Cross Chain Catalysts Proposal (Deployment Grant): Muon

Aztec
1

Team/Product Name

Muon

Contact Details

Summary

We propose integrating Aztec with Muon to enable support for micro-validators on Aztec as a general-purpose, chain-agnostic messaging and programmable oracle solution.

The goals of this integration are:

  1. To support Aztec within the Muon framework, allowing Aztec developers to leverage micro-validators for building cross-chain applications and dApps that require oracle functionality.

  2. To deploy a working example demonstrating how micro-validators can be used within the Aztec ecosystem.

Timeline

Milestones & Roadmap

  • Week 1: Support Aztec testnet in the Muon Network

  • Week 2: Develop a Noir SDK for validating Muon signatures

  • Week 3: Build a POC for a simple bridge using micro-validators as a showcase

About Us

  • Reza Bakhshandeh (Lead Developer and CEO): A seasoned expert with over 21 years of experience across AI, Big Data, and Blockchain technologies. Reza has authored academic papers in artificial intelligence and holds US patent US9489401B1. Prior to Muon, he led AI/Big Data initiatives at Socialbook and completed over 200 freelance projects across complex software domains. He has led teams working on various blockchain technologies, including EVM-based platforms, Polkadot/Substrate, Solana, and more.

  • Muon Team: Muon is backed by a highly skilled team of blockchain engineers, AI specialists, and product designers committed to developing decentralized infrastructure and cross-chain interoperability tools for the next generation of Web3 applications. We’re training our Rust developers on Noir and Aztec to get ready for future projects and integrations

We successfully ran our canary network, Pion, for over a year—peaking at over 2,000 nodes and facilitating nearly 1,000,000 transactions. In March 2025, we launched the Muon Network with a live deployment of 1,000 nodes.

Our team has deep expertise in cross-chain infrastructure. We developed MuonDVN, a decentralized verification network built on top of LayerZero, which is fully decentralized, modular, and chain-agnostic. MuonDVN supports both EVM and non-EVM chains, making it a versatile backbone for interoperability.

We’ve secured nearly $100,000 in grants from the Avalanche Foundation and Arbitrum, used to build robust tooling and solutions tailored to those ecosystems. With a proven track record of delivering on technical briefs and meeting milestones, we’re well-positioned to contribute to Aztec’s goals for secure and private cross-chain messaging.

Technical Approach

Supporting Micro-Validators in Aztec: Enabling Chain-Agnostic Cross-Chain Apps and Programmable Oracles

It is 2025, and while blockchain performance issues have mostly been resolved, blockchain isolation remains a major challenge. Traditional oracles are not an effective solution to this problem. The Muon Protocol addresses it by introducing micro-validators.

What Are Micro-Validators?

Micro-validators are request-based services that run on a decentralized network, similar to smart contracts but with full access to the internet. They receive requests from users, process and transform the data, and then sign it. These signatures can be verified on any blockchain.

Micro-validators act as a backend layer for decentralized applications (dApps), enabling developers to process and validate data before executing on-chain transactions.

How Do Micro-Validators Work?

The idea behind micro-validators is to make developing cross-chain dApps and oracles as easy as writing and deploying smart contracts. Here’s how they work:

  1. Developers write micro-validators (small pieces of code in JavaScript or other high-level programming languages) and deploy them on the Muon Network.

  2. A dApp client or user sends a request to a micro-validator, which processes the request and returns a response along with a signature.

  3. The data and signature are pushed to the blockchain. On-chain smart contracts can then verify the signature and data before executing a transaction.

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What Can Micro-Validators Do?

Micro-validators serve as a backend for dApps and can be used in a variety of use cases, such as:

  1. Chain-agnostic cross-chain applications

  2. Programmable and customizable Oracle services

  3. Validating specific on-chain data, such as Smart contract storage variables, Function outputs. State proofs from any chains

Muon and Aztec

Integrating Muon with Aztec and enabling support for micro-validators opens the door to building cross-chain dApps and applications that require customizable oracles. This integration is especially significant because Aztec—and its novel programming language, Noir—are emerging technologies that are currently difficult to support with existing tools, most of which are designed for EVM-based environments.

Key Benefits of Integrating Muon and Aztec

  1. Enabling Chain-Agnostic Cross-Chain dApps
    Micro-validators can serve as a flexible, platform-independent messaging layer across various blockchains—including EVM-based networks, Solana, Polkadot/Substrate, and more—enabling truly chain-agnostic application development.

  2. Expanding Muon Ecosystem Tools to Support Aztec
    Tools like verifiable randomness (VRF), price feeds, and LayerZero DVN have already been built using micro-validators in the Muon ecosystem. Once integrated, these tools can be extended to support Aztec-based applications.

  3. Programmable Oracles for Real-World Data
    dApps on Aztec that require access to real-world data can use micro-validators to build custom oracles tailored to their specific needs, with full programmability and decentralization.

  4. Exploring Privacy-Preserving ZK Oracles and other Ecosystem tools
    As a privacy-first blockchain, Aztec also needs privacy-preserving oracle solutions and other ecosystem tools. This integration provides an opportunity to explore Aztec requirements and how micro-validators can fulfill those requirements in future development phases.

Grant Amount Requested

Deployment Grant - $5,000

Budget Rationale

Development salaries for the Engineering Team (smart contracts, integrations, Tech Lead, QA).