July was an exciting month for the Aleo ecosystem, with several projects gaining great momentum in development and community growth. Meanwhile, Aleo zkMeetups were also taking place worldwide. Here are some of the highlights from the month.

Aleo's Jam-Packed Calendar: More Excitement Ahead

Last month saw a flurry of exciting Aleo events and zkMeetups. The action kicked off on July 1 with the Aleo San Francisco and Kyiv zkMeetups. CEO Alex Shipp visited Kyiv to deliver a keynote speech. The next day, Aleo held a successful Shanghai zkMeetup where Aleo IOU shared their product. On July 8, Aleo hosted zk(Tapas y Tazas) at the zkHaus in Barcelona, Spain.

The second half of July was just as busy. Aleo participated in ETHCC in Paris from July 19. They also organized and took part in other events that week. On July 20-21, Aleo visited Toronto for TRUST/LESS: ZK, Compute and Automation and held the Aleo zkGames PGC. July 29 saw both the Aleo Hangzhou zkMeetup, where Avail Wallet presented and Aleo at the Crypto Lounge Experience in Barcelona.

The excitements are just getting started! Over the next few months, Aleo has an action-packed schedule filled with can't-miss events. First up, from September 6-11 during the Korean Blockchain Week, Alex and a few team members will be in Seoul hosting zap-tastic zk happenings.

Then they’re off to Singapore for Token2049, the premier Web3 conference in Asia running September 13-14. Aleo will be networking and spreading the zk love at this mega gathering. Finally, on September 20 the Aleo crew lands in London for zkSummit 10! It's going to be a nonstop rollercoaster ride of zk adventures, so strap in and get ready!

The Expanding Aleoverse: Updates from Aleo Builders

Aleo has announced an extension to the deadline for submitting applications for their Deploy Incentives program on Testnet 3 Phase III. The original deadline was end of July 2023, but this has now been pushed back to August 21st, 2023. The reason given for extending the deadline is to accommodate developers who have faced challenges deploying programs on Aleo over the past month. Aleo acknowledges that the ongoing updates to the consensus algorithm on the testnet have caused periodic network outages and instability. This has made it difficult for developers participating in Deploy Incentives to reliably deploy and test programs.

By extending the deadline by almost a month to August 21st, Aleo aims to give developers more time to create and submit their applications without having to deal with testnet instability. The extension demonstrates Aleo's commitment to support its developer community and ensure participants can submit quality applications for evaluation despite recent technical difficulties on the testnet. Yet, leading projects of different catagories are making moves in the past month.

Leo Wallet

Last month, Demox Labs' biggest milestone was undoubtedly launching Privacy Pride, the first native NFT collection on Aleo. Alongside the collection, they debuted the Art Factory - a repository for building NFT projects on Aleo using the Leo Wallet. It aims to simplify launching NFT projects for developers and non-technical community members alike.

The Art Factory represents the first fully-featured dApp on Aleo, with all operations enforced on-chain and private keys managed within the Leo Wallet. As Aleo's inaugural NFT collection, Privacy Pride showcases the platform's unique ability to mint provably rare digital art without compromising user privacy. Between the Art Factory's accessible tools and the Privacy Pride collection demonstrating Aleo's capabilities, Demox Labs is paving the way for private NFTs to flourish on the network.

IZAR

IZAR has become the most active project on Aleo, with total addresses surpassing 3k and cross-chain transactions exceeding 20k. This is an impressive milestone, considering Aleo's testnet still has a high barrier to entry and successfully executing transactions is time-consuming. As an interoperability protocol, IZAR currently connects the Aleo and Ethereum ecosystems. Notably, the team won two prizes at ETHShanghai: first place in the main track's “Infra & Public Goods” category, and a side track award sponsored by Linea.

According to the IZAR Odyssey blog, the team will soon launch Crusader NFTs to celebrate passing 10k total transactions. They recently gave us a sneak peek on Twitter. It's likely IZAR will continue bringing users and asset liquidity across blockchains once Aleo launches its mainnet by year's end. They also plan to incorporate novel governance models and zkSnark multi-sig verification to further enhance capabilities and user trust, ideally avoiding the centralization issues plaguing most cross-chain bridges.

