We are pleased to announce the release of Aleo Testnet 3. With this version, we are one step closer to launching our mainnet and realizing the vision of a decentralized private computing ecosystem outlined in our original Zexe research paper.
Today, Aleo is launching the first phase of Aleo Testnet 3.
We are excited to announce the distribution of 25 million Aleo tokens (ALEO) to our developer, prover, and validator communities over the course of three stages in Testnet 3. We also encourage Aleo hackers and enthusiasts to participate in our upcoming bug bounty program.
Aleo Testnet 3: Developers, Provers, and Validators.
Aleo Testnet 3 will be released in three (3) stages to our community. Here are the highlights of each stage.
Stage 1 - Developers (August 2022)
Developers can start writing, deploying, and executing programs.
The Aleo team will bootstrap the network with a genesis beacon.
Stage 2 - Provers (September 2022)
Provers begin solving the coinbase puzzle (PoSW) to earn credits.
The Aleo team launches bug bounty programs for snarkOS and snarkVM.
Stage 3 - Validators (October 2022)
Validators start producing blocks and earning rewards.
Provers with 1 million Aleo tokens will be eligible to become validators.
The Aleo team will bootstrap the network with AleoBFT for Stage 3.
Please note that during Aleo Testnet 3, the network will be periodically reset based on discoveries from the bug bounty program.
Aleo Programs: Zero-Knowledge Applications are here.
In the coming weeks, Aleo Testnet 3 will be updated to allow developers to start writing, deploying, and executing Aleo programs on the network.
Here is an early preview of some exciting features in Aleo Testnet 3:
Deploying and executing programs on the Aleo Virtual Machine (AVM)
Solving the coinbase puzzle (PoSW) to generate new credits
Validating blocks using AleoBFT and generating coinbase proofs
Batch proving and verification on our Marlin + Plookup proof system
Support for multi-signature wallets using FROST threshold signatures
Once developers have the opportunity to deploy their first Aleo program, the Explorer will be updated to start showcasing applications from the network. We will invite our developer community to participate in the review of top Aleo programs alongside the Aleo team.
For developers eager to learn how to write Aleo programs, please join one of our many developer workshops in the coming months. As developers start learning how to write Aleo programs, we encourage the publication of Medium guides and blog posts to share how to set up and write Aleo programs.
Join our Discord to stay tuned for our developer competition rules and reward announcements.
AleoBFT: A new consensus hybrid architecture.
During Testnet 3, Aleo will transition its consensus model to a hybrid architecture for provers and validators called AleoBFT.
AleoBFT combines the instant determinism of new blocks from validators with the computational power of provers to introduce coinbase supply into the network. The design of AleoBFT incentivizes validators to stay active by producing blocks and incentivizes provers to expand the proving capacity of the Aleo ecosystem.
A comprehensive blog post about AleoBFT will be released during Stage 3. However, we believe this transition is an important and exciting step for our ecosystem, and we want to share it with our community now so that our developers, provers, and validators can prepare for these upcoming upgrades. This transition will allow Aleo to achieve a more fair distribution of network supply and further incentivize decentralization while maintaining strong performance guarantees.
First, AleoBFT guarantees instant determinism for every block.
Once validators produce and reach consensus on each block, transactions are confirmed. This approach solves the shallow fork problem for validators and improves node stability. Additionally, it creates a smooth application experience for developers on Aleo. For users, this improves UI/UX by enabling fast confirmations in wallets, explorers, browsers, and applications. Finally, this guarantee makes interoperability with other ecosystems simpler.
Second, AleoBFT ensures the network remains sufficiently decentralized.
As demonstrated in Testnet 2, block production became highly centralized as a few provers developed specialized hardware for zero-knowledge cryptography. While ZPrize is helping create a fair competitive environment, the fact remains that a few entities will dominate the network, introducing centralization and censorship risks for users.
By using AleoBFT, we are able to separate the role of block production from coinbase generation. Validators are now responsible for producing blocks, and provers are now able to compute proofs at the scale they desire. AleoBFT aims to incentivize provers to become validators by staking at least 1 million Aleo tokens on the network. This ensures that provers can maintain their censorship resistance by becoming representatives of all consensus-reaching provers.
Third, AleoBFT incentivizes provers to expand the proving capacity of the Aleo ecosystem over time.
In AleoBFT, provers solve and generate coinbase proofs (PoSW) on the network in exchange for a portion of the coinbase reward in each block. With this new model, provers are now computing the core subcomponents of zero-knowledge proofs - namely, multi-scalar multiplication (MSM) and fast Fourier transform (FFT) - while earning a percentage share of their proof in each block reward.
For provers, AleoBFT allows the generation of zero-knowledge proofs at any scale with any hardware, without competing for a "winner takes all" effect in each block. Therefore, unlike Testnet 2, this process means that provers running on commodity hardware will be able to participate and earn coinbase rewards. These coinbase rewards are shared between provers and validators, incentivizing provers to accumulate tokens over time as they become validators. By incentivizing a broader distribution of rewards, we believe these new mechanisms will expand the capacity of the Aleo network, providing greater proving power for Aleo developers and users.
Aleo Mainnet: L1 for decentralized private applications.
As the Aleo ecosystem moves closer to launching on its mainnet, the Aleo team would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone in the community who has made Aleo possible.
With this milestone, we want to celebrate the hard work of over 30,000 Discord community members, 100+ ambassadors, 50+ apprentices, and 30+ masters. You have all contributed to making this ecosystem a vibrant, organic, and decentralized community.
As we launch the final testnet, we hope that every community member can help make Aleo Testnet 3 a great success in showcasing the power of our zero-knowledge cryptography.
The Aleo team will be hosting workshops in the countries/regions where our community is located, and if you would like to organize one with us, we hope you reach out. Your contributions have been and will be crucial for the success of Aleo on Testnet 3, the mainnet launch, and beyond.
In the coming weeks, the Aleo team will release a series of blog posts diving deeper into the incentive program and how it works. Additionally, we will update our documentation pages to reflect the new features and technologies introduced in Aleo Testnet 3.
We look forward to sharing this journey with you as we launch Aleo, the first decentralized platform for fully private applications.
To stay up to date with the latest on Aleo Testnet 3 and our future developments, please join our Discord and follow us on Twitter.