Programs

A program is a fundamental data structure for representing application logic and application state.

Aleo introduces a new programming language called Aleo instructions that enables developers to write private web applications. Aleo instructions is a statically-typed programming language for writing privacy-preserving, secure programs on Aleo. By leveraging zero-knowledge proofs, Aleo instructions offers computational integrity for real-world applications.

Program Logic

Aleo instructions offers developers with an easy-to-use environment for writing programs. By designing an assembly language with syntax familiar to developers and composable in features, Aleo instructions is well-suited to integrate with existing developer frameworks to supercharge web apps with privacy and integrity.

program token.aleo;

record token:
    // The token owner.
    owner as address.private;
    // The token balance.
    amount as u64.private;

// The `mint` function initializes a new record with the
// specified number of tokens in `r1` for the receiver in `r0`.
function mint:
    input r0 as address.private;
    input r1 as u64.private;
    cast r0 r1 into r2 as token.record;
    output r2 as token.record;

// The `transfer` function sends the specified number of tokens
// to the receiver from the provided token record.
function transfer:
    // Input the sender's record.
    input r0 as token.record;
    // Input the token receiver.
    input r1 as address.private;
    // Input the token amount.
    input r2 as u64.private;

    // Checks the given token record has sufficient balance.
    // This `sub` operation is safe, and the proof will fail
    // if an underflow occurs. The output register `r3` holds
    // the change amount to be returned to the sender.
    sub r0.amount r2 into r3;

    // Produces a token record for the specified receiver.
    cast r1 r2 into r4 as token.record;

    // Produces a token record with the change amount for the sender.
    cast r0.owner r3 into r5 as token.record;

    // Output the receiver's record.
    output r4 as token.record;
    // Output the sender's change record.
    output r5 as token.record;

Program Data

Program ID

Each program has a unique program ID that is stored in the program manifest program.json. This program ID is used to indicate the program that was run in the consumption or production of records.

Program Input

To run a program, user-defined inputs are provided in the form of a program input. This input provided by the user is fully private and not revealed to the public network, unless the user intends for it to be public.

Program State

Each program is run with respect to user-provided program state on Aleo. In order to produce a valid state transition on Aleo, the user satisfies a series of programs encoded in records, which compose a transaction.

Program Output

Once a program is evaluated, its program output is produced, along with a zero-knowledge proof attesting to the validity of the output.