PANews reported on October 1st that according to CoinDesk, the Aleo Network Foundation and Paxos Labs announced a partnership to launch a privacy-focused USD stablecoin, USAD. Built on Aleo's zero-knowledge (ZK) layer 1 blockchain, the stablecoin aims to attract financial institutions sensitive to on-chain transaction data by encrypting wallet addresses and transaction amounts.

USAD will be issued through Paxos Labs, a regulated infrastructure provider incubated by the well-known stablecoin issuer Paxos. It is reported that the Aleo project has previously received investments from well-known institutions such as a16z, Coinbase Ventures, and SoftBank.