Aleph Zero 2024 recap: Laying a strong foundation for growth into 2025

2024 was a year of building for Aleph Zero with strategic partnerships, governance votes, events, integrations, ecosystem expansion, and core network and Common developments. As we head into 2025, let’s take a look back at Aleph Zero’s key milestones over the past year! 

New partnerships made

Aleph Zero added a significant amount of new partnerships in 2024. Firstly, web3 tax reporting software leader Koinly integrated AZERO for the 1M+ users of its crypto tax management platform. The platform automatically synchronizes data from all connected sources—exchanges, wallets, and blockchain addresses—and imports all your transactions (including exact times and market prices). You can still use it for the 2024 tax season, along with Blockpit as an alternative.

Next, DappRadar was also integrated with the Aleph Zero network. This is a key platform for discovering dApps across all blockchains and product categories. Additionally, with Lukka, Aleph Zero on-chain monitoring went live. While the Aleph Zero Snap was also added to MetaMask Snaps, so you can now transact with Aleph Zero network native assets on MetaMask using your Aleph Zero wallet. 

Then, together with Oxford University, Aleph Zero joined the HomeDAO initiative incubate ZK use cases. HomeDAO is a startup society based in Oxford for Web3 founders, which is focused on the growth and incubation of startups dedicated to the construction and growth of the third web. The main goal of Aleph Zero House has been to find and support interesting use cases that showcase the capabilities of Aleph Zero and drive value to its ecosystem. See3, a project focusing on synthetic media provenance, has been the result of this initiative.

Another trailblazer that Aleph Zero partnered with this year was Techstars—the most active pre-seed investor in the world. As an Innovation Member for Techstars’ Web3 Accelerator Class of 2024, Aleph Zero is now working with some of the most innovative startups building in web3. There were 12 startups in the 2024 program, which received up to $120,000 in funding. In addition to monetary assistance, they gained access to Techstars’ global network of mentors, investors, alumni and corporates, along with commercial and technical support from Aleph Zero as an Innovation Member.

Next, Galxe, the leading platform for web3 community growth and engagement, integrated Aleph Zero for on-chain tasks and community rewards. Galxe boasts a remarkable reach of over 12 million unique users and has been instrumental in accelerating the expansion of major platforms like Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, alongside collaborations with over 3,600 partners through engaging reward-based loyalty programs. While the integration of Across Protocol (Ethereum’s fastest cross-chain bridging solution) into Aleph Zero EVM is helping drive fresh liquidity into our ecosystem, along with empowering users with rapid, affordable, and secure interchain transactions. Across will also power the interchain capabilities of zkOS.

Additionally, Rarible—one of the world’s top NFT marketplaces—went live on Aleph Zero. Collections from Upcade and DRKVRS are already available to mint.

Thanks in part to these integrations, Aleph Zero was recognized as one of the top 50 blockchain projects in CV VC’s Top 50 Report. CV VC is an early-stage venture capital investor focused on global startups using blockchain technologies.

Shaping the future of stablecoin use and regulation in Europe and beyond

2024 was also a year of building with regards to stablecoin developments on Aleph Zero. Firstly, we joined the Digital Euro Association to begin work on shaping the private and public digital Euro. Next, we formed a partnership with Stablecoin Standard, where Aleph Zero is engaging with many of the top stablecoin issuers around the world (currently representing 17 differently denominated currencies, including CAD, CHF, EUR, GBP, HKD, JPY and USD). The objective here is to enable users of the Aleph Zero ecosystem to have multiple safe harbors on-chain that they can settle in—no matter where they are based.

Additionally, the launch of 1USD with fiat-backed stablecoin innovator Archblock represented a big milestone for the Aleph Zero network—and a step forward in the wider growth of privacy-focused stablecoin solutions. As the first stablecoin to go live on Aleph Zero’s unique layer-1 blockchain infrastructure, 1USD will provide users with a dependable, secure, compliant, and privacy-focused medium of exchange, which is fully backed by cash and cash equivalents at a ratio of 1-to-1 with the US dollar. The setup of 1USD is still pending as the project undergoes the path to obtaining the required licenses. Aleph Zero also adopted Circle’s Bridged USDC Standard. This development is enhancing our ecosystem by reducing liquidity fragmentation and providing a clear path toward native USDC adoption.

