Aztec launches privacy-focused L2 Ignition Chain on mainnet following token sale

Aztec Network, a privacy-focused Layer 2 on Ethereum, has officially launched its Ignition Chain on Ethereum mainnet on Wednesday, following the start of its AZTEC token sale last week.

"Aztec just shipped the Ignition Chain, the first fully decentralized L2 on Ethereum," the team announced Wednesday in a post on X. "This launches the decentralized consensus layer that powers the Aztec Network."

The mainnet launch of Ignition Chain, which enables programmable privacy, came after the network's public testnet rollout in May. Ignition Chain saw its validator queue reach 500 on Wednesday, which triggered block production on the Ethereum mainnet, the team said.

Ignition Chain powers Aztec's vision of a "private world computer," where developers build DeFi apps with end-to-end confidentiality. It aims to address Ethereum's transparency limitations by using zero-knowledge proofs while maintaining verifiability. In 2022, the Aztec team raised $100 million in its Series B funding round led by a16z.

"2025-2035 will be Privacy's turn of the wheel," said Zac Williamson, co-founder of Aztec Network, in a post on X.

"We are going to see the rise of products and services that perform the same information processing role, but using distributed ledgers as their settlements layer and privacy tech as the execution engine," said Williamson. "Data will be sucked out of the Web2 fortresses and given back to the user."

AZTEC token

Last week, Aztec announced the token sale of AZTEC, which serves as the native asset of Ignition Chain. It is used for staking, governance, and block rewards. A validator needs 200,000 staked AZTEC tokens to become active on the network.

The token sale registration began last week, so far attracting around $2.5 million across 2,088 bids from 1,925 unique bidders. 

The official auction bidding for the general public is set to start on Dec. 2.