Aleo deepened real-world adoption through its integration with Request Finance, USDG network membership, and new listings on Revolut and Binance Alpha, strengthening its private and compliant payments offering.
Aleo’s market cap increased 50.5% to $117.6 million, while the price of their native token ALEO rose 15.7% to $0.22.
Private transactions rose to ~20.2% of Q3’s 3.3M total transactions. This is a 5.2% increase QoQ and the highest share of private activity to date.
Despite price gains, average daily transactions fell 50.7%, and active addresses declined 58.2%.
Q3 marked the release of three major snarkOS upgrades (v4.0.0–v4.2.0). These introduced prover staking (ARC-46), program upgradability (ARC-6), and priority fees (ARC-5), cutting base compute costs by ~90% and enhancing developer flexibility.
Primer
Aleo (ALEO) is a privacy-focused Layer-1 (L1) blockchain designed for private and compliant payments, with enhanced scalability and security through ZKPs. Cofounded in 2019 by Raymond Chu and Collin Chin, Aleo combines its unique Coinbase Puzzle with AleoBFT, a high-performance consensus protocol, to verify ZKPs and validate transactions. This allows validators to confirm the validity of transactions without knowing potentially sensitive information such as the addresses involved in a transaction or the amount transacted.
Built around its Leo programming language and AleoVM ZK virtual machine, Aleo enables developers to build fully private dApps that run offchain while proofs are verified onchain. This architecture supports use cases across identity, DeFi, and gaming, offering a scalable framework for verifiable privacy. By making privacy programmable at the base layer, Aleo aims to establish itself as the leading platform for secure, compliant, and privacy-preserving Web3 applications. For a full primer on Aleo, refer to our Initiation of Coverage report.
In Q3, average daily transactions, meaning all onchain actions executed on Aleo, including both public and private transfers, fell 50.7% QoQ to 36,130. Transaction throughput started off July with a daily average of 34,603, and rose 46,709 daily average transactions in August but declined to 26,777 daily average transactions in September. The spike on August 13 likely occurred after Revolutlisted ALEO for UK and European Economic Area (EEA) users, which lowered friction for users to acquire ALEO.
Despite these declines, Aleo’s focus on ZK-native architecture continues to provide a foundation for future growth. As developer tools and privacy-preserving applications expand, long-term metrics such as prover adoption and application-layer integrations may provide a more meaningful signal than raw address or transaction count alone.
User engagement with Aleo’s core privacy features continued to deepen. One core feature of Aleo is the ability to submit private transactions using the network’s provers, which generate ZKPs to verify their validity. Of the 3.3 million transactions processed on Aleo in Q3 2025, approximately 20.2% (671,000) were private. This marks a 5.2% QoQ increase from Q2. While public transactions continue to dominate, the rising share of private activity signals growing adoption of Aleo’s ZK infrastructure. As the prover ecosystem matures and privacy-native applications expand, private transaction volume may become a core driver of Aleo’s differentiation in the L1 space.
Staked ALEO
Validators play a central role in Aleo’s consensus process, producing blocks, validating transactions, and confirming ZKPs generated by provers. To join the active validator set, participants must self-stake a minimum of 100 ALEO and hold a combined stake (self + delegated) of 10 million ALEO. Validators earn rewards from the 23.8 ALEO base block reward, ⅓ of the Coinbase Puzzle reward (the other ⅔ goes to provers for generating the ZKPs), and transaction priority fees, while delegates receive a portion minus validator commission. Tokenholders can stake directly with a minimum of 10,000 ALEO, or use liquid staking platforms like Pondo.xyz and Betastaking.
The total amount of staked ALEO increased 4.3% QoQ, rising from 1.33 billion ALEO tokens to 1.39 billion ALEO tokens. The growth in native terms signals sustained validator commitment and network security participation, even amid market turbulence. The USD value of staked ALEO rose more than the native amount, driven primarily by ALEO’s price recovery. When measured in USD, total staked value increased 18.4% QoQ, from $253.0 million to $299.4 million.
Aleo distributed 65.6 million ALEO in validator and prover rewards over Q3 2025, with 34.4 million ALEO issued as block rewards and 31.2 million through puzzle rewards. Reward issuance remained consistent and effectively flat, reflecting stable block production and proof generation throughout the quarter.
