Collin Chin

Co-Founder and COO @ProvableHQ | building ZK-native teams

[Shield @ShieldApp]

Shield is live.

Built on @AleoHQ by @ProvableHQ, Shield is a self-custodial wallet for holding and moving crypto without exposing balances, counterparties, or transaction details by default.

What’s yours is yours.

https://t.co/wtnrOHyW4R

[Provable @ProvableHQ]

snark0S v 4.0.0 slaps

[biggest upgrade since mainnet]

[Collin Chin @ChinCollin]

Every 'transparent blockchain' advocate should explain why they think Satoshi wrote about 'electronic cash' but built a system where your coffee purchase is public forever.

[Provable @ProvableHQ]

Here's our Manifesto:

Crypto began with a simple, radical idea: remove trusted intermediaries from digital transactions. Not just banks or governments - all intermediaries.

The cypherpunks of the 1990s envisioned a world where cryptographic proof replaced institutional trust, where privacy was default, and where individuals controlled their own digital fate.

Bitcoin was supposed to be digital cash - private, peer-to-peer, outside the control of any institution. The whitepaper promised "electronic transactions without relying on trust."

This wasn't about making payments faster or cheaper. It was about fundamentally changing who controls money and information.

But somewhere along the way, the industry lost the plot. Bitcoin became "digital gold" and “a transparent ledger where every transaction is public forever.”

Your wallet balance, transaction history, and spending patterns are readable by anyone with an internet connection.

This certainly isn't privacy. It’s closer to surveillance infrastructure with an extra step. And if someone knows everything about you they control you.

Ethereum added programmability but made the privacy problem worse.

Every smart contract execution, every DeFi trade, every NFT purchase is broadcast to the world. MEV bots front-run your transactions because they can see them coming. Competitors analyze your DeFi positions because they're public.

Worse, both systems force global recomputation of everything. Every node re-executes every transaction to verify the network state. This architectural choice, having thousands of machines redo the same work to maintain consensus, made privacy impossible and scalability an unsolvable problem.

The "world computer" became the world's most inefficient computer, where computation gets more expensive as more people use it.

The industry didn't just convince itself this was acceptable: it convinced itself this was the point. And worse, that it has been the point all along.

"Transparency is a feature, not a bug" became the rallying cry. "Auditable transactions" and "public verification" were reframed as innovations rather than failures. We were told that being able to track every transaction was somehow aligned with decentralization, that

surveillance = accountability.

Ethereum doubled down on this narrative, positioning radical transparency as the path to institutional adoption. "Look, institutions can audit everything!" became the pitch.

But institutions don't want to audit everything - they want privacy. They need to protect customer data, trade secrets, and competitive positioning.

No bank wants competitors analyzing their liquidity management. No hedge fund wants front-runners seeing their DeFi positions. No corporation wants suppliers tracking their payment flows.

Ethereum's "transparency for institutions" was solving a problem institutions never had while ignoring the one they actually need solved. Worse, both Bitcoin and Ethereum architectures make privacy an afterthought.

Privacy can't be bolted onto transparent systems. It has to be built in from the foundation, or it doesn't exist at all. L2s and sidechains tried to solve this but missed the point - scaling transparent transactions faster doesn't make them private.

We think zero-knowledge proofs represent the missing piece of the original vision. ZKPs let you prove a computation was performed correctly without revealing the inputs, outputs, or intermediate states.

This is the breakthrough that makes the cypherpunk dream technically feasible.

For the first time, you can have verifiable computation with perfect privacy. More importantly, you can compute locally and prove globally - executing your transaction privately on your own device, then submit a proof to the network.

No global recomputation.

No shared state visible to everyone.

Just cryptographic proof that the computation was valid.

The Aleo L1 implements this vision in its complete form.

Private transactions, private smart contracts, and private data - all while maintaining global consensus and cryptographic verifiability.

Users control not just their assets, but their information. Applications can compute sensitive business logic locally, then prove it was executed correctly without revealing any details to the network.

This is what crypto was always supposed to become: programmable money that preserves privacy by default, not as an afterthought.

Bitcoin gave us decentralized money.

Ethereum gave us programmable money.

Aleo gives us dencentralized, programmable, private money - the synthesis the original vision always required. It's programability enables it to have compliance features too, so that applications built on it can preserve user privacy and stay compliant in their jurisdiction.

