Somewhere in my history, I had used Aztec Network... a sort of exploration of privacy protocols about 4 or 5 years ago... I think it was looking into Zk.Money, and then it shut down... and now Aztec is back with a fully dcentralised and privacy first L2 on Ethereum! Woohooo... I had sort of thought that that experiment had died a slow quiet death, but it appears that they have just been plugging along and building.

Anyway, the public token sale for Aztec (with stuff that already works!) is on the 3rd of December, but various users and contributers (including previous users of Zk.Money) are able to place pre-bids! Awesome, and to top it off... it is a new form of on-chain ICO from Uniswap, the Continuous Clearing Auction, which softens the hideous gas wars and experience of a popular on-chain ICO. I hated those, and to top it off, they were often in crappy timezones and waking up in the middle of the night to blast through a transaction was not fun at all...

... anyway, pre-bidders can get a soulbound NFT that allows you to place bids and market orders in the couple of weeks leading up to the ICO sale. And to top off everything, there is a ZK version of KYC from ZkPassport's Noir Circuits... which was pretty easy to do... there was a glitch with the QR code from the sale page, but restarting the computer and phone seemed to fix that!

And that was the major awesome experience! One of the promises of crypto was decentralised and PRIVATE verification... the idea that a particular aspect of identity or authorisation was done WITHOUT needing to see everything else... or even the actual thing being verified. So, answering the question, are you over 18... without needing to see address or even your actual date of birth!

With ZKPassport, all of that information stays on your device, and the cryptographic proof is sent to the requester... AWESOME! This sure as hell beats those stupid KYC services that have been popping up everywhere... that store and then LOSE your data. OOOPSIE, sucks for you!

Anyway, back to the sale... as a pre-bidder, you can set a maximum price on the rounds, or just go market order. I can't be bothered to try and set the optimum price, and I do want to see where Aztec goes in the future, so I just plonked down a market order... which means that I will just pay the clearing price for each of the rounds. No problem, happy to do that! I'm less keen to miss out just because I was playing games and trying to cheap out and save a few cents!

Handy Crypto Tools

Infinex: The future of self-custodied crypto wallets. Simple but powerful to use, made for normies!
Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Coinbase Wallet: Multi chain wallet with lots of opportunities to Learn and Earn!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
WooX: The centralised version of WooFi. Stake WOO for fee-free trades and free withdrawals! This link also gives you back 25% of the commission.
GMX.io: Decentralised perpetual futures trading on Arbitrum!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
KuCoin: I still use this exchange to take part in the Spotlight and Burning Drop launches.
MEXC: Accepts HIVE, and trades in most poopcoins! Join the casino!
ByBit: Leverage and spot trading, next Binance?
OkX: Again, another Binance contender?