Smart Contracts
This section is a collection of how-to guides and references for building smart contracts with Aztec.nr.
If you are looking for an overview of how smart contracts work, head to the Concepts section.
What is Aztec.nr?
Aztec.nr is a framework for writing Aztec smart contracts.
Nomenclature
Noir is a domain specific language for creating and verifying proofs. Its design choices are influenced heavily by Rust.
A smart contract is just a collection of persistent state variables, and a collection of functions which may edit those state variables.
An Aztec smart contract is a smart contract with private state variables and private functions.
Aztec.nr is a framework for writing Aztec smart contracts, written in Noir.
Futher Nomenclature can be found here.
Getting started
Install aztec-nargo
To write an Aztec.nr contract, you need to the compiler, aztec-nargo which is installed when you install the sandbox. See install instructions here.
For those coming from vanilla Noir, the version used for aztec.nr is tracked separately to nargo for vanilla Noir. Be sure to use aztec-nargo to compile your contracts.
Install Noir LSP (recommended)
Install the Noir Language Support extension to get syntax highlighting, syntax error detection and go-to definitions for your Aztec contracts.
Once the extension is installed, check your nargo binary by hovering over Nargo in the status bar on the bottom right of the application window. Click to choose the path to aztec-nargo (or regular nargo, if you have that installed).
You can print the path of your aztec-nargo executable by running:
which aztec-nargo
To specify a custom nargo executable, go to the VSCode settings and search for "noir", or click extension settings on the noir-lang LSP plugin.
Update the Noir: Nargo Path field to point to your desired aztec-nargo executable.
Install Noir tooling
There are a number of tools to make writing Aztec.nr contracts in Noir more pleasant. See here.
Tutorials
See the Private Voting tutorial for more info on getting set up to write contracts.