Catenaa, Sunday, December 14, 2025-Privacy-focused Ethereum Layer 2 developer Aztec Network concluded its public AZTEC token sale Saturday, raising 19,476 ETH, roughly $61.3 million, from more than 16,700 participants.
The sale, held December 2 to 6, used a Continuous Clearing Auction mechanism designed to shift away from insider-dominated launches and promote fair community access.
Aztec said about half of the funds came from existing community members, including testnet operators and early users of its now-closed Aztec Connect product, rather than large institutional investors.
The auction started at a floor price aligned with a $350 million fully diluted valuation, representing a 75% discount compared with prior equity financing rounds. Per-user caps of 240 ETH were implemented to limit concentration among large holders.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams highlighted the auction’s fairness, noting that it avoided sniping, bundling, or timing games.
A Uniswap v4 liquidity pool with 273 million AZTEC tokens, around 2.6% of total supply, will go live after the token generation event to support secondary market trading.
Purchased AZTEC tokens will remain non-transferable until at least February 11, 2026, after which token holders can vote on unlocking transfers.
If no governance vote passes, tokens will unlock gradually through November 2026. Validators must commit 200,000 AZTEC tokens to stake.
Aztec launched its Ignition Chain in mid-November, calling it the first fully decentralized Ethereum Layer 2 network focused on privacy.
Currently, 165 nodes power the network, which is producing blocks but not yet processing user transactions. The project aims to stress-test the network before full functionality launches in early 2026, with nearly 556 million AZTEC tokens already staked.
