In the world of encryption and the first Blockchain innovation of privacy, a few names carry weight like Howard Wu. From the founding protocols to compose the participation such as Zexe and Dizk to the launch of Aleo, a layer of Blockchain that is designed from A to Z for programming privacy, Wu appeared as a key engineer of the zero knowledge movement (ZK).
In this edition of Hakiron “behind startup”Ishan Pandey sits with Howard Wu to explore the Aleo roots, ZK encryption, interaction between compliance and privacy, and why the personal computing revolution in Web3 might have already begun.
Ishan Pandness: Hi Howard, it is a pleasure to welcome you in the “Behind the Startup” series. Tell us a little about your background in encryption and what led you to start Aleo?
Howard Wu: Hi Ishhan, thanks for hosting me. My interest in encryption goes beyond a pure charm with mathematics – it is a basic desire to define the meaning of confidence. This has effects throughout our daily life, including the best way to protect our personal data online and in the real world.
If we will benefit from all the amenities offered by the web, how can we be safe? More than 5 billion people use the Internet today. These are trillion of personal data – home addresses, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and even deeper personal information such as medical records.
I had the honor to work with Professor Alessandro Chisa and Professor Downt Song as a researcher at the University of California at the University of California, Berkeley. During my presence in Berkeley, I co -authored the ZEXE research sheet, which means zero deaths, along with Professor Chiesa and her fellow in the minds of Zk Cryptography. Together, we started Aleo and began to create a Blockchain that was developmental, special and proficient, giving developers the ability to bake zero knowledge in the most important use applications including payments, identity and Defi.
Ishan Pandness: Your work on Zexe and Dizk is the foundation in the ZK world. How did your academic research evolve into the infrastructure of the real world adopted by the main protocols?
Howard Wu: I knew during my higher studies that I wanted to have an impact in the real world with my research. When we published the zexe research paper, I received a huge amount of arrivals from the decentralized protocols and VCS alike. The co -founder of Ethereum Vetalek asked me to launch Zexe on ETAREUM, and wanted Defi protocols such as UISWAP & Kyber to use Zexe to build irritable dark bathrooms.
With the amount of interest we received, I decided to leave the faith to market Zexe. We named the company Aleo, which means the execution of the independent professor’s book outside the series. Our goal was simple: Bitcoin brought decentralization, brought ethereum programming, and ZCash brought privacy. Aleo was here to bring the three.
After receiving a preliminary financing of the outstanding VCS VCS VCS, we were on our mission to build special smart contracts and submit this entire new model to the world of encryption. We spent the first three years in building, testing and verifying the validity of our structure. That is, we wanted to design a developed, invaluable system, secret and inter -operating with the rest of the encryption. In our fourth year, we only did that and launched Aleo with Coinbase and Hashkey as our Day-1 launch partners.
Ishan Pandness: Aleo builds a special Blockchain and programmable using zero knowledge evidence. What are the main technical and philosophical challenges in designing a balance between privacy and performance and ease of use of developer?
Howard Wu: From 2019 to early 2020, we spent nearly a year knowing how Zexe was published on Ethereum. We have worked with people from Ethereum Foundation and Grants Community to explore what it takes to spread a special system just like ZEXE on Ethereum.
In this process, we learned a very difficult fact. It is difficult to achieve privacy incredibly on Blockchain by Default. For example, since Ethereum used an account based on the account, the price of each treatment should have been paid publicly through a well -known address for the public. Worse, Blockchain itself had no beginnings to support encryption and dismantling special status. We inherited the design bodies of the list based on the menu when we realized that the future of encryption was forced. The ability to introduce the real privacy of users and applications was almost impossible and costly to achieve on ethereum.
From this, we realized that we needed to build L1 from A to Z. We needed to create an L1 that was separately, and a friend ZK, and an intuitive to non -photographers to show the real power of ZK. From the first day, our focus was to make sure that the developers-without obtaining a doctorate in mathematics or encryption-can write, publish and operate smart contracts without friction. For years, we have been repeated to ensure that our Blockchain structure has made the private state management (DA) intuitive and controlled for our developers.
Ishan Pandness: With proof, you are now focusing on compatible and confidential payments. Why do you think that compliance and privacy should not be mutual exclusive – and how can this balance be achieved?
Howard Wu: The real world’s encryption payments will not achieve a collective adoption until we provide the privacy of transactions for the final user. I often want to share how amazing advantages associated with pushing vendors in encryption – faster settlement times, and cross -border payments – but the faults are huge. Nobody wants all their information from their transactions in the open to everyone, including competitors, data scientists and governments, to see.
Aleo offers compliance at each level of a protocol. For example, every ALEO account is protected by the account display key, which can think and read the transaction information. Compliance departments are allowed to provide a separation between responsibilities and control the arrival of the series of the right parties. For example, you may want to give a software engineer vision for beginners in a graph of transaction and descriptive data, while allowing fraud or compliance teams using the offer keys to reach the history of transactions.
Ishan Pandness: Aleo introduces a new model to publish the application compared to EVM systems. What are the changes when the developers build on Alex, and how does the zero knowledge evidence change from the DAPP model?
Howard Wu: Ethereum was not designed to be privacy first – like most Blockchains, it was built with transparency in its essence. Like most Blockchains, ethereum works like central computers. Time users this full global computer for the computer to operate code at 100 mm seconds. This architecture does not approach and does not provide privacy for its users.
Aleo is designed to expand the range of user transactions and provide real privacy using ZK encryption. Instead of re -implementing each Blockchain transaction, in Aleo, users provide transactions with the proof of ZK for implementation, allowing the network to check that the transaction has been properly implemented.
In doing this, where Ethereum is central, Aleo offers a personal computing revolution. You run your accounts, protect your personal data, and determine what is shared with the public network. It is a truly strong transformation of encryption.
Ishan Pandness: We see a wave of innovation ZK – from ZKVMS to lubrication systems. What do you see is the next main penetration in the encryption of zero knowledge, and what has been overcome?
Howard Wu: The last two years have been an exciting time for ZK researchers and developers. The growth in the interest in ZK technology was Asy. ZK use increased significantly.
I think ZK will be a bridge between web2 systems and Web3 platforms. For example, the rise of recent developments in ZK identity solutions shows how ZK is an answer to many increasing challenges on the web. You can now use ZK to apply an age check. Which, you can attest to the fact that you are over the age of 18 without revealing your birth date for everyone on the public internet. In addition, ZK allows you to prove that you are not from an authorized country, without revealing your nationality. This extends to the Kyc/AML region, where the risks for compliance and financial safety are high.
Ishan Pandness: Many chains are struggled with privacy with adoption due to the complexity of the developer or organizational uncertainty. What strategies do Aleo use to develop both developers and cases of using the real world?
Howard Wu: Aleo is committed to developing and educating the next generation of Web3 developers so that people around the world can experience ZK encryption for themselves. Hackathon Codesprint encourages developers to compete by building DAPPS in critical areas, including special compatible Stablecoins, and access to specially verified cases such as lending and borrowing. We will announce the latest round of the winners soon.
We have also made a partnership with Google Cloud to provide developers with the infrastructure and ZK data groups, such as spreading the node with one click in its market, merging the Aleo Blockchain data into Google Bigquness, and grants from the Google Cloud for Startups.
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