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Aztec Town Hall Recap - July 2025: Community Milestones & Recognition

Joined Aztec's July 31st Town Hall with 864 other people. What stood out most was how community-focused it was.

The numbers everyone was talking about​

The team shared some impressive numbers during the call:

150k Discord members. What's interesting is these aren't just inactive accounts - they're seeing hundreds to thousands of new people joining daily. That's genuine growth.

Over 850 people showed up to this one town hall. The team was clearly pumped about this, posting afterwards: "Our Townhall was out of this world! With over 850 of you showing up and proving that Aztec is the top privacy community in crypto." They thanked David for hosting and gave shoutouts to Amin, Koen, Medsea, and clairekart for jumping on.

Apparently if they hit 1,000 people next week, one of the usually anonymous team members will do a face reveal. So that's something to look forward to.

5,000 people in the validator queue - though they updated it to 4,800 during the call. Here's the thing that got my attention: because everyone has to go through ZK passport verification, they actually know these are real people. As one of them put it: "5000 unique individuals... real real people real machines waiting to validate the network." That's pretty different from most crypto projects where you never really know who's behind the numbers.

15k+ full nodes have been running consistently for 3 months now. One team member mentioned this is "really, really impressive to see this type of sustained number of nodes on a testnet." The sustained participation shows real community commitment.

Network performance - the actual numbers​

They were pretty transparent about where the network actually stands performance-wise:

Current stats:

  • 87% average attestation rate
  • 91% average proposal rate
  • 1,349 validators currently active
  • 135,000 STK total staked (100 STK per validator)

The team was honest about the progress: "This is significantly better from last testnet... we were at something like 70%" but also acknowledged "If you consider that Ethereum's at 99.9, it shows that we've got some time to go."

The transparency was refreshing - they shared both progress and areas for improvement.

Technical stuff (explained so normal people can understand it)​

They covered some technical updates but actually explained them in a way that made sense:

Automatic validator slashing - Previously, removing offline validators was "almost arbitrary... People just didn't know what to expect." Now they've built automatic slashing that removes offline validators, helping the network recover on its own.

They're planning to demonstrate this with something called a "walk-away test" where they'll "turn off our validators and we're going to watch live as everybody else slashes us labs and kicks us out of the validator set." Basically proving the network can survive without them.

Governance upgrades - They built something called a "governance staking escrow contract" which means validators can opt-in once and then automatically get migrated to new network versions. No more having to manually re-enter after every upgrade.

Super nodes - To fix transaction issues, they're introducing "super nodes" with high bandwidth and large memory pools that help other validators stay synced up.

The privacy stuff - Instead of just saying "we do privacy," they gave actual examples:

  • Private voting where your choice is secret but results are public (good for DAOs)
  • Cross-chain privacy so you can use DeFi without revealing your whole portfolio
  • Privacy for institutions that need regulatory compliance

Q&A stuff people actually asked about​

Q: Can I run multiple validators with one ZK passport?

Right now you can only run one validator per ZK passport, but this can be changed through governance if needed.

Q: What if I can't use ZK passport for verification?

They have a backup form for people who can't use ZK passport, and they're working on expanding country/ID support. Eventually there will be other verification methods.

Q: Does ZK passport work on older phones?

Good news - they just shipped an update that "makes it incredibly easy to run ZK passport on older phones and low memory phones." This was apparently blocking a lot of people.

What's coming next: Governance upgrade soon to speed up the validator queue, software update for the slashing functionality, weekly town halls continuing, and ZK passport expansion.

Community celebration time​

This was honestly the main focus of the call. Way more time spent on recognizing people than talking about tech.

The team was clearly excited about community creativity, especially people running validators in weird places - airplanes, microwaves, treadmills, Times Square billboards. One of them said: "This might give us the most joy that we get as a team here" when talking about these creative setups.

The winners​

They recognized a bunch of people. As they put it: "The following is a list of all our members who have gone above and beyond in helping create this community, in being a part of crafting who we are. For that we are so grateful!"

