We’d like to discuss the most pressing issues and outline the next steps for the Aleph Zero community. 

In this relatively extensive update article, we will cover the most frequently asked questions from the last couple of weeks: 

• Governance vote 

• Marketing strategy
• Aleph Zero EVM Launch 
• Sports & entertainment use case 
• zkOS 
• Community tokens 
• Liquidity 
• Common Mobile 
• L1, institutions, data availability
• idOS usage of Aleph Zero’s ZK
• Common’s iceberg orders 
• ZK Card Payments 
• Privacy fan engagement apps & loyalty 
• Emails, phone, and Twitter accounts instead of wallets

There’s a lot to go through, so let’s dive in. Note that this particular update does not include the developments in the Ecosystem Funding Program; that will be provided separately.

Governance vote 

Date: Second half of August

With the launch of Syncra, AZERO holders will be encouraged to vote on: 

• Enabling the community to submit their proposals and vote on them, including, of course, the ones shared via Discord already. Thank you for so much activity around this!
• Capping the supply of AZERO: as a baseline option, the Aleph Zero Foundation would like to propose capping the maximum supply at 500M AZERO and introducing exponentially diminishing inflation. This logic of a capped maximum supply will be included as one of the options in the first voting stage. 
• Adjusting inflation: If the logic above is selected, the second voting stage will then focus on determining the specific hyperparameters, with proposed maximum supply values ranging between 400M and 800 M.

The governance vote is scheduled to begin as soon as August 25th. It will last 7 days, and the agreed-upon changes will be implemented no longer than two weeks after the vote concludes. The Foundation wallets will be excluded from the vote. 

Detailed rules of how the governance process will be executed will be published in the next few days.

How will it work? The Aleph Zero GOV token

Based on the voting power, there will be two voting stages around inflation:

First Voting Stage: stakeholders will choose from several proposed options for adjusting inflation parameters. Examples of these options include capping the maximum supply with exponentially diminishing inflation, simply changing the yearly minted amount, and other similar approaches. This vote will be multiple choice, allowing participants to select their preferred option from those provided.

Second Voting Stage: once the preferred option is chosen, the second stage will focus on deciding the specific hyperparameters within that option. Participants will vote on the particular values for these hyperparameters. The median value, weighted by the voting power, will be chosen as the final hyperparameter. 

Supporting market liquidity

Date: expecting finalization of the ongoing negotiations within the next 2-3 weeks.

The Foundation has been negotiating with various market-making organizations to deepen the available liquidity (in turn making the markets more attractive for traders) and simultaneously build cases for more listings on major centralized exchanges.

This has been a priority over the past two months and will remain so until finalized—which we expect to occur within the next 2-3 weeks.

At the same time, we’d also like to thank the existing market makers for their support and advice.

Refining the marketing strategy

Date: ongoing, with expected wrap-up by mid-August

We hear your concerns about the effectiveness of marketing activities, especially those related to broadening the community behind Aleph Zero. We’re aiming to improve both the quality and reach of our campaigns constantly, and are now in the middle of planning a new set of activities. 

With the underperforming sentiment around the Alephoria rollout, necessary steps will be taken to refine the value proposition for holders and potential newcomers to the community. A combination of various factors contributed to an impact lesser than expected, such as unclear communication around the objectives of the campaign, not enough suspense, and not enough external contributions and collaborations. 

The refreshed marketing approach will be based on several assumptions (note that this is not the description of a funnel but an overview of what we seek to improve): 

• Branding, proper visuals, and quality content have always been the cornerstone and essential elements of our marketing approach. That being said, we do hear your requests for making the communications more straightforward and less technical, so that’s one of the first changes to be introduced. 
• External collaborations with projects, influencers, and community leaders: while all of those have been our focus for a while, we feel that there’s been a lack of creativity around these engagements and too little custom content built around each specific partnership. 
• More online events and video content: we plan to hold more town halls, community Twitter Spaces, and cross-platform engagement. We understand our focus has been primarily on building and development, and the engagement with the community has been lacking.

While the assumptions above might seem simple, they bring us back to the core of Aleph Zero’s marketing — one that put us on the map in the first place.

Treasury management

A kind reminder that the Foundation Treasury Management rules are available here.

Ongoing integration with a leading chain tracking software

Date: early September

This one is currently being finalized for both the Aleph Zero L1 and the Aleph Zero EVM, making the adoption of the ecosystem more trackable and visible across several major platforms. Hint: it’s a Terminal.

Major custodian integration

Date: December

Another of the AZERO integrations to be finalized this year—and already signed—involves a leading custodian firm. This activity will further boost the availability of AZERO in various markets by making the integration easy.

