Waiting for seven years to issue coins, but waiting for community controversy? At a time when the privacy track has significantly rebounded, the veteran project Aztec Network has finally announced the release of its cryptocurrency - but its first return did not receive applause, but rather a comprehensive debate on the contradictions between airdrops, valuation, lock-in, and compliance. The total amount of AZTEC tokens announced by Aztec this time is 10.35 billion, of which investors and teams account for over 48%, foundations and ecological incentives account for 27%, and the proportion used for public sales is about 21.96%. The most controversial thing is that there were no TGE airdrops. A large number of people have worked with Aztec Connect http://zk.money Users who have been interacting for a long time have found themselves "practicing hard for seven years, waiting for nothing". Aztec has stated that it will provide a whitelist to node operators, users, and contributors. Currently, the list exceeds 300000 addresses, but this is not enough to quell disappointment. Even more glaring are the valuation and lock up conditions. Aztec's initial bid for FDV is $350 million, which is a 75% discount from the latest private equity valuation, but still considered "too high" by some communities. In addition, whether it is the sale of Genesis Sorter or public auction, tokens must be locked for at least 12 months, and the public round must be unlocked in advance after 90 days by the governance decision. Against the backdrop of rising bear market expectations and widespread TGE defaults, this type of long lock up is considered extremely high-risk. The issuance mechanism adopted by Aztec is also quite experimental - it became the first project to use Uniswap v4's Continuous Clearing Auction (CCA), aiming to discover prices in real-time on the chain and automatically establish a liquidity pool. However, the requirement to complete KYC and mint NFTs for participation is in stark contrast to its "privacy narrative" and has also been questioned for "reverse privacy". Returning to the project itself, Aztec was once one of the most anticipated Ethereum privacy layers, raising over $119 million from 2018 to 2022 with investors including Vitalik, a16z, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures. But since Tornado Cash was sanctioned by OFAC, the privacy ecosystem has been under comprehensive pressure. Aztec announces closure of Aztec Connect in 2023 http://zk.money Turning to the development of the universal ZK language Noir and new chain architecture, TVL was once as low as $4 million. Until 2024-2025, the privacy track will breathe a sigh of relief as narratives such as Zcash, Monero, Noir rebound. The US court's ruling that sanctions against Tornado are illegal also opens up policy space for privacy agreements. This year, more than 17000 nodes and 30+applications flooded into the Aztec testnet after four weeks of restart, and the narrative recovery seems to provide a window for coin issuance.