The big winners (these people got actual swag):

  • ZEN won the main prize - a custom Aztec-branded DApp node (they called him "Homestaker Sentinel")
  • Yanks got "High Attester" for consistent performance
  • 0xRedd | CryptoNodeID became "Proposer Commander" for block proposal performance
  • Fran earned "Meme Lord" for 201 consecutive days of Aztec memes. The team was joking about pressure: "oh, another meme has come out from Fran... we got to ship it for you."
  • Mr. FOMO got "Content Chronicler" - they called him "one of the most enthusiastic people I've had the pleasure of interacting with" for all his guides and quizzes

Queue Masters: Max | TG, dv_hub, pirateBABL, seuncoded - recognized for patiently waiting in the queue while helping others

Wildest Validators: mircha, frianowzki, TheCryptoDict - for running validators in creative locations

Community Support Recognition:

  • Top Guardians: Lordy, 0XHarish!, Can, Huzaifa - for months of helping newcomers
  • Explorer shoutouts: opeyemiamos, Hamzin, Huseyin I HusoNode, Derry, shi@, Reey, akbar, seuncoded, XaveArmy, Malbur
  • Guardian shoutouts: iamdine, Rowley, Lordy, 0XHarish!, Chrollo, WyldB0t, VICXWEB, Can
  • Language Ambassador: Batuhan for stickers and emojis
  • AzMod: Hendrix | Mod for community moderation

Role upgrades: 20+ people got promoted from "uninitiated" to "initiated" - Tella, caprison#6220, Bigbuzzzzz, Ife, KING, SPARSH, shi@, Cryptocattelugu, The Gufi, SLY, Mrityuuuuuuuu, Michael, Benny_ACE, Meow, Mo, Hamzin, erolfi, GOODMAN 7TaR, Nasty benzo, Haru

The rewards​

Winners get personal codes via email from swagbox.uk sometime mid to late next week. They can use the code to claim prizes from the Testnet Swag Store. As the team said: "Aztec is covering everything! Swag, shipping, and customs. Just enjoy it!"

The team announced they're "doing these shoutouts every week! Will your name be next?"

Community culture and how it actually works​

The dashboard success story: There's this community-built dashboard at dashtec.xyz that started in the Guardian channel. It got so good that it's now "a primary tool that our own engineers use to debug the network." Pretty cool when community tools become essential infrastructure.

Engagement beyond the headlines: 30k+ Guardians actively helping newcomers, 35k+ "Uninitiated" members working their way up through community roles, weekly town halls continuing this format, and community governance over all network parameters.

Team approach: They emphasized "if you're not running validators, that's great. We love you and we want you involved." Also mentioned that "the Aztec Labs team doesn't have any special privileges here for getting into the queue. We wait in line like everyone else."

Ways to contribute: Content creation (memes, guides, educational stuff), helping newcomers in Discord, building community tools, language support, running infrastructure if you're technical, or just participating in discussions and governance.

Recognition structure: Weekly town halls with spotlights, actual prizes not just virtual rewards, role progression from uninitiated to guardian to initiated, social media features, and performance tracking for validator operators.

Key highlights from the call​

Community metrics verification: The 150k Discord members and 5000 validator queue numbers are verified through ZK passport, meaning these represent real individuals rather than duplicate accounts.

Recognition system in action: The call featured extensive community recognition, from Fran's 201 consecutive days of memes to community members building tools that the engineering team now uses for network debugging.

Network performance updates: Attestation rate improved from 70% to 87% since the last testnet, with the team openly discussing both progress made and areas still needing improvement.

Upcoming developments: Governance upgrades to speed up validator queue processing, automatic slashing implementation, weekly town halls continuing, and ZK passport expansion to more countries.

Final thoughts​

Going into this Town Hall, I thought it would be the usual tech updates and announcements. Instead, most of the time was spent celebrating people - which was actually pretty cool to see.

What got me was how they recognized so many different types of contributions. Like, they gave awards to someone who makes memes every day, people who help newcomers, and folks building community tools. That's not something you see everywhere.

The whole vibe felt genuine. When they talked about network performance being at 87% (up from 70%), they didn't try to oversell it. They were just like "hey, we're getting better but still have work to do." That kind of honesty is refreshing.

Also, knowing that the 5,000 people in the validator queue are actually verified real humans through ZK passport makes the community feel more authentic than just looking at member counts on Discord.

Looking forward to next week's Town Hall. If 1,000 people show up, someone's doing a face reveal. Given how engaged everyone seemed, that'll probably happen.

Author's Note​

I attended this Town Hall myself on July 31st and tried my best to capture what happened accurately. Everything here reflects my own experience as someone who was actually there listening to the presentations and discussions.

If there's anything I missed or got wrong, please feel free to reach out - I'd really appreciate your input!

Interested in joining the Aztec community or attending the weekly Town Halls? Join the Aztec Discord or follow @AztecNetwork on Twitter for updates.