In homage to the acyl azide approach developed by Felix and Merrifield, a strategy for N-C-SPPS was developed based on benzyl ester hydrazinolysis and activation of the corresponding hydrazides using sodium nitrite (Scheme 7). The effectiveness of the method was exemplified by the synthesis of Ac-Phe-Phe-Gly-Asn-Ser-Leu-Val-OH (53). Elongation of the peptide was performed in both directions from an asparagine residue which was attached by coupling Fmoc-Asp-OBn to Rink amide resin.