On Ethereum, everything is publicly visible, but in the real world, people value privacy — and Aztec brings that privacy to Ethereum. It enables private functions executed and verified directly on a user’s device, while public functions run within the Aztec Virtual Machine. Private data is stored as encrypted UTXOs accessible only to their owners, whereas public data resides in a shared Merkle tree. Aztec seamlessly combines private and public execution and state, supporting both private and public messaging with Ethereum. To achieve this, Aztec introduces its own alt-VM, extending the Ethereum ecosystem beyond EVM compatibility.