Aleo: The Blockchain Project Leading the Web3 Privacy Revolution

Aleo is a blockchain project dedicated to privacy protection, with its core technology based on Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP), aiming to achieve a higher level of privacy and scalability. The fundamental idea of the project is to enable users to authenticate their identities and process data without exposing personal information.

Project Overview

Privacy

The core technology of Aleo is zero-knowledge proofs, which allows transactions and the execution of smart contracts to be conducted while protecting privacy. 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 decentralized financial applications.

The main components of Aleo include:

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

2. snarkVM and snarkOS: snarkVM allows off-chain execution of computations, while only verifying the results 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 that supports programming interactions between users, organizations, and decentralized autonomous organizations.

Aleo also provides an integrated development environment and software development kit, allowing developers to quickly write and publish applications. Additionally, developers can deploy applications in Aleo's program registry without relying on third parties, thereby reducing platform risk.

Scalability

Aleo adopts an off-chain processing method, where transactions are first computed for proof on the user's device, and then only the verification result is uploaded to the Blockchain. This method greatly improves 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 and the computational power of provers. AleoBFT not only enhances the level of decentralization in the network but also improves performance and security.

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

2. Decentralized Assurance: By separating block production from token generation, validators are responsible for generating blocks, while provers carry out proof computations, preventing a few entities from monopolizing the network.

3. Incentive Mechanism: Validators and provers share block rewards; encouraging provers to become validators by staking tokens, thereby enhancing the decentralization and computational power of the network.

Aleo allows developers to create applications without resource limitations, making it particularly suitable for tasks that require long runtimes, such as machine learning.

Latest Developments

Aleo will launch the incentive testnet on July 1st, here are some important updates:

1. ARC-100 Vote Passed: The proposal involving compliance aspects, fund locking on the Aleo network, and security measures such as delayed deposits has been approved. The team is making final adjustments.

2. Validator Incentive Program: This program will launch on July 1st, aiming to validate the new puzzle mechanism. The program will run until July 15th, during which 1 million Aleo points will be allocated as rewards.

3. Initial Supply and Circulating Supply: The initial supply is 1.5 billion tokens, with an initial circulating supply of about 10%. These tokens mainly come from task rewards (75 million), which will be distributed within the first six months, and include rewards for staking, running validators, and validating nodes.

4. Testnet Reset: This is the final network reset, and no new features will be added after completion; the network will be similar to the mainnet. The reset is intended to add new features and update the puzzle mechanism.

5. Code Freeze: The code freeze was completed a week ago.

6. Validator Node Expansion Plan: The initial number of validator nodes is 15, with a goal to increase to 50 within the year, and ultimately reach 500. Becoming a delegator requires 10,000 tokens, while becoming a validator requires 10 million tokens, and these amounts will gradually decrease over time.

Synthesis Puzzle Algorithm Analysis

The latest version of Aleo's algorithm core is called Synthesis Puzzle, which is centered around generating a common EpochProgram that is fixed for each epoch. By constructing R1CS proof circuits for the input and the EpochProgram, it produces the corresponding R1CS assignments (i.e., witnesses) that serve as leaf nodes of a Merkle tree. After calculating all the leaf nodes, it generates the Merkle root and converts it to the proof_target of the solution.

The detailed process for building the Synthesis Puzzle is as follows:

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

2. In each epoch, the EpochProgram calculated by all provers is the same, sampled from the instruction set using the random number generated by the current epoch_hash.

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

4. Aggregate the R1CS and input corresponding to the EpochProgram, and perform witness computation.

5. Convert all witnesses into a sequence of leaf nodes of the Merkle tree.

6. Calculate the Merkle root and convert it to the proof_target of the solution to determine if it meets the requirements of the current epoch.

7. The input of EpochProgram can be updated multiple times for solution calculations in the same epoch by iterating the counter.

Impact of Algorithm Updates

After this update, the puzzle has changed from generating a proof to generating a witness. The calculation logic for all solutions within each epoch is consistent, but there are significant differences in the calculation logic between different epochs. The new algorithm discards the MSM and NTT calculations from the previous version, which may impact existing GPU optimization strategies. At the same time, since the process of generating a witness involves executing a program that changes with each epoch, there may be some dependencies in the instructions that require serial execution, making parallelization potentially very challenging.