How Aztec Will Build Products That Make Users Private

Transcript

Good morning, GMGM. Thank you everybody here for taking choosing [music] to spend your time at our third inaugural Noacord. >> Hey everyone, thanks for having us and uh yeah, it's great to see so many people here. >> Yeah, this is amazing. We had the first NorCon one year ago um in Thailand. So, it's incredible to see how much it's grown. It's like a dream. we were in a tiny tiny very very small um hotel ballroom. So this is incredible. Um well, thank you all so much for being with us here today. Um I'm Claire Cart.

I'm the CMO at Aztec. I've been in um ZK specifically since like 2018 and uh it's just a dream to see how far it's come along. I'm really excited to sit down with Joe today who is the co-founder of Aztec and um the CEO of Aztec Labs. Um, so I kind of want to start and just set up like the um just kind of set up a little bit of a foundation, Joe, for your background. So you've been building Aztec for a really long time, right? Um, maybe you have more Yeah. a lot of gray hair from the photos I saw when you were young.

>> Um, what like brought you to Ethereum? Like how did you get here and why the heck have you been doing this for this long? >> Yeah, I guess I have to zoom out a little bit. I actually first heard about Ethereum in 2013 2014. Um I was in San Francisco at a kind of tech hacker house. Um and Vitalic and Gavin Wood came. So that's when I first learned about Ethereum. I didn't do anything about that knowledge then like most people. I just kind of followed it and like this is cool. Um but a few years later um a startup I've been working on stopped working and I was like okay I want to get into like Ethereum and get into blockchain. And the reason I kind of got into it is because I think it's a way to kind of have a big impact on the

world, level up kind of the world's like financial ecosystems. And so we started actually trying to put like corporate debt onto Ethereum and kind of give people like access to fairer saving rates. And we were doing that by talking to institutions and trying to originate these loans on Ethereum. When we kind of started actually trying to get to the point of putting the loans on chain, we ran into a wall which was privacy. like everyone we spoke to was like this is great like the business model could work but we need privacy and Zach started kind of looking into it and uh at the time Zcash was meant to be kind of you know moving some of their their kind of pre-ompiles and proving system to Ethereum but it it never happened and so we decided to kind of um take on that

challenge um Zach wrote an open source paper the original Aztec protocol paper I think in 2018 and many iterations later that's kind of like spawned into uh the Aztec network. But along the way, we've always been focused on kind of building products that require privacy and show uh show the power of this technology. And so we had kind of different versions of Aztec along the way with ZK Money and Aztec Connect that have always highlighted what's possible. And in the future, we're going to keep building products on top of the network to show you guys what can be built with the network.

>> I think it's really interesting that you wanted to build products, but you ended up building infra. Um it feels like you know when you're new to a space sometimes you sort of get forced to build the IM infra in order to build the products that you want to see. Um has it been frustrating at any time to like you're a real like product person so has it been frustrating to you to have to like you know build that deep down and not be able to launch the products that you want? Um sometimes I think like yeah we've had an ethos though like at every point of Aztec we've tried to test the market by building a product at kind of each release. So ZK money was that with the last major release and it it had 200,000 users. Um at the moment we

obviously have kind of uh other products live with you people can use ZK passport on the token cell website. So I've managed to satisfy my product cravings uh in in other ways. Um, but I think I guess to answer the question, it's it's only frustrating um if uh like the techn is good enough. And so every time we've come to market, we've been like, okay, this is useful. People are building on it, but something's still missing. I think finally we're at a point with uh this this current Aztec network where it's actually feature complete. And so now it's the most exciting time to start building products. The feature set is amazing. um you have full account abstraction, fee abstraction and as as we heard from Josh earlier kind of like smart contracts with private state and

private execution. So the design space has just exploded now. >> Tell us a little bit more about where the network is in its journey like you mentioned no more being feature complete. Um something really big happened yesterday. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? >> Yeah, so I think was it yeah was it yesterday? It was like 1:00 a.m. We were we were watching >> yesterday or the day before? I've lost track of the days, but it happened at some point while we were here, >> some point in the early hours of the morning. Um, yeah, so we the network, our community of uh sequencers, they launched the ignition chain of Aztec. Um, it's a bit like the beacon chain on Ethereum. It's a fully kind of complete version of Aztec, but the gas limit set to zero. The goal is to kind of ensure

that block production, decentralized governance, decentralized proving and sequencing works on mainet. Um, and then early next year the execution environment will be turned on and you'll all be able to send transactions and deploy things to the protocol. So, it's pretty cool. It's a bit surreal because you know in the early test nets we were running a lot of nodes to check things were working correctly. We're now not running a single node and so yeah some of the team are like what am I supposed to be doing now? Like [laughter] um so now we're turning our focus to building things on top of the network and making sure the kind of execution upgrade uh works correctly. But yeah, it's it was a huge milestone last night.

