Aztec

Aztec is the leading privacy-first Layer 2 on Ethereum, empowering developers to build applications that protect user privacy. Backed by a $100M Series B led by a16z, Aztec is led by a team of world-class cryptographers who invented the standard for trustless client-side proving—making privacy-preserving apps possible. In a landscape where speed and novelty rarely translate into durable moats, Aztec’s sustained traction, deep institutional adoption, and growing ecosystem around privacy-preserving cryptography validate that its work has broken through the “flock,” proving privacy isn’t a feature race but a foundational technology trusted to underpin real, long-term financial infrastructure. 1. Pioneers of Privacy in Web3 Aztec's team developed PLONK in 2019, a SNARK-based proving system that is computationally inexpensive and only requires one universal trusted setup. PLONK was a big breakthrough, not just for Aztec, but for the wider blockchain community. Today, PLONK has been implemented and extended by teams like zkSync, Polygon, Mina, and more. There is even an entire category of proving systems called PLONKish that all derive from the original 2019 paper. The foundational crypt