Aleo Credits
Aleo credits are the native token of the Aleo blockchain, managed by the built-in credits.aleo program. They pay transaction fees (deployment and execution), back validator stakes for consensus participation, and reward provers who generate coinbase proofs.
Credits exist in two forms. As a private record, credits are encrypted and visible only to the owner, like a UTXO. As a public mapping entry in account within credits.aleo, they are visible on-chain. Users convert between forms with transfer_private_to_public and transfer_public_to_private.
Fees are denominated in microcredits (one credit = one million microcredits), split into a base fee for proof verification and storage, and a priority fee for faster inclusion. Deployment fees scale with compiled program size because validators store verifying keys permanently. Validators must stake credits to propose blocks, and their stake can be slashed for misbehavior. Provers earn newly minted credits by solving coinbase puzzles, which is how new supply enters circulation.