Aleph Zero EVM Launch

Date: Mid-August

The introduction of the Aleph Zero EVM is a pivotal development. It makes the ecosystem compatible with popular Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) tools and allows developers to build Solidity smart contracts and applications with a high degree of account abstraction.

This compatibility also eases the integration of AZERO with exchanges, bridges, and tracking tools, making the ecosystem more accessible and adaptable.

Current status: the EVM testnet is already live, and the mainnet launch is scheduled to happen in the next weeks, marking a significant milestone in Aleph Zero’s evolution.

Entertainment/sports organization to launch their app on Aleph Zero EVM

Date: Mid-August

TLDR:

• What: A sports entertainment organization is launching a mobile app; 
• Immediate userbase: Approx. userbase to be onboarded in the initial phase: 250,000; 
• Total user base and viewership: 3-4 million per event;
• Concept: each user equals a new AZERO wallet, the app is powered by a loyalty token exclusively deployed on Aleph Zero, and AZERO is used for transfer fees in an abstracted form. 
• Functionality: wallet set-up, on-chain payments, and crypto payment cards with token cashback.

As a result of a collaboration with an entertainment/sports organization that reaches around 3 to 4 million people with each of their events, we have been working together on a mobile application built on the Aleph Zero EVM. The app allows the users and audience of this organization to set up their account with just their phone number—and in the meantime, an AZERO wallet is created for them in the background in a completely abstracted fashion. The app will also facilitate various on-chain activities and payments, leading to an increased use of the blockchain as adoption progresses.

We’re looking forward to this development going live in just a few weeks. The first phase’s target is an estimated 250,000 users. 

The organization is also partnered up with a major media conglomerate.
Important: The same software is used to create a white-labeled solution that is easily re-implementable for other Web2 firms and communities. The goal is to onboard another wave of users into the ecosystem and the space in general.

zkOS as a privacy layer

Date: Public testnet in early Q4

Aleph Zero is setting new standards in on-chain privacy with its EVM offering, which includes precompiled privacy features. These features simplify zero-knowledge (ZK) privacy, enabling users to “go private” in under two seconds in 80% of cases, thanks to extensive optimizations.

Is this then another “privacy chain?” Not really, as the Aleph Zero EVM aims to, first and foremost, be a vessel for exporting privacy to the broader EVM ecosystem while simultaneously allowing Aleph Zero developers to build with Solidity and benefit from the privacy features at a lower cost than building elsewhere. 

And the first use case is…

Common Wallet: multichain privacy experience

Date: Public testnet in early Q4

We’re working on what we believe is the most innovative and user-friendly privacy product on the market.

How’s it different from your standard non-custodial wallet? 

• It’s a side-panel design that can be with you everywhere; 
• You can stay private while interacting with any supported network; 
• All privacy routing happens on Aleph Zero, in the background, enabling a swift user experience;

How’s it different from other privacy-preserving wallets? 

• You can receive funds from any public address on any of the supported networks directly into your private account; 
• You can use an integrated on-ramp or a bank transfer directly into your private account; 
• You can use a centralized exchange or other external on-ramp app privately, via a one-time address generated by the wallet; 
• Your favorite app does not need to integrate anything for you to use it privately! 
• You can use the side-panel to connect to the account of your choice or create a new, temporary one just for this connection; think of it as disposable Revolut cards!

The initial implementation of Aleph Zero’s privacy technology will be an EVM privacy layer embedded natively within the Common Wallet, which is already functional in a local environment. This integration enhances privacy across all existing and future EVM chains and applications, with each wallet use contributing to an increase in Aleph Zero’s total value locked (TVL) and transaction count due to underlying abstraction features.

There are two main reasons why this is worth your attention: first, it will likely be the first truly multichain private wallet. Wherever you are and whichever network you operate on, you can remain private. Second, Common Wallet will substantially contribute to Aleph Zero’s usage, as every zero knowledge-proof computation will be calculated on the network in the background thanks to account abstraction features. 

P.S.: If you still can’t visualize it, make sure to observe our socials tomorrow!

Supporting community tokens

Date: Q3 2024

With the PSP-22 verified token list and a process for Common listings, we also seek to support independent teams outside of the Ecosystem Funding Program in obtaining listings on various centralized exchanges—as requested by the Ambassador community. 

Common Mobile

Date: Q4 2024

As we gear up to onboard more users from the native crypto space and beyond, we are working on one of the most comprehensive and understandable ways of interacting with on-chain activities.