And so the the timeline from here is uh transactions get turned on early next year and then we'll just be improving kind of uh the throughput of the network and and kind of the security and uh reliability of the network. >> For anyone who likes lore, because it was the sequencers who, you know, came online and and made the network go live, some of us had been so stressed out and we were like, we just maybe need to like have a little bit of fun. We didn't know when it would go live, right? because it's just like whenever the 500th sequencer comes on. So we decided to go out and go dancing not knowing that that is when it would launch. So we were literally at the club with like some marketers, some of the technical team, you know, trying to have fun as a team

because we never see each other and that's when it went live. So uh I like to think, you know, the power of decentralization. [laughter] It was a really good moment. >> Yeah, we found uh I I didn't make it as a club. I'm too old for that now, I think. [laughter] But um we found a bar inside another bar which was kind of fitting cuz it was like ZK in bar form. [laughter] >> Bar in a bar. That was good. >> Walk for a fridge to get there. It was kind of cool. They're like, "Hey, we got a secret bar. Do you want to come into it?" And I was like, "Yes." >> Oh, that is cool. Um could you explain how Aztec and Noir fit together? Because this is a question we get a lot.

Obviously, noir is like agnostic and it's like open- source and it has all these properties that make it useful in a lot of different applications, not just, you know, thinking about Aztec as a network, but how did you think about designing Noir um and how it fits in with Aztec? >> Yeah. So, maybe like looking back at the previous versions of Aztec, we'll kind of see why why Noir exists. Um the previous versions of Aztec were written in C++. Um, and so there were about two or three people in the company who could understand Zach C++ and it was very slow to develop them as a as a result. And so as we started to remake Aztec and we were running into this problem of like

who could contribute to to what Aztec was, we ran firsthand into the problem of like you need to be a cryptographer to write zero knowledge programs. And the whole kind of premise behind no is that anyone should be able to write a zero knowledge program. And we started kind of embracing that firsthand. So Noir is just this generic language for writing zero knowledge applications. Aztec itself is written in Noir. So all of the circuits that exist, they're written in Noir. We use it extensively. We dog food it. Uh the entire protocol is written in Noir. When you kind of deploy smart contracts onto Aztec, they're also written in Noir using the macros that that Josh went through earlier. Um but you can also use Noir completely offchain. Um I think ZK

passport's the best best example of this. Um if you want to prove you're you know above 18 for a particular website for like access Reddit and some of like the the kind of like over 18 content on Reddit which is now blocking everything. You need an identity proof. Um and the verifier of that proof is just a website. It doesn't need to be a blockchain. So it's very generic nor you can have off-chain proofs. You can have offchain onchain proofs or you can have whole smart contracts on Aztec. Um, and so it's just a generic language that we're very committed to supporting because it it means that like I can write smart contracts in Noir now and I don't have to be Zach. So that's the main reason.

>> Not having to be Zach is that's good. We need more more people who can do what Zach can do. Um, you know, for all the years I've been in the space, I feel like there's a lot of criticisms that infer companies face that they can't ship products, right? that they build these things that no one wants, that no one knows how to build on, that the team itself doesn't know how to build anything on. How would you respond to that criticism um in the context of Aztec? >> Um I think it's you mean in terms of like that there's no there's no apps or or like Yeah. Can you can you maybe try and clarify like like why are there no apps or or more like >> why are there no apps, right? like infra companies receive so much like an outsized proportion of the venture

