Fundamentals of Aleo

The Layer 1 for Decentralized Private Applications.

Founded in 2019, Aleo is the first decentralized open source platform to support private and programmable applications. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, Aleo moves smart contract execution off-chain to enable a variety of decentralized applications that are both completely private and scalable to thousands of transactions per second.

Aleo has built a blockchain network with good user experience, privacy, good editability, and high performance, and provides a completely private application development platform to protect through a decentralized system and a zero-knowledge proof network User Data on the Web.

Structure

A zero knowledge proof is a cryptographic protocol where one party (the prover) proves to another party (the verifier) that something is true without revealing how it is true.

Zero Knowledge Primitives‍

A “primitive” is a basic building block of a programming language, an atomic unit that is not divisible into smaller components.

Shielded Identities

like a firewall which protects the private information of a given person or entity.

Shielded Transactions

a primitive first created by Zcash. But shielded transactions in Aleo are more than just asset transfers.

Privacy + Programmability

ZEXE ( Zero Knowledge EXEcution )

Aleo provides opt-out privacy, ensuring ultimate control lies with the user, who can choose what information they wish to be public. Aleo enables network participants to interact on a public network with complete privacy without sacrificing any degree of performance or power that decentralized networks enable.

zkCloud

• zkCloud is the cornerstone of a new model for peer-to-peer, decentralized, private computation that can be either run locally or delegated to specialized provers.
• zkCloud enables programmatic interactions between shielded identities, which could be users, organizations, DAOs, or more.
• These interactions occur via shielded transactions, which provide cryptographic proofs that guarantee correct execution of a given program.
• These transactions are submitted to the Aleo blockchain which updates global state, and anchors the activity on zkCloud and provides a decentralized and censorship-resistant data availability guarantee.

Leo

Leo is a Rust-inspired statically typed programming language built for writing private applications. It is designed for developers to build intuitively on the Aleo blockchain, providing the groundwork for a private, decentralized ecosystem. It is the first known programming language to introduce a testing framework, package registry, import resolver, remote compiler, and theorem generator for general-purpose, zero-knowledge applications.

Leo is designed to remove as many cryptographic knowledge requirements as possible. Moreover, it is designed to be reminiscent of Javascript and Typescript so that the army of JS/TS developers out there (around 12 million of them, dwarfing crypto dev numbers) will have a very straightforward learning curve.

Fundraising

Series A ($28M)

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from Placeholder VC, Galaxy Digital, Variant Capital, and Coinbase Ventures. Other notable investors include Polychain Capital, Slow Ventures, Dekrypt Capital, Scalar Capital, a_capital, zkValidator, Balaji Srinivasan and Ethereal Ventures, a new venture fund established by Joseph Lubin.

Series B ($200M)

Series B funding round led by Kora Management LP and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Tiger Global, Sea Capital, Samsung Next, Slow Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), culminating in a valuation of the company at $1.45 billion.