With Common Mobile, we seek to build a solution that’s described in more detail at common.fi/roadmap—the project is being built in React Native for both iOS and Android. The core idea behind this app is to simplify account management with features like easy account retrieval, IBANs, and payment cards, in a sufficiently non-custodial fashion, to combine various protocols and functionalities into a single, user-friendly interface.

Aleph Zero WASM L1: Institutions and data availability

Aleph Zero’s WASM Layer 1 network is a robust and sufficiently decentralized solution, featuring over 160 validators. It’s a fast, cost-effective, and highly reliable blockchain with over two years of uninterrupted uptime. With the introduction of Aleph Zero EVM, the L1 will continue its path of enterprise adoption, while serving as a secure storage and data availability layer for everything being built on top of Aleph Zero.

We’ll present a use case related to art tokenization in the near future (Q4).

Other developments in progress

Zero-knowledge identity with idOS

Date: Q4 2024 / Q1 2025

As the earliest backer of idOS, Aleph Zero entered this relationship with the goal of building a zero-knowledge identity solution together with the idOS consortium. The goal here would be not only to reach a “no-data KYC” approach eventually but also to enable users to prove that a given fact associated with their identity is correct without disclosing the exact contents of that fact. As an example, a user could prove that they are over 18 years of age without disclosing their actual age—or, that they hold a European passport, without disclosing the exact details. This is a challenging effort from both the technological as well as the regulatory side.

Common iceberg orders (PTWAMM orders)

Date: Q1 2025

The concept of a Time-Weighted Average Market Maker (TWAMM) order was described by Paradigm back in 2021. Long story short, “TWAMM has specialized logic for order splitting and a direct connection to an embedded exchange, providing smooth execution for low gas cost. Arbitrageurs keep prices on the TWAMM’s embedded exchange in line with market prices, ensuring execution near the time-weighted average price of the asset.”

The Common team is currently investigating generalizing iceberg orders into Private Time-Weighted Average Market Maker (PTWAMM) orders. The goal is to accomplish this as the first in the industry and open up a whole new array of interactions with on-chain DeFi. It’s an extremely strong use case for on-chain privacy. 

At the moment, Common is a relatively simple AMM DEX built around convenience and speed; we’re aware that your expectations are/were higher, and we might not have communicated the launch plans loudly enough beforehand. The priority has been to go live with a reliable DeFi environment while pursuing a more advanced design. 

Enter the next phase of the buildout described in the roadmap. Think of Common as taking the best of 1inch, the best of CoW Swap, and adding several privacy-centric features that enable the facilitation of complex strategies, such as the iceberg orders. And yes, you can also use those orders for memes. 

ZK Card Payments with Holyheld

Date: no date set yet

Together with Holyheld, the Aleph Zero team is exploring the enablement of privacy-enhanced card payments, where the link between the user and their card is broken, therefore shielding the user’s real-life spending from the processing entity—yet still being able to prove that the funds have not been spent on illicit purchases. 

Protecting users’ privacy in loyalty and fan engagement apps 

There are two main caveats to on-chain loyalty and fan engagement applications—it’s relatively easy to tie the users’ in-app credentials to their wallet addresses. With Aleph Zero’s privacy, this link would no longer be traceable—protecting the user’s identity and data from prying eyes. 

Using emails, phone, or Twitter handles instead of wallet addresses

One of our ongoing integrations assumes the ability to connect an email, phone number, or Twitter address with your on-chain wallet address. Aleph Zero’s privacy capabilities will break the link between these two. 

Building for essential needs

Ever since the inception of Aleph Zero, our goal has been the same—if we were to boil it down to one thing, it would be to improve the UX in crypto. It sounds simple, but it really isn’t; how do we get Web3 to a state that’s understandable for Web2 users?

Solving the speed of essential operations lies at the core of this challenge. We’ve successfully tackled finality challenges with Aleph Zero’s AlephBFT consensus, and are now en route to solving the speed of privacy-enhanced operations—as privacy itself is the essential building block allowing for optimal user experience.

From the perspective of today’s market, privacy is the ultimate super narrative, resilient to whether the current sentiment is with AI, memes, DeFi, RWA, or other verticals.

Instead of trying to predict what will change in the next 10 years, why not think of what will not? What needs will we, as a society, always have?

Privacy is an essential part of our lives. It has substantial economic benefits and doesn’t have an expiry date. Time will only prove this point—and Aleph Zero will be around to show how to do it the right way.

Track our progress

As we prepare for a series of significant changes and upgrades, make sure to track our progress at alephzero.org/roadmap and common.fi, as well as at alephzero.org/ecosystem. 

Thank you for your feedback, support, and patience.