Most importantly, it gives both institutions and individuals the same fundamental privacy rights and computational sovereignty.

A bank's private transaction has the same cryptographic guarantees as yours. A corporation's confidential smart contract runs with the same privacy as a personal application. No special privileges, no institutional backdoors, no regulatory exemptions.

The cypherpunks didn't dream of transparent blockchains analyzed by chain analysis companies and regulated by transaction monitoring. They dreamed of cryptography replacing institutional trust.

Aleo make that dream technically possible for the first time.

And Provable is the company that’s building it all.

We have 1091 followers. Follow and watch us flip the script (we ship every week).

Or bookmark this post and check in 5 years.

Either way, we are inevitable.

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

Onchain B2B payments day with @bitwaveplatform was a hit 🔥

@1HowardWu broke down what the Google Cloud integration with Also data means for developers alongside @patwhite, Smitha Purohit (@PayPal), @masseyrl, and @sergiofly.

Here's some takeaways 🧵

[Collin Chin @ChinCollin]

If you’re a developer already using BigQuery you can use the following direct link to the Aleo dataset. https://t.co/9qMQ2rFtYh

[Collin Chin @ChinCollin]

Excited about this partnership! - its a huge win for privacy. For those curious about real-world Aleo dataset: https://t.co/sU8Zs9uWBe #privacytech #datascience

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

Today, we're announcing that the Aleo Network is the first privacy-first Layer 1 ZK blockchain to integrate with @GoogleCloud @GoogleCloud_SG, reinforcing our leadership in the ZK ecosystem.

Learn more ↓

https://t.co/geYq2h3NyN

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

Today, we're announcing that the Aleo Network is the first privacy-first Layer 1 ZK blockchain to integrate with @GoogleCloud @GoogleCloud_SG, reinforcing our leadership in the ZK ecosystem.

Learn more ↓

https://t.co/geYq2h3NyN

[ETHDenver 🏔🦬🦄 @EthereumDenver]

ZK-Powered Payment Channels by @0xd0c from @ProvableHQ!

Design privacy-preserving payment channels using zero-knowledge proofs on Aleo.

Full video below 👇🧵

[Howard Wu @1HowardWu]

private smart contracts unlock so much, and i’ve wanted to unpack the tradeoffs in designing @AleoHQ for a while now.

each architectural decision was made with the end-user in mind. being thoughtful about speed, compliance, security, & UI/UX, while using bleeding edge cryptography is not so simple!

thank you to @SuccinctJT & @rhackett for hosting me on this @a16zcrypto podcast!

[Provable @ProvableHQ]

Today, our team is publishing research papers to document the core components of Aleo protocol:
🌐 AleoBFT - a novel consensus algorithm
🛡️ AleoVM - a zkVM w/ private smart contracts
🪄 Varuna - a universal & upgradable ZK proof system

Let's deep dive into the details of the Aleo protocol!
🧵👇

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

We're excited to announce that Aleo's Coinbase Learning Rewards is open, allowing participants to earn from a pool of 𝟕𝟓𝐦 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐨 𝐭𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐬.

Get started learning in the Coinbase app.

[Collin Chin @ChinCollin]

@1HowardWu @AleoHQ Shoutout to our formal verification and protocol GOATS @acoglio @bendyarm @VicSintNic

[Howard Wu @1HowardWu]

📣 Excited to share our team has formally-verified the AleoBFT consensus protocol!

We now have a formal proof that, in AleoBFT, blockchains of different validators *never fork*.

This is important because, while most protocols use fixed or rarely-changing committees, AleoBFT supports *dynamic committees*.

Check out our blog post -- the formal model and proofs in ACL2 are available & open-source!

https://t.co/DCaqh7u36x

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

wen mainnet? now.

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

Gm, we have a question for you.

What type of content would you like to see more of from #Aleo?👇

Make other suggestions in the comments too!

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

🛠️ Aleo Accounts Deconstructed:

1️⃣ Private key → Used to authorize transactions

2️⃣ View key → Used to decrypt account records

3️⃣ Account address → Used to interact with others

[Aleo @AleoHQ]

Say goodbye to guessing the fee amounts when deploying apps on Aleo.

We added a 'Fee Estimator' feature to https://t.co/KvuLM7iXwm