On average, validators earned 373,941 ALEO per day in block rewards, while provers captured 338,451 ALEO in daily puzzle rewards. The relatively balanced distribution between the two mechanisms highlights the dual-engine nature of Aleo’s network security model, which relies on consensus validators and ZK proof generators to maintain system integrity.
Financial Overview
Although the transaction volume and activity fell throughout the quarter (covered in this report’s Network Overview section), network fees, which are denominated in ALEO, rose 45.4% from 114,228 to 166,037 QoQ. The rise in USD-denominated fees from $22,405 to $44,339 QoQ increased total revenue for stakers, validators, and provers, weakening short-term incentive structures.
Inflationary pressures also remained contained, with circulating supply growth in line with expected emissions. In Q3, 65.6 million ALEO were issued as rewards. This suggests that while market sentiment has been volatile, protocol-level issuance has not accelerated disproportionately, preserving the integrity of Aleo’s economic model.
Total transaction fees paid on Aleo increased to $43,339 in Q3 2025, averaging $471 per day. In Q3, daily fees peaked at $6,656 and hit a quarterly low of $60, illustrating volatility in daily blockspace demand. The overall fee revenue increased 93.4% QoQ, driven by ALEO’s increasing price, the implementation of priority fees, and a spike in transaction count on August 13, which was likely largely driven by Revolutlisting ALEO.
ALEO ended the quarter at $0.22, up 15.7% QoQ from its Q2 2025 close of $0.19, in line with sustained broader altcoin market strength. ALEO’s average price over Q3 was $0.249, the token peaked at $0.368, and bottomed at $0.202.
ALEO’s circulating market cap also increased 50.5% QoQ, rising from $73.9 million at the end of June to $117.6 million by quarter-end. Market cap averaged $114.4 million for the quarter. It reached a high of $161.9 million in late July after declining to a low of $87.5 million in early July, ending at a market cap of $117.6 million in September. This increase in market cap can be attributed to both the rise in price as well as ALEO’s inflationary emissions in Q3 which increased circulating supply from 411.2 million ALEO to 535.2 million ALEO, a 30.2% QoQ increase .
Ecosystem Overview and Technical Progress
2025 Development Progress
In Q3, Aleo made progress along its technical roadmap by implementing program upgradability and priority fees through various releases.
New snarkOS Releases:
In Q3, Aleo introduced three mainnet releases of their node implementation, snarkOS, which handles consensus, networking, and state management for verifying ZK transactions. These releases upgraded the record model, enabled program upgradability, expanded validator capacity, and introduced a fee market with lower base costs.
snarkOS v4.0.0 (Jul. 22): Records now carry encrypted sender details that only the recipient can unlock with their view key. This allows recipients to identify the sender’s address while keeping it hidden from the rest of the network. It also turns on prover staking (ARC-46), which requires locking credits (Aleo’s native currency used for fees and staking), starting at 100,000 credits per solution (scaled linearly by solutions per epoch) and stepping up quarterly toward 2.5M per solution over 24 months.
snarkOS v4.1.0 (Aug. 12): This release enabled program upgradability (ARC-6) with interface-preserving rules, letting apps evolve logic without fragmenting state, while dependents can opt out of changes. The validator cap was raised to 40 and operators got friendlier tools like easy backups/restores and simple version/metadata endpoints.
snarkOS v4.2.0 (Sept. 16): This release introduced a fee market (ARC-5) with priority fees and ~90% lower base compute fees. This release also allowed for cleaner app connections and networking tweaks which make transactions broadcast and verify more smoothly.
Developer Experience and Tooling Upgrades:
Beyond snarkOS, the Leo language added async-style coding, a simple module system, and local .aleo dependencies to speed up iteration on private apps. The Aleo SDK and snarkVM improved developer workflows with fully offline transaction building, clean hand-offs to trusted proving services, and edition-aware program handling that smooths upgrades and keeps apps compatible as they evolve.
Milestones that are still in progress include:
AleoBFT: Formal verification, AleoBFT syncing, automated ephemeral test environments, and streamlined transaction propagation.
AleoVM: synthesis acceleration and dynamic dispatch.
Leo: Program upgradability (cont.) and compiling time function evaluation.
Provers: Delegated synthesis and formal verification puzzle semantics.
Ecosystem Expansion
Aleo’s broader ecosystem grew materially in Q3 through strategic partnerships, infrastructure upgrades, and the launch of new applications.