Core technical releases 

The Aleph Zero development team was working hard in 2024 to deliver innovations and ensure the network’s stability and performance. First up was the Aleph Zero EVM Mainnet go-live. Developed in collaboration with Gelato using Arbitrum Orbit, Aleph Zero EVM is a specialized layer 2 that brings EVM-compatible ZK-privacy and relies on the Aleph Zero WASM L1 as a Data Availability layer. Additionally, the MOST bridge now connects Aleph Zero L1 and Aleph Zero L2.

Next, the Shielding Demo went live on Testnet with ZK proofs of 0.27 seconds reported. This is the most basic privacy function made possible by zkOS where you can “hide” or shield your tokens. We’re building zkOS to become the easiest-to-use and secure privacy on the market—and with the Shielding Demo, you’re now able to:

• Privately transfer assets to any Aleph Zero EVM address;
• Protect your transactions from being tracked;
• Take advantage of rapid ZK proof generations (proofs of 0.27 seconds were reported on newer iPhones—with our future goal being sub 0.1).

The Aleph Zero token explorer aScan also went live. aScan is a comprehensive token explorer built for the Aleph Zero ecosystem, focusing on PSP22 tokens. PSP22 is Aleph Zero’s equivalent to the ERC-20 standard on Ethereum, offering a framework for creating fungible tokens that are versatile, secure, and easy to integrate within the ecosystem. The PSP22 Verified Tokens List was also released shortly after. This list is a powerful tool you can use to defend yourself from malicious actors making shady tokens.

Governing Aleph Zero as a community: The network is now powered by you

2024 saw Aleph Zero launch its governance DAO, enabling the community to vote on major proposals for shaping the future of the network. The results of our first votes included AZERO getting a 520M supply cap and exponentially decreasing inflation. 

The max supply cap is a major change designed to create more predictability and long-term stability for the network’s economy. While the new inflation model introduces an exponentially decreasing rate of emission, starting with 27 million AZERO minted in the first year after the changes are implemented. This has replaced the previous model, which minted 30 million AZERO annually, and is intended to progressively reduce inflationary pressure over time.

Additionally, in regards to driving further network decentralization, Community Validators have taken over block finalization from the Aleph Zero Foundation (AZF). Now, 9 out of the 10 AZF validators have been replaced with selected community validators based on their performance–in the next step, the process will be fully permissionless, allowing any community validator that meets performance and reliability criteria to participate in block finalization. AZERO holders can also now earn rewards by supporting privacy features through relayers (in addition to existing validation options). Relayers are essential to Aleph Zero zkOS and private on-chain transactions—and enable users to earn rewards for hosting them. 

Common as the main interface for using zkOS–and more

Common began the year with a renewed focus on product design and building the AMM DEX and frontend, along with adding bridging capabilities to Ethereum via MOST. From the moment the Common team released the DEX, they began changing their development approach with a stronger emphasis on releasing smaller features more often. 

As a result of this new approach, the team was able to deliver multiple releases around improving the Common Web App and introduce support for meme coins that were verified by Verified Tokens List, all while taking community feedback into account. During this time, we also had four seasons of Alephoria with thousands in Common Drops rewards, and an explosion in memecoins thanks to project.lol.

Next, the Common team rolled out two major features:

• Bridging to Aleph Zero EVM via MOST;
• Introducing stable-swap capabilities. This led to much more efficient trading on the USDT/USDC pair and later to the onboarding of Ike and its liquid sA0/AZERO pair.

After the rollout of these two labor intensive features, the team took some time to regroup and refocus on the grand Common vision. A big piece of this vision was bringing shielding to the market as fast as possible in the form of a product that will start as a private wallet and grow into an all-in-one web3 personal finance app. In delivering on this, the Common team concentrated on three key pillars:

• Privacy: Working in tandem with the zkOS team to build the Common Shielder Demo and then supporting its development within the browser extension on Mainnet. In doing this, the Common team also showed that it is possible to achieve subsecond client-side ZK proofs on certain mobile devices;
• Yield: Bringing utility to the CMN token and putting forth the concept of Common Yield—a yield optimizer within Common;
• Personal Finance: Laying the foundation for card and IBAN integrations.

