Aleo: An Innovative Blockchain Project for Privacy and Scalability

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

Project Overview

Privacy

The core of Aleo is zero-knowledge proof technology, allowing transactions and the execution of smart contracts to occur while maintaining privacy. By default, users' transaction details are hidden, while allowing for selective disclosure when necessary, making it very suitable for the development of DeFi applications. Its main components include:

1. Leo programming language: adapted from 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, verifying the results on-chain, thus improving efficiency. snarkOS ensures the security of data and computations and allows permissionless function 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 and software development kit, supporting developers to quickly write and publish applications. Developers can deploy applications in Aleo's program registry without relying on third parties, reducing platform risk.

Scalability

Aleo adopts an off-chain processing method, where transactions are first computed on the user's device, and only the verification results are uploaded to the Blockchain. This approach significantly improves the processing speed of transactions and the scalability of the system, avoiding network congestion and high fee issues.

Consensus Mechanism

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

1. Block 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 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; encourages Provers to become Validators by staking tokens, thereby enhancing the network's decentralization and computational power.

Aleo allows developers to create applications without gas limits, making it particularly suitable for applications like machine learning that require long runtimes.

Latest Developments

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

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

2. Validator Incentive Program: Launched on July 1, aimed at validating the new puzzle mechanism. The program will run until July 15, during which 1,000,000 Aleo points will be allocated as rewards.

3. Token Supply: The initial supply is 1.5 billion tokens, with an initial circulating supply of approximately 10%. These tokens primarily come from task rewards and will be distributed over the first six months, including rewards for staking, running validators, and validating nodes.

4. Testnet Update: This is the last network reset, and after completion, no new features will be added; the network will be similar to the mainnet. The reset is to add ARC-41 and the new puzzle feature.

5. Code freeze: Completed a week ago.

6. Validator Node Expansion Plan: The initial number of validator nodes is 15, with the goal of increasing to 50 within the year and eventually reaching 500. To become a delegator, 10,000 tokens are required, while becoming a validator requires 10 million tokens; these amounts will gradually decrease over time.

Synthesis Puzzle Algorithm Update

Aleo recently updated the latest version of the puzzle algorithm, which no longer focuses on the generation of zk proof results, but rather emphasizes the generation of intermediate data witnesses before producing the proof.

Consensus Process

1. The calculators compute the puzzle to construct solutions and broadcast them to the network.

2. Validators aggregate transactions and solutions for the next new block, ensuring that the number of solutions does not exceed the consensus limit.

3. The legitimacy of the solution needs to verify whether its epoch_hash and proof_target conform to the latest values maintained in the network, while the number of solutions included in the block must be less than the consensus limit.

4. An effective solution can earn consensus rewards.

Synthesis Puzzle core process

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

2. In each epoch, all the calculators in the network need to compute the same EpochProgram, which is sampled from the instruction set using a random number generated by the current epoch_hash.

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

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

5. Calculate all witnesses and convert them into a sequence of leaf nodes of the merkle tree.

6. Calculate the merkle root and convert it into the solution's proof_target, checking if it meets the current epoch's latest_proof_target.

7. In the same epoch, multiple solution calculations can be performed by updating the input of EpochProgram through the iterative counter.

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