Aztec Network raises over $60 million in ETH with community-first token sale, testing new auction model

Privacy-focused Ethereum Layer 2 developer Aztec Network closed its public AZTEC token sale Saturday, collecting 19,476 ETH from more than 16,700 participants in what the project claims represents a shift away from insider-dominated token launches.

The sale, which ran from December 2-6 using a novel Continuous Clearing Auction mechanism built with Uniswap Labs, raised approximately $61.3 million at current ether prices. Aztec said half of the capital came from its existing community, such as testnet operators, early users of its now-shuttered Aztec Connect product, and other ecosystem participants, rather than large institutional allocations.

Aztec's token distribution eschewed the airdrop model that has become standard for Layer 2 launches in favor of what it described as a "fair-access" auction. The CCA mechanism started at a floor price corresponding to a $350 million fully diluted valuation, which Aztec said represented a 75% discount to the implied valuation from its equity financing rounds. Per-user caps of 240 ETH were instituted to limit whale concentration.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams praised the sale in a post on X. "No sniping, bundling, timing games," Adams wrote. "Just slow, fair price discovery ending at 59% above the floor — with literally days to bid earlier and get a better average price."

A Uniswap v4 liquidity pool containing 273 million AZTEC tokens (roughly 2.6% of total supply) will also go live following the token generation event to bootstrap secondary market trading.

AZTEC tokens purchased through the sale will remain non-transferable until at least February 11, 2026. Token holders can then initiate a governance vote to unlock transferability. If no vote passes, tokens will unlock linearly through November 2026. Validators wishing to stake must commit 200,000 AZTEC tokens.

The a16z-backed project had raised $100 million in Series B funding in December 2022, with additional backing from Paradigm and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The company has raised over $119 million in total funding, per The Block Pro's Funding Dashboard. 

Aztec launched its privacy-focused Ethereum Layer 2 network, Ignition Chain, in mid-November. Aztec called Ignition the "first fully decentralized L2 on Ethereum," which will power the firm's vision of a "private world computer."

165 nodes are currently powering the network, according to the project's dashboard. The chain is currently producing blocks but does not yet process user transactions, a deliberate staging approach the team says will allow real economic stress-testing before full functionality launches in early 2026. Nearly 556 million AZTEC tokens have been staked.