Recently, I have been researching projects in the field of privacy, and the star project Aleo is being followed by many users, but the information shared by the project is limited or scattered in some corners, so I am considering the need for a systematic understanding of the project and compiling "Aleo blockchain 101".

Q1：Why is the snarkOS called an Operating System?

Well, snarkOS does not typical meaning “Operating System”, It belongs to the “Aleo blockchain” and the DApps on the Aleo chain need to have an executable “System” environment -→ snarkOS;

Q2：What are the main advantages of snarkOS/Aleo compared to similar privacy-focused blockchains, like Cosmos-compatible Secret Network?

Answer：

Q3：What's the difference between the Client/Miner/Operator / Prover?

Client: Participate in the network as an ordinary node and broadcast the messages, capable of sending and receiving blocks

Miner: mine the blocks and then get rewards, capable of producing new blocks.

Operator: An operating node is a full node, capable of coordinating provers in a pool.

Prover: A proving node is a full node, capable of producing proofs for a pool, It’s one of the miners verifying the transactions and then broadcasting to another node. The main work is: Monitor the ledger and detect operators for malicious behavior;

Q4：What does the meaning of “Coinbase tx” in the Aleo block?

The coinbase is the content of the 'input' of a generation transaction, like Bitcoin’s coinbase

and "Coinbase tx" also means the transaction that mints new tokens which are included in every block for Aleo.

Problems: and now(05/30/2022), generating coinbase tx is currently slow in aleo as its computationally expensive