The recent launch of Common Extension V1 on Aleph Zero EVM Mainnet was also a large milestone. This is a side-panel within your browser that enables you to shield and send your AZERO tokens privately. In subsequent releases, you’ll see private-to-private transfers, dApp connections, and transfers without limits.

As we move into 2025, the upcoming Common App will serve four functions overall. It will give you a unified privacy account for all chains. It will ensure you have the highest sustainable yield across the entire EVM. It will enable smooth interchain trading. And, it will allow you to seamlessly use your crypto in the real world via Apple Pay and Google Pay. 

Common will provide a user-friendly interface akin to neobanks, but at the same time (and unlike neobanks) it will distribute 100% of the fees back to token holders. Common is also leading with privacy. It brings a critical additional layer of omnichain privacy through Aleph Zero’s zkOS, with AZERO being used as gas fees for all shielded transactions across the EVM space.

Broadening market availability

In 2024, Aleph Zero was integrated on Bitpanda, which is one of Europe’s most compliant and innovative digital asset exchanges. This came after Aleph Zero’s initial inclusion in the Bitpanda Spotlight, a platform dedicated to showcasing experimental and emerging projects in the crypto space. We also entered the Indian market with a listing on CoinDCX, which is one the largest Indian exchanges. It’s backed by Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, and Bitmex—and boasts over 14 million users. In addition to this listing, our expansion across India and Asia has seen substantial growth with Aleph Zero India holding a ton of engaging developer events and Aleph Zero Japan also following suit. 

Additionally, Bitfinex—one of the leading digital asset exchanges—listed AZERO/USDT and AZERO/USD pairs. Bitfinex was one of the first crypto exchanges and has over 3 million active users, 200 tokens listed and 400 spot trading pairs, along with over 60 perpetual futures contracts. 

While in the realm of decentralized exchanges, Camelot, the largest DEX on Arbitrum, also recently went live on Aleph Zero EVM. Facilitating more than $75 million in TVL and daily trading volumes of around $200 million on Arbitrum, Camelot is opening up a whole new era in decentralized finance on Aleph Zero’s ecosystem. 

This is an area that our business development team is constantly working on, so keep checking back for more exchange listing announcements.

Setting the tone as a blockchain made for innovative enterprises 

Over the past year, Aleph Zero really carved out a niche for itself as a blockchain network that is ideal for innovative enterprises making their transitions to web3. Our first enterprise partnership of 2024 was with stc Bahrain—the leading telecom provider in the Gulf region. 

Through this alliance, Aleph Zero became an official “Pearling Path” partner of stc Bahrain. 

Their Pearling Path initiative is a web3 launchpad program designed to accelerate web3 adoption in the Middle East.

Additionally, in an effort to bolster this partnership, and expand Aleph Zero’s reach in the region, we also worked to attain official Sharia compliance certification from the esteemed Shariyah Review Bureau (SRB). This achievement marked a pivotal step for Aleph Zero as we are set to expand further into Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets in 2025.

We also expanded our enterprise partnership portfolio in Europe. We began this by officially working with Bank Pekao in tandem with Degen House on Archiv3—a project that is tokenizing and preserving Polish cultural heritage on the Aleph Zero blockchain—with digital reproductions securely stored in the Arctic World Archive (AWA). This initiative combines blockchain technology with a commitment to cultural preservation, ensuring the safekeeping of Poland’s artistic legacy for future generations.

This year also saw the launch of Aleph Zero’s NEON Program. The Next-Gen Enterprise and Opportunity Navigator (NEON) program is now supporting global enterprises on their journeys into web3, fostering innovation and widespread adoption of blockchain technology. The program has already brought in big names such as Deutsche Telekom, stc Bahrain, Camara, Pairpoint, and Techstars. Overall, it is delivering dedicated resources, expert guidance, and ease of access to innovative technology to facilitate deeper integration of privacy-enhancing blockchain technology across various business use-cases.

An expanding ecosystem 

2024 was a strong year for the Aleph Zero ecosystem. To date, Aleph Zero’s Ecosystem Funding Program (EFP) has helped launch over 70 projects across a diverse set of web3 sectors.

