Aleo. What will we remember of the year 2022?
Hi! The new year is getting closer and closer. Let’s take stock of the past year in the Aleo project. During this time, there was a long way to go, there were a lot of interesting events. And Aleo is already one step away from launching mainnet! But first things first.
January. Leo Playground became available. Now it’s our usual platform for testing ZKP-based programs, but it was only at the beginning of this year.
Leo Playground is another great tool to provide an easier way to learn the Leo programming language, which was created by Aleo. Go to Leo Playground at: https://play.leo-lang.org/
Also this month was the rewarding phase of testnet 2. It has been extended until the middle of February. Miners who were online during the period from January 5 to 12 received 125 credits, regardless of whether you found a block or not.
At the end of January, the first official community office hours were held. During this event, Aleo’s core team answered questions about the project’s ecosystem.
February. The month began with the traditional Aleo Community Call #12. This time the theme was the Ambassador Program. The key event of the month also took place in the first week. Aleo Raises $200M in Series B. The fundraising round was led by Kora Management LP and SoftBank Vision 2 Fund, with participation from Tiger Global, Sea Capital, Samsung Ventures, Slow Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). This Series B is significant as it represents the largest fundraising round ever in the zero-knowledge industry. The funds raised were used to develop the project. And by the end of the year we are already one step away from launching the main network.
The testnet 2 reward period ended on February 15. We have the following results:
Ending Height: 309,115
Block Hash: ab1we3jrmq3p349gssnl3j8ejz7aacqkt4a05w542e5rsdqmujhuy9qddnmwu
Immediately after the end of testnet 2, another Aleo Community Call was held. Topic: Ecosystem Update.
On February 25, language channels were introduced in Discord. Thanks to this event, the community was able to reach new people.
March. The big news is the launch of the Ambassador Program.
The purpose of the Ambassadors Program is to bring together people from all over the world who are passionate about Aleo and want to support the project by driving adoption, raising awareness, and strengthening the community.
Here are the numbers:
Total verified in first round: 1664
Total submitted in second round: 974
At the end of the month, the ZPrize competition was announced. Zprize brought together the best teams to solve the scalability and privacy challenges facing Web3 today.
April. In the middle of the month, they announced two contests: Meme Contest and T-Shirt Contest. Since I made memes about Aleo, I want to show one of them.
There was also a weekly Aleo Community Call.
May. On May 18, Aleo COO Alex Pruden gave a brief technology talk followed by a short question and answer session.
A sports competition also came to a close.
I’ve been releasing a YouTube news video with updates from April and May. You can watch it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yt6y5YJlag
June. There weren’t many events this month, but I have a lot to show you. In June, I suggested a “Freezelight” contest. In it, participants would draw beautiful pictures using light. You can see a video of my work here: https://youtu.be/_gbpmc9GUuM
July. Despite the summer months, work continued to boil on. Technically, there were the following changes in snarkVM: Adds a serializer, updates commitment, removes deprecated components; Updates serialization on inputs and outputs, full program IDs are now required. In snarkOS: Update deps
In the community: they were at Eth CC and did a joint event with Anoma; they were in Seoul at Eth Seoul and also at Korean Blockchain Week.
August. Testnet 3 was announced.
There have been active preparations for Testnet 3. There have been so many technical changes that the description would take more than one page. Conducted workshops for developers, Aleo Community Call and much more.
September. This month I also released a news release on the channel. You can check it out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67JfnLPEiFo .
There was a new round of recruitment of ambassadors, 1500 people were able to participate.
Berlin, September 11–15: Aleo will be hosting a hacker house throughout Berlin Blockchain Week.
Aleo Community Call and other events also took place.
October. This month also saw a lot of technical changes every week. My knowledge of programming is not so great, so you can learn more details in the project’s Discord.
There were changes to the Ambassador program. About the current system, I have a video on youtube. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDAEYDAF-Z8 .
Developers introduced a system of Aleo points for affiliates. Members get a certain number of points for each job. In order to improve your level, you must earn a certain number of points.
November. The Aleo community has passed the 40,000 user point.
The developers also announced the launch of the second stage of Testnet. The second stage is aimed at provers. Aleo introduced a new consensus mechanism called AleoBFT. This was the last step before launching the rewarding phase of Testnet.
December. It Happened! The rewarding part of Testnet 3 has been launched. Anyone can set up a node. You can use a remote server, which will cost you about $150.
Server requirements:
CPU: 16 cores (preferably 32 cores)
RAM: 16GB of memory (preferably 32GB)
Storage: 128 GB of disk space
Network: 10Mbps bandwidth for uploading and downloading data
This is how 2022 has gone in the Aleo community. A huge journey has been made, we are now one step away from launching the main network. See you in the next article!
