@aztecnetwork is paying about 24% (minus sequencer commission) to stake its $AZTEC token. Its devs could walk away tomorrow, and the chain would keep running.
Before you go chasing that number, here’s what you’re actually securing, how to stake, and what can go wrong.
The High APR
Staking AZTEC currently pays about 24% APR for helping secure the network.
Why is that reward rate so high?
Aztec is a fledgling blockchain in its bootstrapping phase.
The reward is outsized because the network is paying early stakers even as participation remains low
Just remember: if those rewards are newly minted tokens, part of that 24% is keeping pace with inflation, not pure profit.
What Staking Actually Secures
Aztec is a zero-knowledge Layer 2 in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Staking (or delegating) tokens to sequencers helps decentralize the process of ordering and proposing blocks.
Sequencers on Aztec are responsible for four things:
- Assembling them into blocks
- Submitting attested blocks to Ethereum L1
- Ordering pending transactions from the mempool
- Proposing those blocks to a validation committee
You are rewarded for backing a sequencer.
Stage 2 Distinction
If the development team decided to quit building and supporting the blockchain today, you would still be able to use the network tomorrow. That is because Aztec has achieved Stage 2, the highest decentralization tier for an Ethereum L2.
Stage 2 requires a permissionless proof system, at least 30 days for users to exit before any unwanted upgrade, and any Security Council limited to bugs that can be proven on-chain. Aztec goes further: its core rollup contracts are immutable.
Aztec’s Stage 2 status was granted after its governance renounced and revoked ownership of its rollup contracts.
Cool, but it doesn’t mean:
- The blockchain is perfectly secure
- The core team can rescue your tokens
- The token’s utility or price is guaranteed
Stage 2 means no admin or Security Council can override the protocol at will.
How to Participate in Staking
There are three ways to participate. Most of you aren’t running hardware, so I’ll cover the first two:
- Delegation directly via the Aztec dashboard
- Liquid staking with @Olla_Finance
- Run your own sequencer (for the hardware crowd)
Delegation lets you choose a provider, back its sequencer with your tokens, and share in its rewards.
There are several things to look out for, which should impact your decision:
- Total stake: you want to help decentralize the network, and don’t want to stake where everyone else is
- Commission: how much of the rewards will you give away in commission versus keep for yourself
- Slashing: make sure you’re delegating to a provider that has a high uptime
The catch with staking directly is that each delegation requires 200,000 AZTEC.
Olla Finance lets you join a pool of other AZTEC stakers, so you don’t need to hold 200,000 AZTEC yourself. Additionally, you get the stAztec token, a representative token that is liquid and can be used in other DeFi protocols.
Staking rewards are automatically added to stAztec, so when you redeem it for AZTEC, you’ll get more AZTEC back than you initially put in.
The risks with using Olla Finance are the same as those of other liquid staking protocols:
- Validator slashing penalties
- Smart contract vulnerabilities
- Counterparty/protocol centralization
- De-pegging from the underlying asset due to low secondary market liquidity
Choosing an Operator
If I had 200,000 AZTEC to stake to a sequencer, here would be my due diligence checklist:
- Compare providers on the Aztec Staking Dashboard (stake.aztec.network).
- Check the provider’s commission rate and available delegation capacity.
- Review sequencer performance on Dashtec (dashtec.xyz), focusing on uptime, successful proposals, and attestation rates.
- Check individual sequencers’ slashing histories on haveibeenslashed.xyz.
- Verify how rewards are distributed: automated 0xSplits contracts or manual payouts.
- For 0xSplits, verify the reward-recipient contracts and look for successful distributions on Etherscan. For manual payouts, look for a public, auditable payment history.
- Confirm the unstaking delay and understand that delegated tokens remain exposed to slashing.
- Compare your finalists and delegate to the provider with the strongest combination of reliability, transparency, and reasonable fees.
Put this checklist into your favorite AI harness (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok) and have it help you identify which will be the best sequencer for your risk tolerance.
What Can Go Wrong?
Decentralization doesn’t remove risk, especially on a network this new.
They include:
- Slashing: if your sequencer misbehaves or goes offline, part of your staked AZTEC can be cut (usually 2,000 to 5,000 per offense), and if it drops below 190,000, it’s ejected and stops earning
- Sequencer reliability: the sequencer could become a zombie, and you earn no more staking rewards
- Withdrawal delays: it takes a minimum of 4 days to unstake and receive your AZTEC back, and roughly 10 days if your tokens are locked in governance for voting
- Token volatility: as with every crypto token, volatility is extremely likely, and there’s no guarantee that the price will go up
- Smart contract risk: there could be a bug in the smart contract that negatively impacts the sequencer, or even the entire network
Crypto is the Wild West of innovative technology, and it’s imperative you do your own due diligence to identify attack vectors. 24% APR has a way of making people skip the fine print. Don’t.
Takeaway
In 2026, privacy is becoming a huge meta. People don’t want all of their wallet information fully on-chain, nor do they want others to know how many tokens they hold in that wallet.
Aztec is building tools and dApps to increase privacy, while still allowing users to interact with the Ethereum L1.
Two new products already live include zk.money and ZKPassport.
zk.money, relaunched in Sep. 2026, is a self-custodial privacy wallet. You deposit DAI, USDC, or USDT (held as DAI), and your balance, amounts, and counterparties stay hidden. Transactions are capped at under $2,500 for now.
ZKPassport is a privacy-first identity verification platform that lets users prove their age, nationality, or proof of humanity by using a government-issued ID or passport. Your data never leaves your phone, but apps can still verify what they need. ZKPassport was used by more than 17,000 people for the AZTEC token sale.
I believe that the broader blockchain (and non-crypto native) market will begin to seek out privacy-oriented solutions and dApps like these in the coming years. If that’s right, Aztec is well-positioned for broader use.
Disclosure: After researching Aztec, I got psyched and now hold and stake AZTEC.