TM Rating: 75%
Review Date: March 16th, 2022
Aleph Zero is a Proof-of-Stake public blockchain with private smart contracts built from first principles. It combines an original aBFT consensus protocol with a privacy framework based on
Zero-knowledge Proofs and secure Multi-Party Computation with the Substrate stack. The ecosystem it forms consists of AlephBFT Consensus, its novel DAG protocol, Aleph Zero Cloud, a decentralized file storage solution similar to IPFS, private smart contracts, Liminal, its multichain privacy layer usable across all networks that bridge to Aleph Zero, and other more common solutions such as oracles and a decentralized exchange.
Aleph Zero has a solid team that consists of 20 people, including 5 math and computer science PhDs who have accomplishments like ACM ICPC World Finals, first prize in International Mathematics Competition, and Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship in their name. The team also has business experience working at big firms including IBM, ABB, Stellar, Codewise, Capgemini, and even ING Bank.
On their GitHub repositories, the development team is displaying a solid activity with a respectable amount of continuous contributions. In addition to that, the team, which is putting emphasis on the security of the protocol being built, has already submitted its aBFT consensus protocol for auditing by Trail of Bits, a well-respected Blockchain, and smart contracts auditing auditor.
With a wide range of potential applications, Aleph Zero can operate as a public ledger as well as a private instance connected to the public ledger. This allows enterprises to build decentralized projects that benefit from the speed and security of a public DLT platform while still being able to preserve the privacy of their transactions.
While multiple DAG-based solutions have been tried with different approaches, none have been able to succeed beyond theory and there is often a big amount of effort put into research as was the case for Aleph Zero but also for Iota, another DAG-based solution. By adding the use of ZK proofs for privacy features, and its own consensus protocol, Aleph Zero brings a major differentiator, but it will be difficult to succeed where other similar solutions failed.
