The public ledger characteristic of Ethereum has always been a double-edged sword. While the transparency of on-chain transactions ensures security, it is also becoming a bottleneck for large-scale applications.

The most straightforward question is: users do not want everyone to see their balances, transaction records, and interaction behaviors. Institutions are also concerned that competitors can infer their strategies through on-chain data. Privacy demands have evolved from a marginal topic to a fundamental necessity at the infrastructure level.

This is the core demand that protocols like Aztec aim to address. In simple terms, it is to add privacy capabilities for users and the application layer without sacrificing the security and interoperability of Ethereum.

The technical path of Aztec is to enable developers to freely combine privacy logic through tools like Ignition Chain and Noir—this is known as "programmable privacy." It is not a one-size-fits-all privacy package, but rather a tailored solution based on demand.

Looking at it from another angle, the emergence of such solutions indicates that the market is taking the issue of privacy seriously. In future Web3 applications, privacy configuration capabilities may become as standard a consideration as gas optimization.