First Decentralized Private Exchange on Ethereum

AZTEC Protocol, an Ethereum based zero-knowledge privacy protocol to enable private transactions, and Ren, a private interoperable liquidity layer for decentralized finance, are partnering to implement the first ever natively private decentralized exchange on the Ethereum blockchain.

"We are excited to be working with AZTEC to integrate their privacy protocol into Ren", said Loong Wang, CTO of Ren. "By integrating AZTEC, all applications built using Ren can take advantage of zero-knowledge transfers and balances secured on-chain. RenEx, our decentralized dark pool exchange, will be the first place where AZTEC notes can be exchanged without revealing their value on the order book."

In addition to product integration, the collaboration will focus on sharing development and research efforts in an effort to accelerate the adoption of privacy in the public blockchain domain. "As AZTEC becomes a standard across digital assets, those assets will quickly become highly interoperable and liquid," said Tom Pocock, CEO of AZTEC Protocol. "By implementing AZTEC into Ren’s SwapperD wallet, cryptocurrency users will have a tool which inherently allows them to swap to any Ethereum asset privately. We’re thrilled Ren’s ground-breaking cross-chain technology is the first of many tools in the open finance ecosystem to be implementing AZTEC Protocol, giving native privacy to their users."

By facilitating private balances, transfers and trades, both AZTEC and Ren envision that their tools will enable a new wave of advanced applications to be realized that truly respects the privacy and sovereignty of users and their data. Institutions, businesses, and individuals all have well established interests in private balances and transactions. For instance, in a typical decentralized lending market, sensitive information about the debtor and debtee is revealed, which is a limiting factor that forces collateral backed approaches to be used and hinders mature institutional involvement in the industry. Through the use of privacy preserving technology, credit histories will be able to be maintained privately and new opportunities for reputation-based credit markets will be opened.

The DeFi ecosystem is rapidly evolving and the collaboration between AZTEC Protocol and Ren will serve as another crucial piece in enabling decentralized technology to reach real world applications and impact for everyday people.