Aztec Network, a Layer 2 project focused on privacy, has officially deployed its Ignition Chain on the Ethereum mainnet. The launch marks a major step in creating a decentralized consensus layer for the network and follows the start of its AZTEC token sale last week.

The activation of the mainnet, which enables programmable privacy for decentralized applications, was triggered after its validator queue reached 500 participants. This milestone comes after a successful public testnet rollout in May and brings the project’s vision of a “private world computer” closer to reality.

Ignition Chain is designed to power decentralized finance (DeFi) applications with end-to-end confidentiality, addressing the transparency limitations of Ethereum by using zero-knowledge proofs while maintaining network verifiability. The project is backed by significant capital, having raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by a16z in 2022.

Zac Williamson, the co-founder of Aztec Network, noted that the coming decade will be a pivotal era for privacy technology. He envisions a shift where products and services use distributed ledgers for settlement and privacy tech as their execution engine, effectively returning data ownership from centralized Web2 platforms to individual users.

The AZTEC Token

The network’s native asset, AZTEC, is central to the Ignition Chain’s operation. It’s used for staking, governance, and distributing block rewards. To become an active validator on the network, a participant must stake 200,000 AZTEC tokens.

Registration for the token sale began last week and has already attracted approximately $2.5 million from 1,925 unique bidders across 2,088 bids. The official auction bidding for the general public is scheduled to begin on December 2.