IZAR has built impressive momentum as the most active Aleo project. Upcoming milestones like Crusader NFTs and mainnet launch signal exciting growth ahead as IZAR cements itself as a premier interoperability protocol. Its technical ambitions could provide solutions to trust and centralization problems in the cross-chain bridge ecosystem.

PrivX

Moving on to PrivX, the first order book DEX built on Aleo. It's another remarkable project garnering attention within the ecosystem. Looking at blockchain history, DeFi projects often catalyze ecosystem success by attracting traffic and liquidity early on. Currently, few competitive Aleo projects are live, making PrivX uniquely positioned. It's the only order book DEX, contrasting with other teams building AMM swaps.

PrivX has implemented core trading features and integrated TradingView for robust charting. Major upcoming obstacles are the time-consuming local snark-proof generation per trade and high gas fees stemming from testnet parameters.

PrivX is also launching AuraWave NFTs on Aleo to reward traders in their 5-week Hall of Fame Trading Challenge started July 14. Three tiers of NFTs represent achievement levels:

• Obsidian: Awarded to the top 100 overall volume leaders.

• Orchid: Awarded to the top 100 volume leaders of each week.

• Jade: Awarded for participation to traders ranked 101-500.

Most exciting is PrivX's development of an ARC-20 token standard, similar to Ethereum's ERC-20. This could enable essential DeFi building blocks on Aleo by laying the foundation for customized token minting and circulation. PrivX has already released its ARC-20 creation platform, with newly launched tokens expected to trade soon.

Mori’s Shell

Over the past month, Mori’s Shell has made impressive progress on Uniland’s front-end development. They designed an appealing UI with thoughtful layouts and smooth interactions. The team also overcame technical challenges creatively, implementing visually striking animations for voting, gas returns, and gameplay. Their innovations enhanced user experience and engagement. With excellent technical skills and creative problem-solving, Mori’s Shell advanced Aleo’s front end and made key contributions to the ecosystem’s growth this past month.

SuperBuffers

SuperBuffers is a middleware designed to accelerate applications on Aleo. As a potential crucial infrastructure project, it could substantially improve the Aleo user experience. SuperBuffers debuted last month with a blog post outlining its design. It enables delegating expensive ZKP computations to more powerful machines like GPUs while preserving privacy.

Acting similarly to an L2 sequencer between dApps and the L1 chain, SuperBuffers plays a role akin to the Espresso System. By offloading intensive computations off-chain, SuperBuffers will unlock the speed and privacy required for mass Web3 adoption. However, as infrastructure, ample research, design, and implementation is required before benefits are realized.

Once integrated into the ecosystem, SuperBuffers' impact could be immense. By optimizing the performance of ZKPs, it addresses a major bottleneck for on-chain use cases. While an undertaking of this complexity takes time, SuperBuffers is tackling a challenge fundamental to Aleo's vision of wide-scale private applications. Its solutions will provide the necessary performance boost when the technology matures.

Aleo IOU

The last project I’d like to cover here is Aleo IOU. If you’re not familiar with it, I could explain it in simple words, AleoIOU enables peer-to-peer lending and borrowing of Aleo tokens through smart contracts on the Aleo blockchain. It uses KYC for real-name authentication and requires authorization by both parties for key operations to ensure secure transactions. All voucher status changes are immutably recorded on-chain with sensitive data encrypted. Effective vouchers create traceable on-chain transfers that are automatically destroyed when repaid. Below is their roadmap you could refer to.

Summary

It's exciting to see the Aleo ecosystem gaining momentum, with pioneering projects emerging across critical sectors. More launches are surely on the horizon as developers finalize offerings. For example, Avail is building the first decentralized, private mobile wallet using Aleo, led by an expert team in Malta. Mature projects like Fox Wallet are also working to integrate Aleo's testnet.

Aleo's privacy-preserving capabilities will unlock new potential for projects across the board. Early movers like IZAR, Leo Wallet, PrivX, and SuperBuffers are laying the foundations in areas like DeFi and infrastructure. As more builders leverage Aleo's strengths, we'll see novel use cases and experiences previously unattainable.

While the ecosystem is still young, the current pace of development is promising. With advanced teams shipping products tailored to Aleo's features, the network effects of its technology and community will compound. There's palpable excitement and momentum during this pioneering phase. Though challenges remain, Aleo is proving itself as a unique environment for the next generation of private applications.

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