capital money and then they build these things and it's sort of like does anyone want this and it's a question mark no one knows right um and so all this money is being poured into something that maybe doesn't get apps built on top of it um there's a lot of reasons that might be right like are cryptographers the best people to build consumerf facing products there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons but how would you respond to that I mean you mentioned earlier that you have gone out and tested to the market many many times like how have you thought about this differently than maybe most infrounders? Yeah, I think you just have to have kind of um conviction that you're you're solving like an actual problem. And for for us, it's always been very simple, which is like blockchains without

privacy um a dystopian. And that's kind of driven us. And I think most people at Noon, even most people in in the Ethereum space are starting to kind of see this. Um the the issue with the kind of infrauilders is sometimes that's not the case. Like they're building intra because it's like a cool nerd snipe. It's a cool like project, but they don't have that kind of like um conviction or like driving force. It's like if we don't do this, this happens. Um and like so privacy is a very like fundamental one. I think doing the same thing for like I don't know file storage or data availability like is not quite the same level of like world importance. And so that's why um I think sometimes there's a uh maybe just a delta between uh

different infrastructure projects. Earlier today, Zach said something that I loved, which he said, "Privacy is going to eat the world." Um, we all know sort of like the Mark Andre quote that software will eat the world. As someone who's worked very closely with Zach for many years and who shares that vision like what does that mean to you when you think about it in terms of products? >> Um, that's a good question. So, I think maybe like to go back to Mark Andre. So like uh they obviously invested in us and like one of the main reasons um we chose them as an investor is because like Mark Andre's done this before like before Netscape was made the internet didn't have any form of privacy like

traffic was like in plain text there was no SSL certificates and so as a result the internet was basically useless like you couldn't have user accounts having a password was not a thing because you'd have to send it in plain text you couldn't do card payments you couldn't Uber, all those things didn't exist before the first kind of like privacy revolution on the internet, which I think of as like SSL. And so, yeah, I think when Zach says privacy is eating the world, we're just about to get to another point where privacy on blockchains can um create a whole new set of use cases and and products that we can't think of yet. And like in hindsight, it's going to look fairly obvious, but um yeah, I think that's kind of where what proceeding the world

means to me, at least in blockchain context. What are some of the products that you're most excited to see already launched or launching on Aztec that is going to bring about this privacy will eat the world moment? >> Oh, it's a fun question. Um, so yeah, I think those of you who remember ZK Money and Aztec Connect, we're going to be rebuilding that pretty soon. Um, except it's a a bit of a difference. Um, previously you could only take your funds and pay each other inside Aztec um or interact with DeFi on L1. with the new Aztec. Um, some of the teams have been working on bridging to any L2. And so you can kind of view Aztec as a bit like a privacy layer for all Ethereum uh, L2 chains. Um, so there's like if

you want to do something on optimism or base or or arbitrum, you can just initiate that transaction and send it through Aztec through a clean UX. So that's one I'm really excited about because I think it solves a lot of Ethereum's privacy needs. That's not really a net new application though and so it's kind of just adding a privacy layer to existing applications. I think applications that can only exist on Aztec are the most exciting. Um I think Harsh was talking about it earlier from the team but like OTC desks is a really good one. Um under clutterized lending as well. Um there's a team here who's built um an open banking uh Noir library and basically in Europe and the UK all bank data is signed. um it's signed by

the bank that you bank with. And so you could now take your bank statement um you can prove that your income is above 5K, your outgoings are above are below 2K and as a result you can get an onchain credit score and before you've never been able to send that data to a blockchain. Now you can wrap it in a no proof and send it to a blockchain and we can start to do kind of real world consumer finance versus overclasserized lending like Ave. So that's another one I'm excited by. Maybe maybe I can ask you a question, Cla, because I think it's is on this on this topic. Um, like over the over I think the time we've worked together, you've kind of been critical on like do people care about privacy or do they care about private

apps and how do you think about kind of um the interesting apps that can be built and I guess the need for privacy in them? >> Yes. So, okay, [laughter] my palms are getting sweaty. So to be clear, I I do really care about privacy, but I've given some controversial talks where I'm like, "No one cares about privacy." Now, the reason I positioned it that way is I'm a marketer, right? And I think when you hear something like that, it jars you to pay attention. And that was my goal. But my point, and I stand by this, is that most consumers are not motivated by values-based messaging. What that [clears throat] means is like someone saying, you know, privacy is so important. It's so

important. You need it. Consumers don't really listen to that. It doesn't move them to action. What moves them to action is a benefit, something that solves a problem for them. So, I can give an example of this. This is my favorite example. Do any of you like love using your personal email? Like, do you feel like it's just like an amazing and great tool that is really convenient and easy to use? What's like the number one problem that you face with your email? like >> ads. Okay. What else? >> What' you say?

