The auction format was designed to prevent front-running and timing games that often plague token launches.
Aztec Token News
Aztec Network closed its public AZTEC token sale on Saturday, collecting 19,476 Ethereum from more than 16,700 participants in what the privacy-focused Ethereum layer-2 developer claims represents a shift away from insider-dominated token launches.
The sale ran from Dec. 2 to 6 using a Continuous Clearing Auction mechanism built with Uniswap Labs, raising approximately $61.3 million at current Ether prices. Aztec said half of the capital came from its existing community, including testnet operators and early users of its now-shuttered Aztec Connect product, rather than large institutional allocations.
Aztec's token distribution avoided 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 Ethereum were instituted to limit whale concentration during the sale. The auction format was designed to prevent front-running and timing games that often plague token launches.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams praised the sale in a post on X, noting there was no sniping, bundling, or timing games involved. He said the mechanism allowed for slow, fair price discovery that ended at 59% above the floor, with participants having days to bid earlier and secure a better average price.
A Uniswap v4 liquidity pool containing 273 million AZTEC tokens, roughly 2.6% of total supply, will go live following the token generation event to bootstrap secondary market trading. The pool aims to provide immediate liquidity for participants looking to exit or adjust positions.
Tokens purchased through the sale will remain non-transferable until at least Feb. 11, 2026. Token holders can then initiate a governance vote to unlock transferability. If no vote passes, tokens will unlock linearly through November 2026, giving the community control over the timing.
Validators wishing to stake must commit 200,000 AZTEC tokens. Nearly 556 million tokens have already been staked according to project data.
The a16z-backed project 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, according to The Block Pro's Funding Dashboard.
Aztec launched its privacy-focused Ethereum layer-2 network, Ignition Chain, in mid-November. The project called Ignition the first fully decentralized layer-2 on Ethereum, designed to power its vision of a private world computer. Currently, 165 nodes are powering the network according to the project's dashboard. The chain is 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.
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