Last year, we shared that our team was building Aztec Connect to enable cheap, private DeFi transactions via Aztec’s zkRollup. Ahead of the Aztec Connect launch, our team funded the development and audits of bridge contracts that integrated DeFi protocols with our SDK. Our frontend, zk.money, featured these integrations and we awarded grant funding for the development of third-party applications built with our SDK.
Aztec requested funding from protocols including Compound, Lido, and Element to subsidize deposits, providing lower latency (as user transactions were ‘batched’ together to preserve anonymity, so subsidizing those batches improved user waiting times) and lower fees for end users. Through its governance process, Compound awarded 510 COMP for Aztec Connect subsidies. Since launching in July 2022, over 100,000 users have used Aztec Connect to access private DeFi.
This week, we announced that we’ll be sunsetting Aztec Connect to focus our team’s efforts on Noir, the universal language of zero knowledge, and our next-generation encrypted zkRollup. As a result, we are refunding the 510 COMP to the Compound Governance Timelock (0x6d903f6003cca6255D85CcA4D3B5E5146dC33925) within the next two weeks.
We hope that we’ll be able to partner with the Compound community again in the future as we grow the Noir developer community and launch our next-generation encrypted zkRollup. Thank you for your support and please let us know if you have any questions!
It has been a year since the Grant proposal was passed, but you have not integrated Compound during this time. However, you have supported Aave, Lido, and Element. The 100,000 users you mentioned did not bring any user growth to Compound.
Aztec Connect proposed to shut down a few days ago, and you suggested returning the Grant and politely seeking future cooperation.
Next time you propose a Grant, please include a deadline for integration. We do not want the Grant to become a publicity that cannot be realized.
Thanks @ClairvoyantLabs - your feedback about sharing a deadline for the integration is well taken.
Our website was not updated with the Compound integration, which you can find on the Earn tab of our first-party platform, zk.money - screenshot below. This integration is also available in the Aztec Connect SDK so it could be supported by third-party applications. Again, we appreciate the Compound community’s support!
For what it’s worth, the Compound bridge was eventually launched on Aztec Connect, just quietly (I didn’t know about the launch, and I wrote the first two versions of the bridge contract!) and much later than anticipated. The preferred tooling for building these bridges changed on Aztec’s end during construction (e.g. Hardhat to Foundry), and the bridge contract was eventually completed on Aztec’s side. I would guess (I don’t know) that Aztec was already weighing or decided on sunsetting Connect by the time the Compound bridge was launched, hence the lack of fanfare and non-use of the awarded COMP.
In any case, Aztec’s return of the requested COMP is certainly appreciated, and I hope that the next iteration of Aztec’s products may lead to future opportunities for integration with Compound.