>> Spam. >> Spam. >> Yeah, spam. Okay. So, if I was going to market you a product and I was going to say, you know, it's an email that's powered by ZK powered identity verification. What's your reaction? Are you like, hell yeah, I need that email. Okay, you guys might be. You're not the average consumer. That's okay. But you know, if I went out to market and I said spam-free email, ad free email, >> people would be like, "Hell yeah." Right? They don't need to know that it's ZK and it's private, right? Privacy is here solving a problem. So when I say no one cares about privacy, I obviously care very much about privacy. I'm here building this with you guys. But I think like as builders, we have to think what

job is this doing for people that aren't in this room. because like if the 40 people in this room like the product, we failed, right? We need to like it first, but then let's go find a million other people who like it. So that's kind of the yes >> spends a lot of that connect events end up spamming tokens and so on. So >> yeah, >> so yeah, this is okay. This is this is a controversial topic, right? Like the audience is jumping in. I think whenever we talk about products that solve problems for people, people perk up.

They get passionate because they're feeling that problem. So that's my point. And I think like as I help you guys take some of these products to market, help take our ecosystem to market. When I work with our builders, I'm like >> I'm so happy to hear those 40 words that you just used to describe your product. Like what is this going to do? What problem is this going to solve? So that's that's kind of what I mean. Thank you. It was a really good question. >> I I agree. I mean, I think like if you the most interesting kind of like products that are going to be built on Aztec are not copies of what exists on Ethereum because Ethereum by definition has no privacy. Like it's it's a public execution environment. And so like the things that are going to, you know, move the needle on Aztec are products that

privacy enables, but they're not coming because it's private. They're coming because you can do something you've never been able to do before. Um and so that's like the value hook and you know that will be different in different industries. Um, but privacy is enabling something. It's like maybe why they stay, but it's not the reason they're coming in in the first place, unless you're just making an existing product private. So, it depends kind of that spectrum, I think. So, yeah, I agree. >> Yeah, I think we're both I mean, I'm a very commercially minded person, right? Like, I've taken companies to market who sell a variety of things and I think you're also very commercially and product minded, which I think is something that makes Aztec really, really unique. Um, let me switch gears a little bit. So, we're here at Dev

Connect. Obviously, the Ethereum Foundation is like top of mind for people. They've announced their road map um a few months ago and it really includes a lot of privacy initiatives like some privacy at the base layer things and then there's also an ecosystem of other privacy builders whom we cheer on and respect. But I'm curious if you can give some context like when you see those announcements and when you see these other builders having been at this for so long like what do you think when you hear about the challenges they're facing and what do you think will be sort of their challenges getting to market?

>> Yeah, that's a good question. I think um yeah, in terms of like getting adoption for privacy at the base layer, I think long story short, you have to build something like Aztec um to do that. So yeah, maybe Ethereum could merge into Aztec, which you know, that's going to take a lot of time because it's it's taken many years for us to do it. I think at a higher level though, when I see things like the privacy initiatives, they're running into problems that we ran into kind of 3 years ago with ZK money or problems that we've run into kind of over the years. So, I think it's fantastic to see a lot of um like innovation in this space and there'll be some small things we can do at the base layer, but really all they're going to enable is kind of like maybe a

single-use app that has like a bit of privacy for ETH. Um they're not going to involve like they're not going not going to be able to build kind of like complex smart contracts using this. And the main reason for that is that the account model which Ethereum uses is just not very conducive to privacy. Um if you have an balance that's represented by a single number every time you make an update to that balance um you can see what's happening. Um in Aztec our kind of underlying kind of state model is a UTXO model. We abstract that from developers using um kind of noir and some some other magic but you need a UTXO model to have strong privacy. Um, and so I think that, you know, it's great to see these changes at the base layer and more push to kind of like help

things like Aztec succeed, but I think it's only going to get so much adoption. And if we want to build like real world privacy applications, um, you need to kind of do things um, in a bespoke execution environment that's designed from the ground up to have have privacy. So yeah, we'll see how it shakes out next year, but I think it's going to be a lot easier to send transactions through Aztec, I think, um, to other EVM chains and kind of modify what the EVM is, um, is is my take. >> Privacy has been under attack for many years. Um, and you have stayed the course and maybe paid like a personal price for it, right? Like that had to be hard. um for everybody in the room like

