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With more than $100 million in financing, why did Aztec Netowrk, an old ZK project, suddenly transform itself?

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Aztec Network, ZK Rollup Privacy and Capacity expansion solution, has announced that it will phase out its DeFi privacy bridge project, Aztec Connect

Aztec Network's Business Transformation After raising $100 million

Original article by Azuma, Odaily Planet

On March 13th, ZK Rollup Privacy and Capacity Expansion Solutions Aztec Network Announced that it would be phased out. DeFi Privacy Bridge project Aztec Connect, and will be disabled from after one week; zk.money And other front ends (e.g. zkpay.finance) deposit the funds. Aztec Connect Contract.

Aztec Network added that the withdrawal feature will remain open for another year and is not expected to be fully abandoned until March 21, 2024. Aztec Connect contracts and stops running the Rollup collator, but still advises users to withdraw funds as soon as possible.

融资 1 亿美元后不干了？解读 Aztec Network 的业务转型

Aztec Network positioning is based on Ethereum privacy type ZK Rollup, Dapps designed to help users access the Ethereum ecosystem privately and efficiently. The project has so far launched two main products, one is based on Aztec Rollup Privacy transfer protocol zk.money, the privacy bridge linking Ethereum Dapps and Aztec Rollup. Aztec Connect.

Depend on zk.money . Aztec Connect allows users to transfer money without exposing their information (address, funds, etc.) and access it securely. Lido, Element, Aave, Compound, Uniswap And other mainstream DeFi protocols.

Aztec Network has previously completed three rounds of funding.

In November 2018, Aztec Network was completed. $2.1 million seed round funding, ConsenSys Leading investment, the Samos Invetment, Entrepreneur First and the Tment of Jeffrey Tarrant and Charlie Songhurst Such as angel investment ginseng investment.

December 2021, Aztec Network Closed A $17 million Series A funding round. Lead investor, A Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Libertus Capital, Variant Fund, Nascent, IMToken, Scalar Capital, Defi Alliance, IOSG Ventures, ZK Validator and Anthony Sassano, Stani Kulechov, Bankless, Defi Dad, Mariano Conti and Vitalik Buterin and other individual investors participated.

Aztec had just raised $100 million in Series B funding in December 2022. Leading investors were A Capital, Variant, SV Angel, HashKey Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Alumni Ventures, etc.

In light of today's official announcement, Aztec Network will not be running these two products on its own in the future. zk.money & Aztec Connect. (Note: If the user still has assets on Rollup after that, they will have to rely on the community run collator to complete the withdrawal, which will have a high technical threshold.)

融资 1 亿美元后不干了？解读 Aztec Network 的业务转型

Aztec Network, however, says it is open source. The Aztec Connect contract code is happy to see the community actively fork, deploy, and run brand new alternatives. Aztec Network will also support such alternatives in a new Grant campaign to be launched in April.

As for Aztec Network itself, the team will focus its attention on two major new products in the future:

One is the universal development language Noir which supports zero-knowledge proof.

The second is the new private blockchain.

Aztec Network explained that the long-term vision of the project has always been to develop a decentralized, private universal blockchain with Ethereum security levels. To achieve this vision, Aztec Network has adopted a gradual development pace, starting with the development of a secure and private inter-address transfer function (Aztec 1 , namely zk.money), and then on the basis of the implementation of intelligent contract interaction function (Aztec 2 , namely Aztec Connect).

融资 1 亿美元后不干了？解读 Aztec Network 的业务转型

Nowadays, although zk.money . Aztec Connect will be abandoned, but. Aztec Network itself will not stop, and will take the previous development experience and technology accumulation as the foundation to focus on the construction of decentralized, private universal blockchain.

As an old project of ZK circuit, coupled with heavy financial support from a16z and other leading institutions, Aztec Network's every move has been closely watched by the market. Today's announcement of "closure" has not surprisingly triggered intensive discussions in the community.

Some are calling for a fork. The Aztec Connect contract continues this critical infrastructure in the privacy direction.

There are also people who are exploring. Reasons for Aztec Network transformation, such as dForce Founder Mingdao speculates that regulatory pressure is the main culprit -- because at the time of the study, Tornado After the sanctions, zk.money has become a major channel for hackers to launder money.

融资 1 亿美元后不干了？解读 Aztec Network 的业务转型

However, much of the discussion has focused on airdrop circles, with many users saying that with the help of zk.money With Aztec Connect shut down, the interaction costs of past airdrops to ambush the project will be lost.

This concern is not entirely misplaced. Aztec Network's announcement only notes that it appreciates the more than 100,000 interactive users it has, but does not mention how it will quantify their "contributions." In addition, the new chain planned by Aztec Network will probably adopt the brand new intelligent contract language Noir, can it be extended? 0x The format of the address is still unknown, and if the answer is "no", it will also be a problem to map the existing interactive addresses onto the new chain.

Even if, to say the least, Aztec Network is committed to taking care of "old customers", and the adjustment of business direction will also cause the expected delay of coin issuance time. Although nbsp; Aztec Network has mentioned that it will launch a new chain in 2023, but this is the ZK circuit, and "jumping tickets" are a regular practice...

It is not hard, then, to understand why the airmen wailed and even railed. Aztec Network for the new "Cheating philandering men."