AZTEC is an efficient zero-knowledge privacy protocol. The protocol powers real world financial applications on Ethereum mainnet today. A complete explanation of AZTEC can be found in our white paper.

---

Documentation 📚

All AZTEC documentation is available on the documentation website: https://docs.aztecprotocol.com

This contains docs for the:

• SDK
• aztec.js
• Starter kits, demos and code examples
• Protocol specification

Packages 📦

AZTEC is maintained as a monorepo with multiple sub packages. Please find a comprehensive list below.

JavaScript Packages

Package	Version	Description
aztec.js		An aggregate package combining many smaller utility packages for interacting with the AZTEC Protocol
@aztec/contract-artifacts		AZTEC smart contract compiled artifacts
@aztec/contract-addresses		A tiny utility library for getting known deployed contract addresses for a particular network
@aztec/dev-utils		Dev utils to be shared across AZTEC projects and packages

Solidity Packages

Package	Version	Description
@aztec/protocol		AZTEC solidity smart contracts & tests

Private Packages

Package	Description
@aztec/monorepo-scripts	Scripts for managing the monorepo

Usage ⚒️

To create AZTEC notes and construct zero-knowledge proofs:

$ yarn add aztec.js

Other goodies:

$ yarn add @aztec/contract-artifacts
$ yarn add @aztec/contract-addresses
$ yarn add @aztec/dev-utils

To see a demo, head to this tutorial.

For more information, check out our documentation.

Contributing 🙋‍♀️

Requirements

• node >=8.3
• yarn >=1.15.2
• solidity >=0.5.0 <0.6.0

Pre Requisites

Make sure you are using Yarn >= 1.15.2. To install using brew:

brew install yarn

Then install dependencies:

yarn install

Build

To build all packages:

$ yarn build

To build a specific package:

$ PKG=aztec.js yarn build

Watch

To re-build all packages on change:

$ yarn watch

Clean

To clean all packages:

$ yarn clean

To clean a specific package:

$ PKG=aztec.js yarn clean

Lint

To lint all packages:

$ yarn lint

To lint a specific package:

$ PKG=aztec.js yarn lint

Test

To run all tests:

$ yarn test

To run tests in a specific package:

$ PKG=aztec.js yarn test

FAQ ❓

What is the AZTEC Protocol?

The protocol enables transactions of value, where the values of the transaction are encrypted. The AZTEC protocol smart contract validator, AZTEC.sol, validates a unique zero-knowledge proof that determines the legitimacy of a transaction via a combination of homomorphic encryption and range proofs.

What is encrypted 'value'?

Instead of balances, the protocol uses AZTEC notes. A note encrypts a number that represents a value (for example a number of ERC-20 tokens). Each note has an owner, defined via an Ethereum address. In order to spend a note the owner must provide a valid ECDSA signature attesting to this.

What does this enable?

Confidential representations of ERC20-tokens

The AZTEC protocol can enable confidential transactions for any generic digital asset on Ethereum, including existing assets. Our first deployed asset enables zkDai.

Fully confidential digital assets

The AZTEC protocol can be utilized as a stand-alone confidential token, with value transfers described entirely through AZTEC join-split transactions

How much gas do these transactions cost?

The gas costs scale with the number of input and output notes in a join-split transaction. For a fully confidential transfer, with 2 input notes and 2 output notes, the gas cost is approximately 300,000 gas.

Where can I see this in action?

The AZTEC protocol is live today on the Ethereum main-net. Here is an example AZTEC join-split transaction.

Range proofs you say? How does that work?

Read the AZTEC paper here. The unique AZTEC commitment function enables the efficient construction and verification of range proofs. The protocol requires a trusted setup protocol, that generates a dataset that is required to construct AZTEC zero-knowledge proofs

The Trusted Setup

AZTEC ran Ignition, an MPC ceremony to generate a CRS for our privacy network and other zero-knowledge systems like PLONK from October 25th 2019 to the January 2nd 2020. 176 individuals and institutions took part, each generating randomness and adding it to the previous participant's contribution. If even one participant acts honestly and destroys the randomness they generated, the CRS can be trusted. You can see a recap of Ignition here.

Are AZTEC transactions anonymous as well as confidential?

The AZTEC protocol currently only supports confidentiality of amounts. We will be adding User privacy and Code privacy to the protocol and SDK.

This sounds interesting! How can I get involved?

Anybody wishing to become early members of the AZTEC network please get in touch at hello@aztecprotocol.com