On Ethereum today, everything is publicly visible, by everyone. In the real world, people enjoy privacy. Aztec brings privacy to Ethereum. - private functions, executed and proved on a user's device - public functions, executed in the Aztec Virtual Machine - private state, stored as UTXOs that only the owner can decrypt - public state, stored in a public merkle tree - composability between private/public execution and private/public state - public and private messaging with Ethereum To make this possible, Aztec is not EVM compatible and is extending the Ethereum ecosystem by creating a new alt-VM!