Privacy-focused blockchain network closes Aztec Connect tool
Privacy-oriented blockchain platform Aztec is preparing to shut down Aztec Connect, the network’s privacy infrastructure that serves as the encryption layer for Ethereum.
Aztec Network officially announced the upcoming shutdown of Aztec Connect, and plans to disable Aztec Connect deposits from interfaces such as zk.money and zkpay.finance on March 17th.
According to a blog post by Aztec, users will be able to withdraw their funds from Aztec Connect without fees for one year. “While withdrawals will always be possible, they will become significantly more burdensome after March 21, 2024,” Aztec said, advising users to withdraw money as soon as possible. Since launched by July 2022, Aztec Connect has amassed more than 100,000 users, the announcement said.
As of March 2024, Aztec will no longer run a sequencer, meaning that the current system will no longer publish summary blocks that process Aztec Connect transactions. “Contract permissions will be waived and all rollup functionality will cease,” the announcement said.
Since Aztec has fully open-sourced the entire Aztec Connect protocol, the company encourages the Aztec community to fork, distribute and operate a new version of the system. “We would like to see an independently run Aztec Connect and are ready to fund it,” Aztec said.
According to the announcement, the shutdown of Aztec Connect marks a milestone in the development of a decentralized general-purpose encrypted blockchain. Before Aztec Connect launched in July 2022, Aztec first experimented with using a zkRollup with Aztec 1, which was “slow, inefficient, expensive” and limited in functionality to “basic private transfers.”
Aztec emphasized that the research done with Aztec Connect will be useful and critical to the development of a next-generation blockchain, providing the basis for a fully programmable version of encrypted rollups, adding:
“It is undeniable that Aztec Connect was an important stepping stone towards realizing our ultimate goal. It is now time for us to fully focus on that goal: a decentralized general-purpose encrypted blockchain.”
After shutting down Aztec Connect, Aztec plans to focus on the development of the universal zero-knowledge language known as Noir and the next-generation encrypted blockchain.
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The news comes amid ConsenSys preparing to release its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) rollup on a public testnet on March 28. The launch will follow more than four years of research, potentially enabling faster transactions, higher throughput and better security for settlements. on the Ethereum blockchain.
