TL;DR
- Shipped:
- v5 payload
- pipelined block building
- optimistic proving
- constrained delivery
- Landing next quarter: monorepo extraction of aztec node and smart contract framework. A permissionless cosigner as defense in depth against protocol bugs.
- One ask: Let’s finish off the protocol specs. Needs prioritization from Foundation.
What we shipped this quarter
- v5 upgrade payload (Forum Post)
- Make the v4 rollup stage two (AZUP-1)
- pipelined block building (AZIP-6)
- optimistic proving: roughly halves proving cost
- slashing enforcement (AZIP-7 and AZIP-16)
- Multiple roots per epoch in Outbox (AZIP-14)
- Committee attested fees (AZIP-19)
- JSON-RPC API overhaul for node
- Offchain note delivery
- Constrained onchain delivery
- PXE runs on SQLite with encryption at rest
Reconciliation — what we committed to last quarter
See prior commitments at Aztec Labs — Aztec Core Contributor Report · Q1 2026 .
In our opinion, all commitments were completed satisfactorily.
What we’re shipping next quarter
Two major deliverables known.
The primary deliverable is a new, permissionless protocol for having AWS Nitro enclaves act as cosigners for operations on Aztec. This adds an independent layer of verification outside of the zero knowledge proving infrastructure while retaining privacy. Attackers must be able to find and exploit vulnerabilities in both layers simultaneously in order to defraud applications built on this. We’re targeting August for this to be open sourced.
The second deliverable is extracting the aztec node and smart contract framework (aztec.nr, pxe, etc) from the monorepo and into their own, respective repos. This should help greatly with internal and external developer experience (much easier to manage independent release cycles and versioning) and public contributions (because contributors don’t need to wade through the monorepo). This is expected to be complete in July.
Risks, dependencies, and asks
None we are aware of.
Out of scope this quarter
No-setup partial notes are still deferred until we sense demand.