Deutsche Telekom to validate the privacy-enhanced Aleph Zero blockchain

• Deutsche Telekom contributes to the security, governance, and decentralization of Aleph Zero.
• Aleph Zero and Deutsche Telekom MMS are working together on the secure Internet of Values.

Today, Aleph Zero, privacy-enhancing layer 1 blockchain, is announcing that Deutsche Telekom’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Deutsche Telekom MMS, is joining its network of validators. Deutsche Telekom MMS has established a validator node on both the mainnet and testnet, providing its infrastructure to contribute to the collective security, governance, and decentralization of Aleph Zero.

In a landscape where web3 infrastructure is rapidly evolving, Aleph Zero stands out as one of the select few alongside Ethereum, Polygon, Polkadot, Chainlink, Energy Web, Q, Celo und Flow to gain the trust of the household brand. This participation underscores Aleph Zero's credibility, its approach to on-chain privacy, and enterprise-grade scalability potential. 

With Aleph Zero, Deutsche Telekom MMS further increases its infrastructure portfolio by supporting a privacy-enabling, highly scalable and secure Layer 1 Network, making this the first instance of Deutsche Telekom partnering with a privacy-focused network.

"Past incidents such as hacks and security leaks have shown the importance of security, privacy, and decentralization on the web3. Against this context, our collaboration with Aleph Zero is very exciting. With new technical standards and a high level of decentralization, we are working together on the secure Internet of Values," says Dirk Röder, Head of the Web3 Infrastructure & Solutions Team at Deutsche Telekom MMS. 

Antoni Zolciak, Co-founder of Aleph Zero, added: “While offering the benefits of public blockchain transparency, we respect and offer uncompromising privacy options for specific communications, transactions, and records of organizations and individuals. We’re appreciative of Deutsche Telekom’s trust in Aleph Zero and are looking forward to the future of this collaboration while recognizing that the firm represents over ~245 million customers worldwide.”

Aleph Zero’s layer 1 blockchain is based on an original consensus protocol, AlephBFT, ink! smart contracts built by the team behind Polkadot, and WASM. Despite being a public network, Aleph Zero also offers robust privacy technology based on a combination of zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-SNARKs) and secure Multi-Party Computation (sMPC). 

ZK-SNARKs let an actor, known as the prover, provide a succinct proof of a computation without revealing the actual data. This means the verifier can confirm the prover’s actions are correct without accessing the information that the prover would like to keep confidential. On the other hand, sMPC safeguards information by storing it off-chain across multiple nodes. The data is cryptographically divided into pieces so that no single network participant can learn anything about the contents of the data. The nodes can then perform computation on such data while continuing to keep the contents of the data secret.

This solution is created specifically for tasks involving private data from multiple users, and is applicable to various use cases such as private voting or private exchange. However, a drawback of sMPC is its slow speed when applied to longer computations. To balance their strengths and weaknesses, Aleph Zero uses ZK-SNARKs for basic processes and individual data verification, and sMPC for a very small amount of highly specific computations. This approach ensures both speed and security in everyday use.