Aztec Network token auction opens, privacy project welcomes new opportunities. After 7 years, @ Aztecnetwork has finally issued coins They will start the token auction on the 2nd, and now it is possible to pre register and complete KYC to save time. Because they are using a new auction method (Continuous Clearing Auction, CCA) this time, early entry into the auction starting from the bottom price should be more advantageous in terms of price. Currently, more than 10000 addresses have already invested 6271 ETH ($17.78 million) in subscription funds during the pre-sale stage. The FDV at the bottom price of the auction is $300 million. What about this price? At the end of 2022, a16z led their Series B valuation at $1.2 billion. That is to say, the bottom price cost of the auction is one fourth of a16z. Can this be considered as retail investors cutting off institutions After the auction on the 6th, you can receive the coins, but it cannot be transferred or traded temporarily, but you can participate in staking. The auctioned tokens will be 100% unlocked after TGE, and the TGE time will be in mid February (after February 11th, the community can unlock and transfer through voting). Official token sale page: https://sale.aztec.network/ In the previous DeFi Summer cycle, friends who were present or specialized in grooming should be familiar with the Aztec project. As a star project in Ethereum's privacy industry, Aztec's investment portfolio is definitely a dream: not only is there a $120 million bet from VC powerhouses such as a16z, Paradigm, ConsenSys Mesh, Coinbase Ventures, but top opinion leaders such as Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Aave founder Stani Kulechov also endorse as angel investors. The privacy track didn't become very popular in the previous cycle, but the narrative of this round is strong, with XMR and ZEC showing quite strong price performance in recent months. Aztecs, who have been racing on the privacy track of Ethereum for 7 years, started with the DeFi Privacy Bridge (Aztec Connect) and later expanded and upgraded to a universal, programmable privacy L2 in 2023. They have evolved from a relatively single privacy tool to a promising privacy application chain. The core advantage of the privacy track on Ethereum is its programmability, which allows privacy not only to be limited to transfers and payments, but also to realize infinite possibilities through smart contracts. Speaking of which, I feel that the Aztec project is somewhat idealistic and obsessive-compulsive. Sometimes, this trait is needed for projects, otherwise we wouldn't have been deeply involved in the privacy field for 7 years. They want to auction tokens, in order to achieve transparent and non manipulative token auctions, and there is no tool on the market that can meet their needs. They even collaborated with Uniswap to develop a token auction protocol: Continuous Clearing Auction (CCA). Aztec is the first project to auction tokens using CCA, and if the results are good, Uniswap will have another popular tool. The CCA auction method is quite interesting, and its features are reflected in the fact that the entire process is automatically executed on the chain, including the distribution of auction tokens, price discovery, and the automatic grouping of auction funds into a liquidity pool on Uniswap v4 after the auction ends. Therefore, the team cannot decide who can get the quota or manipulate the price, and it also eliminates the situation where the project party does not form a pool or only adds a small amount of liquidity after receiving the auction funds.