Crypto privacy project Aztec has released its v5 upgrade in an alpha stage.

According to a recent report by The Block, Aztec co-founder Williamson Aztec (윌리엄슨 아즈텍) said the upgrade was pursued to make fully private transactions the default in the Ethereum ecosystem.

The upgrade supports users in creating end-to-end private transactions directly on mobile phones or laptops, while maintaining censorship resistance and decentralisation.

Williamson said this "client-side proof" approach differs from the centralised data centre proof method used by other zero-knowledge (ZK) projects. He said he has repeatedly stressed that for ZK to have influence, proofs must be possible on mobile phones, laptops and even $500 Lenovo products.

Aztec said the upgrade more than halves proof times, lowers average private transaction costs by about 50 percent and cuts average block creation time to 6 seconds from 14. It also lowered rollup proof verification costs by about 40 percent, reducing fees for fully private token transfers to under $0.05.

The upgrade comes months after Aztec warned users against using its previous v4, which was scrapped in March due to vulnerabilities. Williamson said v4 was the first release and had known active vulnerabilities, so it was not recommended for use.

Aztec raised $100 million in a Series B funding round last December with backing from Paradigm and a16z.