I think it takes a lot of conviction to build in this space. I think those people are here with us. What advice would you give to them from your own personal journey? What's kept you going? >> I think yeah, I just kind of think about like the impact you want to have in the world and like I'm I'm fortunate like I grew up in a western country like I have a bank account. It's insured in the UK and you can't see the contents of it and that's like a bit of a privilege. Um, and so a lot of the world doesn't have that. And so I think if we're going to board lots of people to um these financial rails, we should at least give them the privacy that we have. Um, and hopefully we can go uh a step further.

So that's kind of what drives like my side of things. And I think that's just like a basic right. Um, it's not like everything should be private, but I I don't think blockchain should be like a surveillance kind of um a surveillance chain. So that's kind of what's kept me motivated. And I think also like um there's these inflection points over time where you have to push back against kind of regulators and people trying to surveil. And I think seeing that happen with the internet um and the internet winning out kind of just gives me confidence that we're on the right track and privacy should not be something that's given by intermediaries. We have cryptographic privacy in in web 2. We should have it in web 3. And so I think

it's just conviction in that. >> And last question before we take some questions from the audience. Um why do you feel right now is like an extremely exciting time to be a privacy builder? >> Why is now the moment? >> Ah cuz it's you can now do it. I think yeah [laughter] I think yeah there's been like not many kind of places where you know you can build some apps on on Ethereum if you're like really into ZK um and you kind of understand the cryptography. Um, but there's not really been an easy way for people to kind of actually experiment and uh build things in the space and you know with no coming to kind of like 1.0 Oh, and about to complete its audits

soon. [laughter] >> Savia >> um and Aztec's execution environment kind of launching next year. I think um you can actually build things now and so um before we've been in like the proof of concept phase we can build things on test nets, you know, we can try this out and build really cool experiments. But now we actually have a place where you can deploy these things and actually start getting users. So I think that's just a exciting place to be cuz at the end of the day users are the ones who need privacy. so we can actually give them what they want. >> I'm so excited to see what everybody in this room is going to build. Thank you so much, Joe.

>> Thanks for coming. >> Yeah, round of applause. And [applause] I think Savio is going to help pass the mic. So, if you have questions, we do have a few good minutes. And yeah, I saw some of you jumping out of your seats, so don't be shy. >> I have a few questions. One of them is like for Aztec network is pretty evident. what is the next steps like on board people and stuff but how do you see no like uh what are like the two or three next steps that you envision for for no that's a good question Savia may have to answer some of this one but um I think the the main kind of like short-term next step is um just making sure it's

it's secure it's audited um then there's some work we need to do on tooling um like the kind of like VS Code developer extension is good but it's not, you know, it it could be better. And so there's like tooling and and and testing just to make make it easier for um people to develop with the language. And then like the third area is not really Noir specific, but it it it leverages kind of um some of the features of Noir like Noir is backend agnostic and we've obviously developed a back end for Noir that's very performant. Um, but I think we're going to see a lot of improvements on how and where you can prove your noir programs. And so, um, making sure that proof construction time doesn't become a

UX bottleneck. And so, that's kind of one area we'll be focusing on at making sure you know whatever circuit you build, it can be proven quickly without your phone crashing because it's out of memory or those sorts of things. >> And the second question maybe is more political one. >> Yeah. It's like uh at some point with something private start to grow, it start to to cross with the regulators, right? like what is your take on how should Aztec navigate those those waters with the regulators and the privacy and the regulators fighting or asking you for some back door or whatever