Let’s dive into some of the key ecosystem highlights from 2024: 

• Ike: With Ike’s Liquid staking going live this year, you can now simultaneously stake AZERO and participate in Aleph Zero’s DeFi ecosystem;

• Syncra: This year, DAO creation and management platform Syncra developed aScan (Aleph Zero’s token explorer) and was critical in launching Aleph Zero’s Governance DAO;

• Panjea: Blockchain-based social media network Panjea launched their MVP to the Aleph Zero community with 40,000 tokens being generated daily in the first year to reward creators;

• Vib3s: A white-label solution for the sports and entertainment industry, Vib3s launched this year to enable organizations to introduce the benefits of web3 into loyalty programs with a web2-like user experience thanks to its account abstraction features;

• Harbour: Innovative payments platform Harbour is bridging traditional banking and blockchain rails with stablecoins—users can transfer from their bank to their favourite self-custody wallet in under 5 seconds;

• IDRISS: Crypto and AI expansion pack IDRISS launched this year to enhance your on-line experience with crypto micropayments, DAO vote alerts, and trading widgets—directly within your browser;

• Tubbly: Walk-to-earn platform Tubbly exceeded 300,000 WASM transactions on the Aleph Zero blockchain and has some big things coming in early 2025;

• Holyheld: Together with Holyheld, the Aleph Zero team began exploring the enablement of privacy-enhanced card payments;

• idOS: web3 identity layer idOS announced their $4.5M seed funding round, which included a host of leading ecosystems and organizations. They also published their OpenFi Ecosystem Map and Thesis. OpenFi is a movement for building an open-source, interoperable, and modular financial system;

• AZERO.ID: On-chain domain name service AZERO.ID had renewals go live on Mainnet and saw over 4,000 total domains registered;

• Upcade: Multiplayer Skill-to-Earn gaming ecosystem Upcade progressed immensely this year on its vision for onboarding the next billion users to web3 gaming with Upcade Pass. Upcade Pass enables users to get started instantly with a phone number, passkey, or social media logins—and +25k Upcade Pass wallets were created in 2024.

Key promotional events and conferences 

For 2024’s promotional events and conferences, we kicked off the year with a major hackathon. CTRL+Hack+ZK was the first self-hosted Aleph Zero virtual hackathon. This three-week innovation journey began with an Aleph Zero ecosystem town hall, where various innovative teams developing on Aleph Zero gave a run-down of their value propositions and the progress they’ve made over the past few months. This was followed by the kick-off of the hackathon and three days of workshops packed with educational programming forums and hands-on mentorship. 

Challenges were thrown down across five different tracks: Telco, Degen/DeFi, DiD, Tooling and Infrastructure, and Gaming. Prizes of up to $75k in bounties, $500k in EFP funding, and $10k for the best overall project were up for grabs. We also hosted the Degen Hack hackathon and conference organized with one of Poland’s largest banks (Bank Pekao) and the Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs.

Next, the Aleph Zero team gave a strong showing at this year’s Warsaw Blockchain Week, appearing at—and sometimes hosting—multiple unique events, among which we co-hosted an event for startup founders with Techstars and Bank Pekao for startup.

The team also attended a ton of side events at Devcon Bangkok, which was one of 2024’s biggest crypto conferences. Antoni Zolciak and Adam Gagol appeared on numerous panels, showcasing Aleph Zero’s unique potential and privacy-enhancing capabilities.

A look into 2025

2024 was the year of laying out the foundations.

2025 is the year of expansion with real products, for real users.

Here are some of the key developments coming in 2025:

• zkOS with interchain shielding, transfers between private accounts, permissionless relayer system, and programmatic plugins for developers.
• Network decentralization with community validators taking over block production and finalization processes.
• Common Mobile App powered by Aleph Zero’s zkOS, with card payments, IBAN accounts, smart yield features, and interchain capabilities.
• Common Extension Updates, bringing interchain privacy, dApp connections, support for ERC-20 tokens, and more.
• New use cases for zkOS.
• Progressing business development in India, Japan, APAC, and the US.

We want to give a huge thank-you to the Aleph Zero community for your support. We’ve made it through 2024!