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Aztec, a privacy protocol that builds on Ethereum, announced on Monday the launch of its second iteration, promising private transactions and smart contracts while being cheaper than standard transfers.
The layer two solution adopted by Aztec is based on zkRollups, similar to Loopring or ZkSync. All of these protocols rely on zero-knowledge evidence to help Ethereum scale, but they have several benefits and targeted use cases.
Loopring focuses on the decentralized exchange experience, while ZkSync aims to be a generalized layer two protocol that could increase Ethereum’s transaction throughput.
Aztec, by comparison, has a strong focus on privacy while still allowing for some degree of scalability. The team says the rollup can reach 300 transactions per second allowing for screened ERC-20 token transactions and private interactions with decentralized financial protocols. Users would be able to trade on Uniswap and other exchanges as part of a joint contract, similar to how it works in Incognito, a cross-chain privacy protocol.
Claimed throughput is a far cry from the potential figures on other zkRollup solutions, but is still well above Ethereum’s theoretical maximum throughput of 40 transactions per second. As Cointelegraph previously pointed out, privacy always comes at a cost in terms of performance. Tom Walton-Pocock, CEO of Aztec, told Cointelegraph that his limitation primarily has to do with potential mass exits: “To ensure users can withdraw from our pool, all encrypted data generated by a transaction must be posted on the chain as call data. “
One of the innovations introduced by Aztec is Noir, a language for private smart contracts. This could allow developers to send private transactions and use cryptographic routines on chain while benefiting from privacy. “Noir’s primary purpose is to incorporate data privacy,” Walton-Pocock said. The rollup also includes social retrieval by default and offers several usability benefits such as user-readable accounts.
The network is currently active on the Ropsten testnet with no specific guidance on its mainnet release, although Walton-Pocock hinted at a launch before the end of the year.
Tier two technologies are often seen as the next step in Ethereum’s evolution, allowing some of the cargo to be transported from the core network while sharding is still under development.
Competition is fierce in this segment, with early solutions such as OMG Network’s plasma reaching production. Smart contracts on level two, which could help DeFi scale, have still largely eluded developers. Solutions such as optimistic rollups and some types of zkRollup are ready to fix this problem, but are still relatively far from a full launch.
Update, 16:00 UTC: The article has been updated with additional comments.
