Phase 3 — Design & Technical Analysis

Part 5 of The AI-Centric Software Development Playbook

From Information to Decisions

Phase 1 produced an Information Report — a structured synthesis of the technology landscape, competitive analysis, compliance requirements, risks, reusable components, and open questions. That report presents evidence. It does not make decisions.

The Starting Point

Every software project begins with a question: What are we building, and what do we need to know before we start?

The Toolkit Is the Practice

Part 1 established the six Core Principles — Security, Maintainability, Economics, Operations, Scoring & Metrics, and Correctness Verification. Those principles define what you care about. This article is about building the means to act on them — and defining the methodology that puts them into practice.

Why Principles Come First

Before we write a line of code, before we select a stack, before we even gather requirements — we need a shared framework for evaluating every decision we make. That framework is what this article establishes.

Small Teams, Big AI, New Paradigm

Software is about to change. Not the principles underneath it — those endure. Not the need for rigorous thinking, sound architecture, or deep technical judgment — those become more important, not less. What changes is who does the work, how many of them there are, and what tools they use to do it.

Aleo is a Layer-1 blockchain built from the ground up for private applications, using zero-knowledge proofs to enable private and public state within smart contracts.

Within the complex architecture of ethics, our deeply-held convictions form the blueprint guiding our every decision, rational or otherwise. Erected on the bedrock of our moral obligations, we build invisible structures that govern our actions, however unpredictable they may seem.

This is an exploration into the security intricacies of Web3 and its manifestation in DeFi. A journey through the virtual landscape, understanding how users, often unintentionally, can become assets and liabilities. We’ll shed much need light into the shadowy realms of potential attack vectors that constantly threaten this decentralized future, drawing lessons from real-world hacks that shook the DeFi world to its core.

This is the second in a series in which we apply the Tactics of the MITRE ATT&CK framework to Web3 in an effort to use mature cybersecurity concepts to in the emerging space of decentralized applications. We hope that exploring the corollaries and differentiators will help develop a better understanding of where security mitigation and detection can be improved