Aleo: An Innovative Blockchain for Privacy Protection Using zk-SNARKs Technology

Aleo is a blockchain project focused on privacy protection, using zk-SNARKs technology (ZKP) to enhance privacy and scalability. The core idea of the project is to enable users to authenticate and process data without disclosing personal information.

Latest Project Developments

The Aleo network randomly generates a ZK circuit every hour. Miners need to try different nonces as inputs to the circuit within that hour, calculating the witness(, which includes all variables in the circuit. This process is also known as synthesize), where the Merkle root of the witness is computed, and then it is determined whether the mining difficulty requirements are met. Due to the randomness of the circuit, this mining algorithm is not friendly to GPUs and presents significant challenges in computational acceleration.

Financing Situation

Aleo completed a $28 million Series A funding round led by a16z in 2021. In 2024, the company completed a $200 million Series B funding round, with investors including Kora Management, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tiger Global, Sea Capital, Slow Ventures, and Samsung Next. This round of funding brought Aleo's valuation to $1.45 billion.

Core Features of the Project

Privacy Protection

The core of Aleo is zk-SNARKs( technology, allowing transactions and the execution of smart contracts to proceed while maintaining privacy. The details of users' transactions, such as the sender and transaction amount, are hidden by default. This design not only protects user privacy but also allows for selective disclosure when necessary, making it very suitable for the development of DeFi applications.

Main components include:

1. Leo Compiled Language: Adapted from Rust, specifically designed for developing zk-SNARKs applications ) ZKApps (, reducing the requirements for developers' knowledge of cryptography.

2. snarkVM and snarkOS: snarkVM allows off-chain execution of computations, with only the results being verified on-chain, thus improving efficiency. snarkOS ensures the security of data and computations, and allows permissionless functionality execution.

3. zkCloud: Provides a secure and private off-chain computing environment, supporting programming interactions between users, organizations, and DAOs.

Aleo also provides an integrated development environment )IDE( and a software development kit )SDK(, supporting developers to quickly write and publish applications. Developers can deploy applications in Aleo's program registry without relying on third parties, thus reducing platform risk.

) Scalability

Aleo adopts an off-chain processing method where transactions are first calculated on the user's device, and then only the verification results are uploaded to the Blockchain. This method greatly improves transaction processing speed and system scalability, avoiding network congestion and high fees similar to Ethereum.

Consensus Mechanism

Aleo introduced AleoBFT, a hybrid architecture consensus mechanism that combines the instantaneous finality of validators with the computational power of provers. AleoBFT not only improves the decentralization of the network but also enhances performance and security.

1. Block finality: AleoBFT ensures that each Block is confirmed immediately after being generated, enhancing node stability and user experience.

2. Decentralized Assurance: By separating block production from coinbase generation, validators are responsible for generating blocks, while provers perform proof calculations, preventing a small number of entities from monopolizing the network.

3. Incentive Mechanism: Validators and Provers share Block rewards; encouraging Provers to become Validators through staking tokens, thereby enhancing the decentralization and computational capacity of the network.

Aleo allows developers to create applications that are not subject to gas limits, making it particularly suitable for applications that require long runtimes, such as machine learning.

Latest Developments

1. ARC-100 vote passed: The proposal involving compliance aspects, the locking of funds on the Aleo network, and security measures such as delayed transactions has been approved, and the team is making final adjustments.

2. Validator Incentive Program: Set to launch on July 1, aimed at validating the new puzzle mechanism. The program will run until July 15, during which 1 million Aleo points will be allocated as rewards.

3. Token Supply: The initial supply is 1.5 billion tokens, with an initial circulating supply of about 10% ### yet to be finalized (. These tokens mainly come from Coinbase tasks ) 7.5 million (, which will be distributed in the first six months, and will include rewards for staking, running validators, and validating nodes.

4. Testnet Beta Reset: This is the final network reset, and after completion, no new features will be added. The network will be similar to the mainnet.

5. Code freeze: Completed a week ago.

6. Validator Node Expansion Plan: The initial number of validator nodes is 15, with a target to increase to 50 within the year, and ultimately reach 500. To become a delegator requires 10,000 tokens, and to become a validator requires 10 million tokens, with these amounts gradually decreasing over time.

Synthesis Puzzle Algorithm Analysis

The latest version of Aleo's puzzle algorithm core is called Synthesis Puzzle, and its main features are as follows:

1. A common EpochProgram is generated for each epoch.

2. By constructing an R1CS proof circuit for the input and EpochProgram, generate the corresponding R1CS assignment ), which is the witness (, and use it as a leaf node of the Merkle tree.

3. Calculate the Merkle root after computing all leaf nodes and convert it to the solution's proof_target.

4. Each puzzle computation is called a nonce, constructed from the address receiving the mining reward, epoch_hash, and the random number counter.

5. The random number generated by the current epoch_hash is sampled from the instruction set by the EpochProgram.

6. Use nonce as a random number seed to generate the input for EpochProgram.

7. Aggregate the R1CS and input corresponding to the EpochProgram, and perform witness calculation.

8. Calculate the merkle root and determine if it meets the latest_proof_target of the current epoch.

This update changes the puzzle from generating proofs to generating witnesses, with consistent solution calculation logic within each epoch, but significant differences in calculation logic between different epochs. The new algorithm discards the previous MSM and NTT calculations, posing new challenges for GPU optimization. Due to the existence of some serial execution dependencies during the witness generation process, achieving parallelization also faces considerable difficulties.

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