ALEO’s vision for a private and scalable blockchain ecosystem

Aleo is the leading developer platform for building full-private, scalable, and cost effective decentralised applications. In just a few years since it began, Aleo's vision to revolutionise the transaction of blockchain has resonated with many big names, such as Coinbase Ventures, a16, Samsung Next and softbank to support their work. So what makes this company so fascinating, and is this something you should dabble in as well?

Howard Wu, a life dedicated to cryptography

The centre of Aleo would be its co-founder Howard Wu. Howard Wu was well known to be an accomplished expert in the field of zero-knowledge proof cryptography who has published many significant academic papers on this topic.

Howard Wu's interest in ZKP started during his days at the University of California Berkeley, after he encountered ZKP on a professor's resume.

While pursuing his master's, also at Berkeley, he dedicated a large chunk of his school days on research and the publication of two paper which has been proven to be the foundation of zero knowledge space and Aleo: DIZK and Zeke.

Impressed even the biggest investors

The Aleo project has attracted a lot of investors, including big names such as Coinbase Ventures, a16, Samsung Next and softbank.

In its press release, a16 said that " We first met Howard Wu, Aleo's founder, back in 2018. We were immediately impressed by the depth of his knowledge of cryptography and distributed systems, and by his vision for crypto's potential."

The General Manager of Samsung Next also said that "We believe that Aleo's solution will enable private and scalable decentralized applications. That's why, together with Softbank Vision Fund 2 and other investors, we conducted a $70 million B+ round of financing for Aleo."

Given how Aleo has impressed these major investors behind its back, I think this gives Aleo greater credibility and which would propel more potential users to try out their platform.

An elegant solution to privacy

Aleo uses a decentralised system and zero-knowledge cryptography to safeguard her data on the internet, giving users the best of both worlds - limitless computing power while maintaining complete privacy. Aleo was specially designed as a blockchain with features like top notch privacy, an open source, making it well suited to tackle the challenges associated with blockchain adoption.

Core components of Aleo

Leo is a domain-specific language developed by Aleo for writing zero-knowledge circuits. It was purposely designed to be developer-friendly, enabling the creation and testing of privacy focused applications without having to understand the intricacies of cryptography.

SnarkVM is a zero-knowledge virtual machine Aleo has created for privacy. SnarkVM has the op code and the primitives that support the system to support the privacy creation of web3 architectures which the other virtual machines on the market lack.

SnarkOS - Is Aleo’s proprietary operating system that works with SnarkVm for the proof generation.

Who would find this application useful?

Businesses that hope to run their operation and data on a globally consistent platform would benefit greatly from the strong privacy mechanism.

Government services would find this feature useful in instances which require user privacy such as voting. In this case, the voting results must be public, but the confidentiality of every vote must be maintained.

Gaming developers can use Aleo to create blockchain-based games where players' actions and transactions are kept private, enhancing user experience and security.