Layer 2 Ethereum network Aztec launched its mainnet on Wednesday – albeit with partial functionality – marking the launch of one of the few fully decentralized networks in the ecosystem.
According to an Aztec email reviewed by Cointelegraph, Aztec has launched its “Ignition” mainnet chain, a functional consensus chain that generates blocks but without a clever contract execution layer.
According to L2Beatonly Facet v1’s untrusted bullish packet network and Aztec’s senior decentralized finance (DeFi) anonymization project, Zk.Money, are classified as a stage 2 system with full decentralization.
Along with Facet, Aztec is among the few protocols without centralized “training circles” because it has relinquished ownership of the bulk contract and Aztec is neither a bulk processor nor an operator. Users or third parties must activate the bulk system themselves in order to make withdrawals or conduct transactions.
In an email sent to Aztec mailing list subscribers, the Aztec team stressed that “neither the Aztec Foundation, the core team, nor investors may run nodes, own shares or participate in governance for the next 12 months.” “This makes Aztec the first community-launched L2 in Ethereum history,” the team told subscribers.
Aztec did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment by publication.
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Aztec staking is now available
Aztec staking is now available to holders, enabling them to participate in network consensus, earn block rewards and shape management decisions. The email suggested that early stakeholders would receive higher rewards because “early participants benefit from distributing block rewards to fewer players.”
Staking dashboard indicates that there are currently 107.2 million AZTEC tokens staked. Both investors and the development team are currently prohibited from investing, so it is likely that these funds come from the 200 million copies of AZTEC sold on the Genesis sequencer salewhich clearly targets whitelisted community members to load the mainnet.
The minimum bid amount (including delegated bids) is AZTEC 200,000, which is equivalent to approximately $6,000 at Community-Only Continuous Settlement auction prices. Still, the tokens could be sold at higher prices than the current $0.03 per AZTEC if demand increases.
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Token sale in progress
Aztec is currently in a whitelisted community-exclusive token sale phase, attracting $2.77 million in assets from 2,209 unique bidders since opening on November 13. This phase will end on December 1, just before the public sale begins on December 2 and closes on December 6.
Tokens purchased during the sale will be locked for a minimum of 90 days and up to 12 months, depending on whether the community votes to release them early. The sale will distribute 1.547 billion tokens, representing 14.95% of the total supply.
Aztec says the token sale is at a 75% discount to the network’s suggested valuation from previous fundraising efforts. By ICO drop dataAztec has raised $2.1 million in a seed round, $17 million in Series A rounds and $100 million in Series B funding rounds. Backers include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm, Consensys, Andreessen Horowitz and HashKey Capital.
Still, Aztec’s own token sales reservation warns that “any reference to a prior quotation or percentage discount is intended solely to inform potential purchasers of how the initial floor price for the token sale was calculated.” The floor price is currently 0.000010 ETH, or approximately $0.03, for AZTEC, which means the project has a fully diluted valuation of $310 million. The disclaimer also notes that unsold tokens “may be collected by the Foundation.”
On December 6, a Uniswap pool of 273 million AZTEC (2.64% of supply) will be launched to provide bootstrap liquidity. Tokens purchased on the secondary market will not be subject to blocks.
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