AZTEC (AZTEC-USD) Research Brief — as of 2026-10-08

What AZTEC actually is

Aztec Network is a privacy-first, zero-knowledge (ZK) Layer 2 on Ethereum that runs both private and public smart contracts, using a dual-environment model (PXE for private proofs, AVM for public logic) that settles verifiable blocks onto Ethereum L1 [9], [11]. The AZTEC token is the native token of this network, used for governance and for staking that supports sequencers and provers, not a fee or equity instrument [8], [12]. It launched on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token (contract 0xA27EC0006e59f245217Ff08CD52A7E8b169E62D2) ahead of the network's own rollout [DOC-3]. The "-USD" in AZTEC-USD simply denotes the US-dollar quote pair.