The team behind Ethereum layer-2 project Aztec Network has unveiled a new whistleblowing platform called StealthNote, allowing employees to anonymously share concerns about their workplace without revealing their identity.
StealthNote leverages zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) to verify that posts are made by individuals with valid company email addresses—without exposing personal information.
In a post on X on April 14, Aztec Labs developer Saleel Pichen explained that the platform generates a zero-knowledge proof of a Google JSON Web Token to authenticate users, verifying they have access to a corporate domain while preserving anonymity.
Aztec’s StealthNote in Development Since 2022
According to Aztec’s documentation, the project has been in development since at least October 2022, with internal testing dating back about three months.
Contributors from the Ethereum Foundation, StarkWare, Scroll, and even institutions like Columbia and Cornell universities have already posted supportive messages on the platform.
“Let’s make privacy cool again,” one message from a Nim Network employee read, reflecting growing enthusiasm around decentralized privacy solutions.
StealthNote’s launch comes amid renewed debate over digital privacy.
Aztec Network, known for its focus on privacy and cryptography, launched on Ethereum in February 2020.
The project raised $100 million in a Series B funding round in December 2022, led by a16z, with participation from A Capital and King River Capital.
With StealthNote, Aztec continues to push the boundaries of how zero-knowledge technology can enhance privacy in real-world applications.
In 2023, a coalition of Web3 companies established the “Universal Privacy Alliance” with the aim of safeguarding digital privacy rights.
Nym, Protocol Labs, the Filecoin Foundation, Oasis, Aztec, and various other entities are part of the Universal Privacy Alliance (UPA).
The alliance, with an initial fund of $150,000, is committed to influencing digital privacy policy and regulatory decisions.
Buterin Calls for Stronger Privacy in Web3
In a blog post published the same day, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned against the growing assumption that governments should be trusted to balance privacy and transparency.
He praised ZK-proofs for offering individuals better control over what information is shared and with whom.
Last week, Buterin also introduced a new roadmap to significantly enhance user privacy on the Ethereum blockchain.
The proposal offers a structured path toward robust privacy features that require minimal changes to Ethereum’s Layer-1 consensus, thus promising near-term benefits without overhauling the network’s core.
It addresses four key areas: privacy of onchain payments, anonymization of onchain activity within applications, safeguarding private reads to the chain (such as RPC calls), and network-level obfuscation.
Rather than waiting on long-term innovations or radical protocol shifts, Buterin presents an incremental and implementable strategy that could fundamentally change the way Ethereum users experience privacy.
He calls for Ethereum wallets to natively integrate privacy tools such as Railgun and Privacy Pools, enabling users to maintain a “shielded balance.”
To eliminate traceable links between actions taken across different decentralized applications (dApps), Buterin advocates for the use of separate addresses per application by default.
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