The largest funding round in the history of the zero-knowledge industry was completed by Aleo, a next-generation public chain, on February 7, 2022 in San Francisco. the Series B round was led by Kora Management LP and SoftBank Vision Fund2 with participation from Tiger Global and Sea Capital, Samsung Next, Slow Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), raising a total of $200 million and ultimately valuing the company at $1.45 billion.
This is Aleo’s Series B round of funding, following a $28 million Series A round led by a16z in April 2021. Following the Series B round, Aleo has the potential to raise another $70 million in Series B+ funding led by Softbank and Samsung.
At this point, Aleo has entered the public eye, attracting the attention of many technology practitioners, capital institutions and traditional server vendors in the crypto field.
Why is Aleo so sought after by capital?
As far as the current phenomenon is concerned, I find that users’ privacy is urgently needed to be solved, because we have a phenomenon: if you search something, the next one will push such content to you, which means our privacy is exploited by some big Internet companies.
Of course, this is not strange in the era of big data, but when we chat, you have said what you like, and then that content is pushed to you, think how terrible it is. I’m afraid that in the current era of big data, we have no privacy, we exist naked, so solving the problem of human privacy must be the next top priority for the development of the Internet.
Aleo happens to be the first platform that provides completely private applications, which is naturally sought after by capital.
Venture capital institutions have the sharpest sense, they find the most important pain point that needs to be solved nowadays, so they choose to invest in this track, and Aleo is the largest financing I have found so far.
What are the core competencies of Aleo?
The core competitiveness of Aleo project cannot be separated from its core technology. A series of technologies, applications and development environment formed around zero-knowledge proof are the important components of Aleo project. As follows:
Leo Compiled Language: A programming language adapted from rust, specifically for developing zk applications. It is designed to allow developers to build intuitively on the Aleo blockchain, laying the foundation for a private, decentralized ecosystem that eliminates as many cryptographic knowledge requirements as possible for developers.
Aleo Studio: zkp-based ide integrated development environment, the first IDE for writing zero-knowledge applications in Leo that allows users to easily publish their personal Leo projects as a package to the ecosystem.
Aleo Package Manager: As the first development package manager for zero-knowledge circuits, it includes collaboration features such as team and organization, making it easy to collaborate with friends and colleagues on private applications. In addition, Aleo Package Manager integrates with Aleo Studio, making it easy to import and publish new packages without leaving the editor.
snarkOS: snarkOS is designed to protect data in decentralized networks and verify proofs representing state transitions/transactions. snarkOS is extensible and users can perform arbitrary functions without permission; isolates malicious user functions that cannot interfere with honest users’ computations and data; and functions for process communication can exchange data between them.
wagyu: a crypto wallet generation library.
snarkVM: a zero-knowledge proof virtual machine. Unlike the ethereum VM, snarkVM enables clients to run computations off-chain and publish only proofs of on-chain computations.
aloe sdk: A software development kit from the Aleo project.
zkCloud: zkCloud enables programmatic interaction between protected identities, which can be users, organizations, DAOs or more. It allows off-chain newcomers to execute computations in an environment, programs in which they are executed in a private, secure, and inexpensive manner, and run without time constraints.
posW: concise proof of workload, with underlying computation based on ZKP instead of hash functions, is a new consensus mechanism that is energy efficient.
What can Aleo bring to users?
With Aleo, users can access a truly personalized world of web services, taking data back from big companies and platforms while managing their own data.
What are the differences and advantages of Aleo compared to other public chains?
General public chains such as ethereum chain emphasize decentralization, de-trusting, distributed storage, openness and transparency, but cannot meet users’ demand for privacy. aleo develops the function of privacy protection on top of the inherent characteristics of blockchain, which is the difference and advantage of aleo and other public chains.
What stage of development is Aleo currently in?
Aleo has completed the first and second tests, and the second phase of the third test was soft-launched on November 10. The code has been fully disclosed for technical adaptation, and the process is revenue-free, and the incentives for miners need to wait for about 4–8 weeks more. The mainline is expected to go live in late 2022 to Q1 2023.
What are the changes in Aleo’s third beta test?
The changes in Aleo’s third test are in two main areas:
1. Deployment and use of custom programs on the network will be supported.
2. The team has modified the network protocol, moving from PoSW to AleoBFT’s consensus mechanism! (PS: Aleo has transformed its consensus model into a hybrid architecture of provers and verifiers called AleoBFT).
How do provers get rewarded in AleoBFT?
In AleoBFT, provers solve and generate coinbase proofs (PoSW) on the network in exchange for a portion of the coinbase reward in each block
Through the above questions, we can see that the rise of ALEO is not accidental, and we should continue to pay attention.
