Progress
Recapping a month of steady progression: Becoming web3’s privacy layer—for any dApp and on any chain
Mar 6, 2025
AI Summary
February was a month of steady progression for Aleph Zero. Last Thursday, we held a State of Aleph Zero livestream, which covered all the critical updates and next steps towards realizing our overall vision.
Most importantly, we detailed how Aleph Zero is evolving into a Shielder Network—a privacy layer that’s accessible across multiple chains—with Common serving as the user interface. This means we’re gradually shifting the messaging from zkOS to the Shielder Network and Shielder SDK, as we believe it better reflects what we’re building—and it has already been well received by our community.
The Aleph Zero team is also progressing with the integration of the privacy infrastructure across multiple chains. Aleph Zero, the Shielder Network is designed to be the universal privacy layer, seamlessly integrating with major ecosystems like Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Monad, Berachain, and Sonic—with more to come.
Aleph Zero’s Shielder has already been deployed on three EVM testnets – Arbitrum, Aleph Zero EVM, and Base. These will proceed to Mainnet after the completion of a security audit on April 7th (pending any relevant fixes).
AZERO will continue to act as the main utility token behind Aleph Zero’s privacy infrastructure. Its usage will increase with deployments on other networks, as it will become the fuel powering all private transactions and shielding
Common is currently undergoing an audit by Kudelski Security, while new features are also being rolled out. These include account transaction history, Nightly App Connect, and WalletConnect integrations. Common Smart Yield’s ERC-4626 yield aggregator is also set to go live around the Spring Release. The CMN token will fuel a range of DeFi activities on Common across various chains, starting with fees for using smart yield, and progressing into other platform fees.
Aleph Zero’s mission has never been clearer. In deploying across various ecosystems, it will become the Shielder Network for web3, which will always be wherever the users are. This means on-chain privacy for everyone—everywhere.
Privacy on-chain, transparency within the community: Aleph Zero Office Hours
In addition to our monthly progress updates on X, the Aleph Zero and Common teams are also now hosting weekly office hours. This is your chance to ask questions, chat with team members, and get an overall feel for how things are going in the projects. Joining is simple—just stay on the look out for the next one on Telegram. Office hours happen each week on:
The full February recap
February was a big month of progress, with Aleph Zero pressing forward on multiple fronts. We couldn’t cover everything in the latest State of Aleph Zero X Space and Office Hours, so let’s dive in and break down all of last month’s developments.
AZERO trading goes live on WhiteBit
You can now get AZERO on WhiteBit, one of Europe’s largest exchanges. WhiteBit moves 5.4 billion in volume every day across more than 700 trading pairs. It offers a wide array of onboarding options and its own user-friendly smartphone app for convenient trading on-the-go. In preparation for the listing, Aleph Zero Co-founder Adam Gagol joined the WhiteBit team for an exclusive X Space. WhiteBit also held a Deposit Race contest with a prize pool of 5500 AZERO.
Learn more about how this listing is expanding Aleph Zero’s global reach.
The official Common Mobile waitlist is live—sign up now!
After revealing the tokenomics for the CMN token, the Common Mobile waitlist live! This means that you can be among the first to test the future of web3 privacy on Common with exclusive early access. Test out all the newest features, and provide your feedback and have a real impact on user experience! Over 7,000 users have already signed up.
Mainnet Uqbar 14.2 and Testnet Menard 15.0
Aleph Zero’s latest Mainnet upgrade (version 14.2 “Uqbar”) went live, marking another milestone on the network’s path to full decentralization. With this release, all validators have successfully upgraded to Aleph Node 14.2, bringing critical improvements to block finalization and heightening overall network robustness.
“Menard” Testnet 15.0 goes even further in terms of decentralization, laying the groundwork for removing the setup with reserved community validator committee spots for block finalization. Now, the algorithm chooses a community validator for block finalization sessions that meets the performance criteria based on the ABFT Performance Monitoring introduced in this release. You can already check validator performance here.
An AI-generated art contest and an op-ed in CryptoSlate
This month, we also held an AI-generated art contest, which was open to the entire community. Participants were tasked with creating unique AI-generated artworks related to Aleph Zero. The winning submissions were selected for creativity, aesthetics, and how well they linked to the vision of Aleph Zero. Congratulations to @oveckyn69, @1Omeich, and @DeVille_379 who took home 1,000 AZERO each.
Additionally, Aleph Zero Co-founder Matthew Niemerg was featured in an exclusive CryptoSlate article, which detailed why businesses today cannot thrive on radically transparent blockchains, as they typically rely on a careful balance of confidentiality and transparency to operate. Matthew breaks down how Aleph Zero can help enterprises attain this balance on-chain.
Around the ecosystem—more games, more users
The Aleph Zero ecosystem is continuing to deliver with new apps and more users coming to Aleph Zero. For example, Upcade unveiled “Fear & Greed: The Game,” which represents a big milestone in their mobile-first market strategy—where they are looking to capture their share of the 2.4 billion users in the mobile gaming market. Additionally, with Upcade Points, you can now participate in the $UPCD airdrop!
Aleph Zero EVM landed amongst the leaders again on Token Terminal’s new tokenholder count—pushing almost 22,000 new accounts. This was largely thanks to Tubbly and their campaigns. In 2024, over 40,000 players claimed 19,647,690 tokens on Tubbly. They were ranked first among Aleph Zero dApps—and 4th in the overall Move2Earn category on
DappRadar. They have also surpassed 500K WASM transactions on Aleph Zero.
Check out Tubbly’s full 2024 summary.
GFTN Forum (fka Japan FinTech Festival): March 3-7, 2025 | Tokyo, Japan
Don’t miss Aleph Zero co-founder Antoni Zolciak’s participation during this year’s FinTech week in Japan discussing how to build new financial corridors. It’s a high-profile event organized by Japanese Financial Services Agency.
Go to event
We’ll be back next month with another monthly progress update and another State of Aleph Zero X Space. You can view the most recent State of Aleph Zero X Space here.
