The company plans to hire more engineers despite the intense bear market.

Aztec Network, a privacy Layer 2 chain for Web3, announced the raising of $100 million in a Series B financing led by venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The funding round also saw participation from A Capital, King River, Variant, SV Angel, Hash Key, Fenbushi, and AVG.5.

• His partnership with a16z will fund the development of a “next-generation encrypted architecture” that would allow users to verify that blockchain rules were followed correctly without revealing any underlying information.
• The main focus of these encrypted blockchains is to allow privacy and anonymity with regards to the execution of transactions.
• Following development, Aztec CEO Zac Williamson stated:

“What we are building is revolutionary technology that transforms the way we interact with each other online, where the end user is the customer, rather than the product. End-to-end encrypted blockchains protect people, obviating the need for centralized financial systems.”

• Aztec Network launched Aztec Connect, which happens to be an ecosystem that integrates with Ethereum decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols like Aave, Lido, and Element Finance, last summer.
• In the future, the company plans to integrate with Compound and five other DeFi protocols.
• Aztec also plans to implement a new public-private execution layer protected by Ethereum that will facilitate the seamless interaction of encrypted and non-encrypted applications on its blockchain.
• The new capital injection will be used to bring in more engineers around the world to build the network through Noir tools, SDK development, P2P network building, data science, cryptography, and full-stack engineering.
• Over the past year, the Aztec team has expanded from seven employees to almost 40, and expects that number to double in the short term.