Glossary
Aleo
A privacy-first Layer-1 where every transaction is a zero-knowledge proof generated client-side, with a custom DSL (Leo) for writing private smart contracts.
Aleo is a Layer-1 designed around private programmable computation. Every transaction is a SNARK proof generated locally on the user's device; the chain only sees and verifies proofs, never the underlying inputs or contract state.
Developers write contracts in Leo, a Rust-flavored DSL that compiles to circuit form. Aleo ships native ALEO token issuance, PoSW consensus, and a decentralized prover marketplace. The trade-off is that all execution being private has real performance costs — proving is slow compared to a public VM.