and that will happen as testnet goes live and beyond. And so at the moment we've got to build out things like a wallet, a block explorer and the first set of applications which hopefully will be very different to what communities are used to on other l two s and other blockchains.
Building a Robust Ecosystem
And once that's done and we have a stable footing and we know what developers can build, we can start kind of targeting communities and going after them all around the world and, you know, telling them about, you know, the importance of a network like Aztec. So it's coming, it's just the developer kind of side of it is our kind of focus today because ultimately users need something to do and so we've got to build these and help developers build a, these amazing projects on top of Aztec first. Yeah, thanks. Just to expand on that. It's a great answer, but it's like, yeah, in order to, as Joe said, for our users to have memorable, delightful experiences, they need to be a robust ecosystem of applications and services they can use.
Conclusion and Community Engagement
It's a bit like if one can equate the ASC network to, everyone calls blockchains while computers. Right? So let's say asset network is a computer where we're building a computer, but a computer is not very useful to the end user without software. So we need application developers to build software. So that's, it's, it's a staged process. Yeah. Adrienne, thanks. Really good question. Sorry we don't have time to take more. I think we can do another session soon with a lot more time for community questions. But if you guys kind of enjoyed what were sharing today, make sure to check out our Twitter profile. We have a link tree up there that'll navigate you to like our new telegram announcements channel to discord where you can talk to the devs and like answer, get more answers to questions if you didn't already.
Final Thanks and Wrap-Up
And with that, yeah, we're at a wrap. So just want to really thank Joe and Zach for coming on and stepping us through this. And if you haven't checked out the interactive roadmap, like, it really is kind of fun to explore and play around with. So please do check that out and we'll see you at the next spaces. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
