Aztec launches private smart contracts as Ethereum rollup

Aztec, a privacy protocol developing on Ethereum, announced on Monday the launch of its second iteration, promising private transactions and smart contracts while being cheaper than standard transfers.

The layer two solution adopted by Aztec relies on zkRollups, similar to Loopring or ZkSync.

Loopring focuses on the decentralized exchange experience, while ZkSync aims to be a generalized layer two protocol that could boost Ethereum's transaction throughput.

Aztec, in comparison, makes a heavy focus on privacy while still allowing a certain degree of scalability.

The team says that the rollup can reach 300 transactions per second while allowing shielded ERC-20 token transactions and private interactions with decentralized finance protocols.

The stated throughput is a far cry from potential figures on other zkRollup solutions, but it is still well above Ethereum's maximum theoretical throughput of 40 transactions per second.

One of the innovations introduced by Aztec is Noir, a private smart contract language.

This could let developers send private transactions and use on-chain cryptographic routines while benefiting from privacy.

Layer two technologies are often seen as the next step in Ethereum evolution, allowing to carry some of the burden off the main network while sharding is still being developed.

Smart contracts on layer two, which could help DeFi scale, have still largely eluded developers.