Aleo

Aleo was founded in San Francisco in late 2019 by Howard Wu, Raymond Chu and Collin Chin, built on the Zexe paper's execute-off-chain, verify-on-chain model, with its own Leo language, snarkVM and snarkOS for programmable privacy.

In April 2021 Aleo raised a $28 million Series A led by a16z; in February 2022 Kora Management and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 co-led a $200 million Series B at a $1.45 billion valuation, with Samsung Next and Tiger Global joining.

Aleo's mainnet went live on September 18, 2024 with 1.5 billion ALEO issued initially. But airdrop allocation and miner payback timelines triggered a broad backlash, and the token peaked at $6.7 on September 28 before a long decline.

In July 2025 Aleo shipped snarkOS 4.0, adding encrypted sender data to the record model that only the recipient can decrypt, versioned contract upgrades, and a 100,000 ALEO stake per proof solution, leaving room for compliance audits.

In the second half of 2025 Aleo pivoted to private stablecoins: USAD with Paxos Labs in October, a USDCx pilot through Circle's xReserve in December, and private payroll with Toku in January 2026, making stablecoins its institutional narrative.

In February 2026 Aleo completed the V13 hard fork to stabilize validator participation, but the token had fallen to about $0.05, more than 90% below its mainnet peak, with some 350 ecosystem projects yet to convert into on-chain revenue.

In October 2026, Aleo released snarkOS v4.0.0, its biggest upgrade since mainnet: transaction confirmations are about 500% faster, and ARC-46 prover staking went live, with the minimum stake rising quarterly to 1.25 million ALEO by the end of October 2026, increasing token holding demand.

On the ecosystem side, the first privacy stablecoin USDCx launched in July alongside partnerships with institutional wallets such as Utila; Ledger hardware wallet support for shielded ZK transactions arrived in May; and on October 15, Zebec launched privacy payment streaming based on USDCx/USAD. On September 24, ALEO surged 145% in a single day to $0.0409. No buyback or burn has been disclosed.

Around August 4, 2026 snarkOS v4.9.0 activated consensus V18 at mainnet height 20,794,000, adding deployment-density checks and translation-key support for dynamic calls into credits.aleo; Leo 4.4.0 tightened cross-program calls so they may read another program's state but not write it directly or through a nested call. On October 19 V22 took effect at height 22,962,000, raising the mapping limit to 128 per program and making private transfers about 8% faster on CPU. An October upgrade to the record model added encrypted sender information that only the recipient can decrypt, serving audit needs without public exposure.

The prover staking requirement starts at 100,000 ALEO per solution and rises quarterly to 2.5 million credits over two years, with staking rewards paid on top of puzzle rewards. Nodes now gossip blocks as soon as they receive them, which the team says makes confirmations about 500% faster.

Future strategy and roadmap: Aleo turns privacy from a property of the chain into the compliance control layer for stablecoins and enterprise payments: USAD went live on mainnet in February 2026 and the default-private Shield wallet shipped, after USDCx reached mainnet through Circle's xReserve, and view keys make selectively disclosable, auditable private dollars sellable to payroll, treasury and supplier-payment teams. Its June Stablecoin Privacy paper invokes the GENIUS Act directly, arguing the privacy layer is the missing infrastructure for institutional stablecoin use, and it plugs into enterprise workflows through Paxos' Global Dollar Network and Request Finance. The pledge to hand over community governance by the end of 2026, alongside $298 million raised in total, is the capital behind a long compliance fight.

Howard Wu, Co-Founder and CEO of Provable (formerly Aleo Labs). Trained in EECS at UC Berkeley, he studied zero-knowledge proofs under the Zcash founders, co-authored libsnark, DIZK and Zexe, co-founded Aleo in 2019 and now runs Provable.

Alex Pruden, former CEO and Executive Director of the Aleo Network Foundation (departed). He holds a West Point degree in international relations and a Stanford MBA, served nine years in the US Army as an infantry and Special Forces officer, was an a16z crypto investing partner and became Aleo CEO in 2022.

Michael Beller, Co-Founder and CFO. He has long led finance and institutional relations and was a core operating figure.

Collin Chin, a core developer, drove the design of the Leo programming language and tooling and has owned the privacy application stack since 2019.

Raymond Chu, Co-Founder. He studied computer science at UC Berkeley, interned in software engineering at Amazon and IBM, was software project manager at Blockchain at Berkeley and co-founded Aleo in December 2019.