Aleo: Leading a New Era of Privacy Computing in Web3

Aleo is a blockchain project focused on privacy protection, achieving higher privacy and scalability through zero-knowledge proof technology (ZKP). Its core philosophy is to enable users to authenticate their identity and process data without disclosing personal information.

Project Overview

The core of Aleo is zero-knowledge proofs ( ZKPs ) technology, which enables transactions and the execution of smart contracts to be conducted while protecting privacy. User transaction details are hidden by default, while allowing for selective disclosure when necessary, making it very suitable for the development of DeFi applications.

Main components include:

1. Leo Programming Language: Adapted from Rust, specifically designed for developing zero-knowledge applications (ZKApps), reducing the requirement for developers' knowledge of cryptography.

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

3. zkCloud: Provides a secure and private off-chain computing environment that supports 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 directly deploy applications in Aleo's program registry, reducing platform risk.

Scalability

Aleo adopts an off-chain processing method, where transactions are first computed on the user's device to generate a proof, and then only the verification result is uploaded to the blockchain. This approach significantly enhances transaction processing speed and system scalability, avoiding network congestion and high-cost issues.

Consensus Mechanism

Aleo introduces AleoBFT, a consensus mechanism with a hybrid architecture that combines the instant finality of validators with the computational power of provers. AleoBFT improves the decentralization of the network, enhancing performance and security.

1. Fast Finality of Blocks: AleoBFT ensures that each block is confirmed immediately after generation, 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 few entities from monopolizing the network.

3. Incentive Mechanism: Validators and Provers share block rewards; Provers are encouraged to become Validators by staking tokens, 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 long-running applications such as machine learning.

Latest Developments

Aleo will launch its incentivized testnet on July 1st, here are some important updates:

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

2. Validator Incentive Program: 1 million Aleo points will be distributed as rewards between July 1 and July 15. The percentage of points generated by the node will determine its share of the reward, and each validator must earn at least 100 tokens to qualify for rewards.

3. Token Supply: The initial supply is 1.5 billion tokens, with an initial circulating supply of approximately 10%. These tokens mainly come from the Coinbase task (7500 million ), which will be distributed within the first six months, and will also include rewards for staking, operating validators, and verifying 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 one week ago.

6. Verification Node Expansion Plan: The initial number of verification nodes is 15, with a target to increase to 50 within the year, eventually reaching 500. To become a delegator, 10,000 tokens are required, while to become a verifier, 10 million tokens are needed. These amounts will gradually decrease over time.

Synthesis Puzzle Algorithm Analysis

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

1. A common EpochProgram is generated for each epoch.

2. By constructing R1CS proof circuits for the input and EpochProgram, generate the corresponding R1CS assignment (, which is the witness ).

3. Use the witness as the leaf node of the Merkle tree, calculate the Merkle root and convert it to the proof_target of the solution.

4. Each puzzle calculation 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 EpochProgram is sampled from the instruction set based on the current epoch_hash.

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

7. After calculating the witness, convert it into a sequence of Merkle tree leaf nodes and construct an 8-ary Merkle tree with a depth of 8.

8. Calculate the merkle root and convert it to proof_target, and determine if it meets the latest_proof_target of the current epoch.

9. Submit the solution and broadcast if the conditions are met.

This update changes puzzle from generating proof to generating witness. The solution calculation logic within each epoch is consistent, but there are significant differences in the calculation logic between different epochs. The new algorithm discards the previous MSM and NTT calculations, and due to the serial dependencies in the witness generation process, achieving parallelization poses considerable challenges.

Overall, Aleo has further strengthened its leading position in the Web3 privacy computing field through this innovative algorithm, laying a solid foundation for future development.