Aztec launches decentralized and private Ethereum L2 on mainnet, almost

Aztec launched its Ignition mainnet with no centralized operators, opening community staking ahead of a major token sale and positioning itself as a fully decentralized L2.

Ethereum layer-2 network Aztec launched its mainnet Wednesday — albeit with partial functionality — marking the launch of one of the few fully decentralized networks in the ecosystem.

According to an Aztec email viewed by Cointelegraph, Aztec has launched its “Ignition” mainnet chain, a functional consensus-producing chain that generates blocks, but without the smart contract execution layer.

According to L2Beat, only the trustless, optimistic rollup network Facet v1 and Aztec’s old decentralized finance (DeFi) anonymization project, Zk.Money are classed as a stage 2 system with full decentralization.

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