Layer 1 Project Aleo Raises $200M

Aleo has raised $200 million in a series B funding round to build a new Layer 1 blockchain focused on scalability and user privacy.

Aleo Pulls In VC Backing

Aleo, a Layer 1 blockchain focused on scalability and privacy, has closed a $200 million funding round. The team announced in a tweet that it hoped to “build the next-generation of private apps powered by zero-knowledge proofs.”

The funding round was closed at $1.45 billion valuation. It led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Kora Management, with participation from notable VCs as Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Samsung Next, Slow Ventures, and Sea Capital.

Aleo was created by Howard Wu, who based it on his original research on a novel cryptographic primitive called ZeXe.

The Layer 1 blockchain will employ a security model in which decentralized applications are hosted on-chain but most computations take place off-chain. To do this, Aleo will rely on of zero-knowledge proofs. Notably, such proofs are currently being used by existing blockchain scalability solutions on Ethereum, including Polygon Miden, StarkWare, zkSync, and Loopring.

The Aleo testnet is currently live with a mainnet launch planned soon. Once that goes live, blockchain will reward validator nodes with its native token, Aleo Credits. The token will be used to pay for computational resources in the Aleo blockchain ecosystem.

Aleo has also released Aleo Studio, a development environment like GitHub that will be used exclusively for zero-knowledge proofs. The team has also developed a new programming language named Leo. Both of these resources are geared toward simplifying the experience  of deploying applications on the network.

As of today, Aleo has raised a total of $228 million. It closed a Series A round of $28 million led by a16z in April 2021.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owns ETH.