As the Aleo project is about to be mainnet, the market has become active, and more and more participants are getting ready to take action. You may face various pitfalls or doubts when participating in Aleo. Based on the recent feedback and private messages from many netizens, let’s sort out the valuable information about Aleo for everyone, so that everyone can keep the information symmetrical, avoid falling into pitfalls, and improve self-prevention.
Today I would like to introduce to you the most popular Layer 1 privacy public chain - Aleo. As the leading project in the zero-knowledge proof track, it is very popular with global capital.
ALEO: SoftBank, Samsung, and a16z are vying to invest. The most eye-catching top project in 2023 will raise a total of US$298 million.
Project Description
Aleo 是第一个使用零知识证明解决隐私问题，同时保证可编程特性的公链。具体而言，Aleo通过零知识证明保护用户隐私，包括隐藏参与者、金额、智能合约等交互细节，同时让用户有选择权（Aleo提供了可选择退出隐私模式，确保最终的控制权属于用户，并可以自行选择他们所希望公开或隐藏的信息）；通过使用零知识密码学，还将智能合约执行转移到链下，支持各种Dapp，保证其可拓展性（每秒数千笔交易）
Features and Benefits
Aleo和其它公链的不同且独特之处在于对隐私的保护和链上可扩展性。当前区块链搭载的智能合约有两个很大的限制：它们在设计上是完全公开、透明的，因此不允许隐私的存在；它们不能扩展到数百万、更不用说数十亿的用户，意味着无法支持亿万用户级别的线上实时游戏或活动。针对上述现象，Aleo网络基于零知识证明密码学，解决当前公链既保护隐私又支持处理海量数据（可扩展性）的难题。既解决当前互联网数据泄露的困境，又完善当前区块链数据信息公开透明的缺点，同时还实现和当前互联网平台相媲美的海量数据实时处理及丰富的可扩展性，这是Aleo项目为市场关注的特别之处。下图能够更直观、清晰地了解Aleo网络的特色：
development path:
Aleo was established in 2019 and has won the favor of top investment institutions in two rounds of financing A and B. It is worth mentioning that in the Series B financing completed in February 2022, Aleo became the largest-ever financing project in the field of zero-knowledge proof.
The Series B financing was led by Kora Management LP and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (SoftBank Vision Fund 2), with participation from Tiger Global, Sea Capital, Samsung Next, Slow Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), raising a total of US$200 million. This brings the company's valuation to US$1.45 billion.
This is Aleo’s Series B financing following the US$28 million Series A financing led by a16z in April 2021. In August 2022, Aleo received another US$70 million in Series B+ financing from Softbank Vision Fund 2 and Samsung Next. This means that a total of $298 million was raised in Series A, Series B and Series B+.
Its Series A financing was US$28 million led by a16z, and its Series B financing was US$200 million, led by Kora Management LP and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with a project valuation of US$1.45 billion. Later, it received US$70 million in Series B+ financing led by Softbank and Samsung Next, with the total financing scale reaching US$298 million, becoming the largest financing in the history of the zero-knowledge industry.
Project comparison:
Team situation
Aleo团队由来自谷歌、亚马逊和Facebook等公司，以及加州伯克利分校、约翰霍普金斯大学、纽约大学和康奈尔大学等世界知名研究型大学的世界级密码学家、工程师、设计师和运营商组成。
The picture above shows the original team members, now Alex Pruden has been promoted to CEO of Aleo, and Howard Wu serves as chief technology officer and is also a co-founder. The reasons why they founded Aleo or joined Aleo stem from the stories and sense of mission behind them. Understanding them helps us understand the original intention and great vision of Aleo as a new Internet tool or application.
We can find that the Aleo team is very strong and their academic backgrounds are excellent. For example, Howard Wu is a senior expert (OG) in the field of zero-knowledge proof cryptography, and his related scientific research results have also attracted much attention. It seems natural that an excellent team can attract the attention of top investment institutions.
Tokenomics
机构对Aleo的看好也反映在其代币分配上。Aleo credits（积分）的初始供应总量为10亿枚，在发布之初，早期投资者持有57%，团队持有20%，公众持有15%，捐赠者持有8%（如激励测试网、社区大使的积分均来自此处）。假设没有任何初始持有者出售其代币，那么5年后，早期投资者将持有33%，团队将持有11%，公众将持有55%，而捐赠者仅持有1%。
In addition to the initial 1 billion points, another 1 billion points are generated through mining (PoSW). The mining rules adopt a halving output rule similar to that of Bitcoin, which is halved every 3 years. Within 1-3 years, each block can produce 100 points; from the 4th to the 6th year, the output of each block is halved to 50 points; from the 7th to the 9th year, The output of each block is halved again to 25 coins; starting from the 9th year, each block maintains the output level of 12.5 coins until all positions are mined.
This halving rule encourages miners to participate in mining as early as possible, which plays a vital role in the launch of the project and the security of the network.
Summarize
The four-year agreement has expired and the mainnet is about to be launched. Aleo wants everyone to realize that ZK can be used for both blockchain scalability and privacy purposes.
There are many friends who are not very familiar with this project. Let’s put it this way, currently, those who are doing decentralized storage cannot avoid the two big brothers Fil and AR.
FIL, I believe everyone knows that it was launched on October 15, 2020, with an opening price of 26U and a maximum of 237U, nearly 10 times more profits. Of course, more importantly, FIL’s mining machines have enabled more investment enthusiasts to successfully transform into district For blockchain enthusiasts, it can be said that FIL has allowed more currency participants in the country. Everyone knows how many of them have become rich.
AR, so far, can be said to be the leader in the decentralized storage sector. It was released in 2018, with an opening price of 0.7U on the first day and a maximum of 90U, with a profit margin of nearly 130 times. The advent of AR has solved the problem of data storage in the blockchain. There are issues with scalability, data availability and cost. This makes district center storage more efficient and faster. Today, with the rapid development of Web3, AR is an unavoidable topic #sol #aleo