ZkCloud’s Sequencing and Proving in Aztec's Public Testnet

Long live ZK!

Jun 04, 2025

The launch of Aztec’s Public Testnet created a new paradigm in the Ethereum L2 landscape by going fully decentralized from day one. The testnet aims to validate all the mechanisms that are needed to launch a robust and fully permissionless mainnet. At ZkCloud, we are very excited to support Aztec and participate in the testnet as both a sequencer and a prover.

Aztec brings privacy to Ethereum

Aztec is a privacy-first L2 on Ethereum, supporting smart contracts with both private and public state, as well as private and public execution. However, true privacy does not exist without decentralization. Decentralization across sequencing, proving, and governance is essential to ensure that no single party can control or censor the network.

Aztec is the first in multiple ways in Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem:

First L2 launching fully decentralized: Most rollups that we’ve seen in the past years have launched with a centralized sequencer, prover, and governance. Aztec breaks this pattern by launching fully decentralized already in the public testnet phase.
First privacy-preserving L2: Aztec uses ZK proofs to enable private smart contract logic and encrypted execution. Strictly speaking, Aztec is the first rollup to utilize zero-knowledge proofs for privacy, not just for scalability and verifiability.

The Aztec Public Testnet, launched on 1 May 2025, allows anyone to run a sequencer, participate in governance, and generate proofs.

ZkCloud’s ongoing support for Aztec

ZkCloud has been actively involved in Aztec’s early community discussions around prover decentralization and the overall block-building process. We also participated in ProverNet 1.0, which was the first ever network to test decentralized proof generation and real-time proof outsourcing. In the general track, ZkCloud (previously Gevulot) won in proving speed and tied in proven blocks, while we won the track for custom integrations. Read more about our results and learnings here.

From Q4 2024 onwards, we’ve participated in Aztec’s Sequencer and Prover (S&P) Testnet, which was a series of networks testing decentralized block building, governance, and proof generation.

Now, in the Public Testnet phase, ZkCloud is contributing in two key roles:

Sequencer — contributing to block production and participating in governance.
Prover — generating epoch proofs (covering sets of 32 blocks) using ZkCloud’s high-performance proving nodes, built for low-latency, high-throughput workloads.

These contributions reflect our long-term commitment to building and supporting decentralized zero-knowledge infrastructure.

Closing thoughts

As a team building a decentralized network ourselves, we’re committed to supporting Aztec’s path to mainnet — contributing to block-building, governance, and proving. We believe decentralization must be foundational, not optional, and we’re proud to support Aztec and the broader ecosystem in making that real.

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About ZkCloud:

ZkCloud, built by Gevulot, is the first universal proving infrastructure for ZK. Generate ZK proofs for any proof system at a fraction of the cost. Fast, cheap, and decentralized.

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