Aleph Zero

Project roadmap

  • Core chain
  • Governance
  • Smart contracts
 
Completed
Peer-reviewed consensus protocol

Aleph asynchronous BFT consensus protocol appeared on AFT'19 peer-reviewed conference: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3318041.3355467

Proof of Concept Golang implementation

The PoC implementation is available in our repository (https://github.com/aleph-zero-foundation/consensus-go) and served as a basis for the first benchmarks.

 
Completed
Golang consensus benchmarks

Testing the sole consensus mechanism has yielded an impressive result of finalizing data corresponding in size to 89600 transactions per second with the sub-second latency.

Threshold ECDSA PoC Implementation

The implementation served as a basis for protocol benchmarks in the paper.

 
Privacy: Liminal-ZK and Liminal-MPC research

Researching the zero-knowledge proof subsystem of the native privacy layer on Aleph Zero. Detailed roadmap under construction.

 
Completed
Native coin transfers

Minting AZERO and allowing it to be freely transferred among different parties.

Polkadot.js integration

Integrating with wallet, basic explorer and developer tool at azero.dev

Rust implementation of AlephBFT

Reimplementing our consensus and setting up the chain using Substrate - a modular Rust framework for blockchain creation.

Validator rotation

Developing mechanism allowing validators to automatically switch places in the committee.

 
In Progress
Account explorer

Allowing users to see advanced account statistics.

Validator elections

Aleph Zero validators will be reassigned for each session, based on the sum of their own stake and funds staked on them by the community.

Basic smart contract capabilities

Adding WASM-based smart contracts to Aleph Zero blockchain, together with deployment tutorials.

Nomination pools

Providing better nominator experience by allowing multiple users to jointly stake their tokens.

Hardware wallets integration

Allows to store AZERO on Ledger and Parity Signer hardware wallets.

 
In Progress
Basic node update mechanism

Preparing for future chain upgrades to be performed on-the-fly, i.e., without the chain downtime.

Basic Smart Contract Templates

Including both backend templates, and frontend integration with wallets.

Metamask Snap integration

Providing plugin for Metamask based on the Metamask Snap feature.

Validator dashboard

Explorer showing status of validators and their advanced statistics.

 
Liminal 1.0: on-chain ZK-SNARK proof verification

Substrate pallet for verifying ZK-SNARKs with smart contract API that will enable integrating privacy components into Aleph Zero dApps

 
To Be Done
The Foundation's Committee Role

At this stage, foundation nodes will still keep their permanent positions in the committee, but the committee size will grow so that the majority of seats will be occupied by community validators chosen in the permissionless manner.

Smart contracts tooling

Enhancing developer experience with a handy debugger and easy to set-up local development environment.

 
Private token standard

Enabling simple creation of shielded tokens with ERC20-like API.

Liminal 2.0: private smart contracts engine

Enabling applications written in DPC private computation paradigm, where private state is stored on user machines.

 
To Be Done
Moving to full community-governance

Giving away privileged positions of foundation nodes in the committee and enabling full community governance over future chain updates.

 
Liminal 3.0: MPC based general smart contracts

Enabling smart contracts to store their own private state under and perform MPC computation on it. Enabling general private DeFi and governance.

Private applications

First private applications deployed on the mainnet, including private DEX, and private governance system.