>> like >> yeah it's a great question so we've designed kind of at least on the Aztec side things very carefully to make sure the reason it's fully decentralized is that there's there's no one person who can come and say, "Hey, can you turn this off or you can do this?" It's up to an app developer to make sure that they've kind of um you know, obeyed like local regulations and and they're doing things correctly for that that app. That's going to be very different for USDC than it is for like a game with some NFTts. And so it really depends on um what you're building. The goal of Aztec and Noir is just to make sure that you as a developer have the tools to, you know, um enforce that. So we have a lot of features like viewing keys. You

can encrypt state for different people. Um you can have public state if needed. You can do identity proofs. Um so there's lots of features built into the network that a developer can use to make sure they kind of um uphold uh like regatory requirements if if it's applicable to them. And I think from a network side um we've just designed things such that you know if there is a bad app um the that app gets taken down not the network. Um and that's kind of what we see on Ethereum. um you know, Ethereum is is not possible to take Ethereum down. Aztec's the same way. And so that just puts the the onus on developers more and so our goal through the foundation and through workshops like this is to kind of educate developers on what they can and can't

do. But that's the approach we take. >> Thanks so much for the great questions. I think there was Go ahead please. >> I [clears throat] I see that a lot of people from developers from ecosystem are used to building like financial or DeFi applications. H do you foresee like a liquidity layer moving to Aztec, DeFi moving to Aztec or maybe like a new kind of innovative applications that are like unlocked by that this privacy layer and if so like what kind of standards h do you think are needed to bring like the next generation of developers into building into Aztec?

>> Yeah, it's a great question. So I think inside Aztec um I don't think there's much point in just recreating existing DeFi. I think um you have to add something else. Um so we've we spent a lot of kind of time working with um three teams building kind of bridging protocols in Aztec. When you bridge from Aztec you can bridge privacy to public defi. And so those are like three smart contracts inside Aztec. So they're kind of like a mega app like with with that smart contract you can bring privacy to all of Ethereum. And so that's like a use case of like how powerful Aztec's execution environment is. So I do think that that's a way to get um privacy to existing DeFi. There will be new types of DeFi that are created in Aztec. Um we

have some teams in the ecosystem building ODC desks. Um there's a team called Neimi building dark pools. So basically taking DeFi and thinking okay if we had a clean slate and we could design it with privacy in mind we probably wouldn't build like a constant product market maker. We would build a different type of DEX. And so there is going to be DeFi. it's just not going to be like the public defi uh we expected. Those may take a little bit longer to build because it's it's a new design space. Um but on day one, we can just bridge privacy to existing DeFi. So that's how I see it kind of playing out.

In terms of standards, I think there will need to be standards of the token token or value inside Aztec. So, we have worked with D5 Wonderland um I'm sure some of them are here um to build token standards um and make sure that you know you can interoperate between smart contracts, wallet standards um kind of those basic things. But we have a basic library of standards that people can use already. >> I think we might be at time. Is there time for one more question? >> We should have time for one more. >> One more question. Okay. Um, if I'm a developer and I don't necessarily want to build an application, but I would like to contribute in some way, what are ways that we can uh contribute to Aztec?

>> Well, that's a great question. Um, I think yeah, on the tooling side, um, there's a bit of a delta right now between like uh kind of tooling for Noir and tooling for Aztec smart contracts. Um, and so that's one area um that we're looking into. um tutorials, explainers, um kind of explaining explaining the state model standards um as well. Uh yeah, I think there's there's a lot of areas around kind of like showing what can be built um and exploring the design space is probably the best way uh to contribute in the short term. If you want to go beyond that, like you know, we can get you into the core team as well, but that's another question.

[laughter] Um before we wrap up, I just want to quickly say if anyone in the audience is planning to build an application um using Noir on Aztec, please reach out to my team. We do help with go to market. We'll make sure you have a spot at NorCon the next time we do it. So we provide quite a lot of help and assistance to everyone building and that includes a lot of the builders being featured today. So you can consider me my me your CMO if you choose to build on our stack and I'd be so happy to meet and talk with any of you here. Um, but aside from that, Joe, do you want to leave the audience with any last words and then we'll thank them and wrap up?

>> Yeah, likewise, if you've got kind of like, you know, things that you need product advice on, like what what do users care about? Um, our whole team is is willing to help. Ping me, ping Harsh, ping Josh on the Devril team um and we can help you explore kind of different um product ideas. >> All right. Well, thank you all so so much. We really appreciate it. And Joe mostly, thank you. >> [applause] >> Thank you, Claire.