The Aztec Foundation will delegate 100M AZTEC from its own holdings to a selected group of sequencer operators, it announced on 5 November 2026. Applications close on 20 November 2026.
What the programme offers
Each selected operator gets either 5M or 10M AZTEC of delegated stake for a six-month cohort and earns its normal commission on it. In return, each operator commits to one concrete contribution. The Foundation's examples include public infrastructure (snapshot services, bootstrap nodes, RPC endpoints, a governance dashboard), running a testnet sequencer to find issues before mainnet, supporting ecosystem apps, or an idea the operator proposes.
At the end of each cohort, the Foundation reviews every delegation against what the operator committed to and how its sequencer performed. In the Foundation's words: "Delegations that aren't delivering move to other operators in the next cohort."
Who can apply
- Sequencer operators with at least three months of mainnet operation.
- At least 1M AZTEC staked.
- At least 95% of attestations and 95% of proposals landing on Ethereum over the last 90 days.
- The five largest operators by stake are excluded, so that stake spreads more widely.
A panel from the Aztec Foundation and Aztec Labs will choose operators on the proposed contribution, performance, contribution to decentralisation and community track record.
Timeline
- 20 November 2026: applications close.
- 24 November 2026: selected operators announced.
- 1 December 2026: delegations made.
What it means for stakers
100M AZTEC is about 16% of the 635.1M AZTEC staked on Aztec today, according to BitBasic's Aztec dashboard, so the programme can noticeably change how stake is spread across operators from December. Because the largest five operators are excluded, the stake goes to smaller operators.
The Foundation says it will resize its delegation at the start of each cohort and scale it back as more of the community stakes. It keeps the governance voting power on the delegated stake but says it will not vote with it.
Delegators choosing an operator can follow each sequencer's performance on BitBasic's Aztec validator list.