On September 14, The Aleo Network joinedBinance Alpha, Binance’s pre-listing discovery program, which will increase visibility of ALEO to a Binance’s community of over 280 million users.
On September 4, Request Finance, a financial platform for businesses to manage both crypto and fiat operations, moved their partnership with Aleo from pilot status towards full integration. This Aleo integration will allow Request to provide secure and private payroll onchain, while also allowing for compliance with regulatory requirements through selective disclosure mechanisms like view keys.
On August 28, the Aleo Network Foundation joined the Paxos-founded Global Dollar Network (USDG), alongside members like Robinhood, Worldpay, Standard Chartered, Kraken, and Anchorage. Aleo will enable programmable, private payments to USDG.
On August 12, Revolutlisted ALEO for UK and European Economic Area (EEA) users. This gave Revolut’s 60 million users greater access to and lowered friction for users to acquire ALEO.
Community and Developer Engagement
Aleo focused on fostering developer support and community growth in Q3 through various initiatives and strategic engagements.
In Q3 2025, Aleo strengthened developer relations through regular community and core dev calls with ecosystem contributors to encourage collaboration and innovation.
In Q3 2025, Aleo held Codesprint V4, a hackathon encouraging the development of private applications in areas like compliant private stablecoins, fintech infrastructure, identity, and DeFi, with community voting to select finalists and a 20,000 ALEO token prize for the first-place winner (winners yet to be announced).
In Q3, Aleo ran multiple “Learn & Earn” zkWorkshops in Istanbul (Sept. 5), Osaka (Sept. 16), and Seoul (Sept. 25) to educate developers on ZK applications.
On Aug. 24, Aleo co-hosted NTT Digital’sBlockchain NEXUS in Tokyo to expand its presence in the blockchain community.
Governance and Tokenomics
ARC–7 (Stake-Weighted Governance): Approved on Aug. 20, this proposal formalizes a stake-weighted voting framework where validator votes are signed and tallied against a snapshot of stake, with delegators able to override their validator once per vote. The process emphasizes reproducibility (publishing snapshots, signatures, and tallies) and is designed to evolve toward trustless, on-chain voting over time.
ARC-5 (Reduce Execution Fees by 90%):Approved on July 29, and executed on Sept. 16 with snarkOS with snarkOS v4.2.0, this proposal cuts compute-related base fees by ~90% and adds priority fees to create a fee market.
ARC-6 (Program Upgradability):Approved on June 26, and executed on Aug. 12 with snarkOS v4.1.0, this proposal enables interface-preserving upgrades without fragmenting state, while dependents can opt out of changes.
ARC-46 (Staking for Puzzle Solution Submissions):Approved on June 5, and executed on July 22 with snarkOS v4.0.0, this proposal implements a minimum stake per solution per epoch (scaling linearly by solutions) and stepping up on a schedule toward 2.5M credits per solution over ~24 months.
Closing Summary
Overall, Aleo is building a clear vision around private payments, with partnerships like Request Finance and the Global Dollar Network moving privacy from concept to production. Q3 also saw expanded ALEO distribution via partnerships with Binance Alpha and Revolut.
Over Q3, ALEO’s circulating market cap rose 50.5% to $117.6 million while price rose 15.7% QoQ to $0.22. Circulating supply also rose 30.2% to 535.2 million in Q3 2025. Staked ALEO grew 4.3% to 1.39 billion, signaling validator confidence. Private transactions reached a record ~20% of all transactions, and fee revenue increased 93.4% QoQ, despite the average daily transactions decreasing by 50.7% QoQ.
Three snarkOS releases introduced prover staking, program upgradability, and major fee reductions, strengthening Aleo’s ZK infrastructure. Additionally, multiple Aleo proposals (ARCs) were approved and executed, including ARC-5 (Reduce Execution Fees by 90%), ARC-6 (Program Upgradability), and ARC-46 (Staking for Puzzle Solution Submissions). Overall, Aleo remains committed to its vision of privacy-first programmability and payments.
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Kaleb was previously a research and governance analyst at 404 DAO. His primary interests are high performance L1 and L2 chains and innovative DeFi protocols.
Kaleb was previously a research and governance analyst at 404 DAO. His primary interests are high performance L1 and L2 chains and innovative DeFi protocols.
