How does the new public chain Aptos meet market expectations?

Author: Honeypot Tech

As the countdown to the mainnet launch begins, it is foreseeable that the new public chain Aptos will increasingly enter the spotlight of the crypto community.

This brand-new Layer 1 public chain can be seen as a sequel to Meta (formerly Facebook) Libra (later renamed Diem) after its plan was shelved. At the end of January this year, Diem was sold by Meta, and some core members left to form a team to develop the Aptos public chain based on Diem's open-source code.

In March this year, Aptos received investments from top institutions such as a16z, FTX Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Binance Labs, raising external expectations for it. Recently, sources revealed that Aptos has discussed a new round of financing with investors, which is seen as a signal for its ecosystem development.

Compared to existing public chains on the market, Aptos's biggest feature is its use of a brand-new programming language called Move, which was originally designed for the Diem project, focusing on blockchain security, scalability, and upgradability.

Since launching its testnet in March this year, Aptos has undergone multiple rounds of testing, with over 20,000 validator nodes already in the test network. Data shows that Aptos can currently process over 10,000 transactions per second, and ideally, this public chain could handle 160,000 transactions per second in the future.

The Aptos mainnet is expected to go live at the end of September, and many projects are already being developed and deployed based on the testnet, including the ultra-parallel CLOB protocol Econia, the mobile multi-signature wallet Hive, and the automated market maker (AMM) trading application Pontem Network.

With a luxurious background, can Aptos become a highlight in the blockchain industry in the second half of the year? The answer will be revealed in September.

Top-tier Background Boosting Aptos's Expectations

The last crypto asset bull market gave rise to emerging Layer 1 public chains like Solana, Avalanche, Fantom, and Harmony, showcasing a flourishing scene of blockchain infrastructure. At the peak, the native tokens on these public chains surged dozens or even hundreds of times from their lows.

With the cyclical nature of the market, the ecological activity and asset accumulation on these new public chains have significantly declined compared to the bull market, and under the rapid pace of industry development, they have gradually become "the previous wave." In the crowded public chain arena, "the new wave" is arriving.

Aptos is the most eye-catching presence among the new wave, with a project background and funding matrix that can be considered top-tier in the industry. According to the latest news, the Aptos mainnet is expected to launch at the end of September this year, and during the countdown phase, this Layer 1 public chain has begun to frequently enter the crypto industry's view.

On July 22, sources revealed that Aptos has discussed a new round of financing with investors, with the company's valuation set at $2.75 billion, which may increase as negotiations progress. Seeking new financing indicates that Aptos is starting to build momentum for its on-chain ecosystem, which is a positive signal for Aptos followers.

Before formally introducing Aptos, it is necessary to discuss its unique background. Aptos was officially established in February this year, but prior to that, the Aptos team had already accumulated significant technical expertise.

In June 2019, the Libra white paper was released, planning to issue a globally circulating super-sovereign digital currency, but was ultimately abandoned due to regulatory constraints. Subsequently, Libra was renamed Diem, positioning itself as a stablecoin similar to USDT, but still, Diem ended without success under regulatory restrictions. At the end of January this year, Diem was sold by Meta for approximately $182 million.

However, some original members of the Diem project did not give up; after leaving Meta, they reorganized and placed their new venture on Aptos.

Avery Ching, co-founder and CTO of Aptos, served as a chief software engineer at Meta for over 10 years and was the technical lead of the original Meta crypto wallet Novi team. Additionally, many developers and researchers in the Aptos team, such as Alden Hu and Dahlia Malkhi, participated in the development of Diem and Novi.

With the previous story of Diem, Aptos quickly gained attention from some top-tier capital after its establishment.

On March 15 this year, Aptos completed a $200 million strategic financing round, led by a16z, with notable participants including Tiger Global, FTX Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. At the end of March, Binance Labs also announced a strategic investment in Aptos's development team, Aptos Labs, to collaborate on development, code review, infrastructure building, and hackathons.

Binance Labs invests in Aptos Labs

It is important to note that Aptos has deliberately maintained a distance from Meta to ensure the project's independence. According to the official team, "Since leaving Meta, we have been able to put our ideas into practice, discarding the bureaucratic red tape, and starting from scratch to build a brand new network and implement them." Therefore, although the outside world views Aptos as a "sequel" to Libra, it has no further ties to Meta.

Multiple Rounds of Testing Accumulate Over 20,000 Nodes

After receiving large-scale investments from top institutions, Aptos has embarked on an intensive research and development process.

Currently, most public chains adopt Solidity for development to ensure compatibility with Ethereum. Aptos, however, is different; it uses the new Move language as its development language based on Diem's open-source codebase and employs an iterative Byzantine consensus protocol known as "proof-of-stake DiemBFT" consensus. This consensus mechanism can achieve high transaction throughput, low latency, and more energy-efficient results compared to the proof-of-work mechanisms used in some other blockchains.

As a programming language originally designed for Diem, Move addresses the shortcomings of existing languages. It is reported that currently, blockchains prioritize a "sequential" execution model, which allows accounts and smart contracts to interact arbitrarily in a series of transactions but prevents linear scalability.

Inspired by linear logic—where digital assets are defined as "resources" that cannot be copied or disappear out of thin air—industry insiders view Move as a smart contract language born for operating digital assets. Its static type system allows most errors in smart contract code to be detected by the compiler at compile time, making smart contracts more reliable.

Designed with a new language, Aptos aims to balance blockchain security, scalability, and upgradability.

Aptos believes that Layer 1 blockchains should take on more scalability responsibilities to simplify and mainstream user experience. Therefore, it does not intend to rely on Layer 2 like Ethereum to enhance scalability but aims to improve network scalability as much as possible during the underlying design. According to its testnet data, Aptos can currently process over 10,000 transactions per second, and ideally, after the mainnet launch, Aptos could handle 160,000 transactions per second.

With the emergence of new blockchain application scenarios such as NFTs and DAOs, the upgradability of blockchains has also been emphasized in the industry. However, many current blockchains struggle to make significant protocol improvements after launch, leading to events like downtime and network forks. Therefore, Aptos has paid close attention to upgradability in its design and construction of the blockchain. The management and configuration of its block validators are handled through on-chain state to facilitate community voting and rapid execution of upgrades. It is reported that Aptos has successfully executed several major upgrades during its development process without downtime.

In terms of development progress, in March, Aptos launched a developer testnet, collaborating with strategic partners and the web3 developer community to gather feedback and improve the Move developer experience and the Move language. In May, Aptos initiated the registration for the incentive testnet, during which Aptos will provide incentives to all participants who help secure the network.

In Aptos's roadmap, the incentive testnet consists of four rounds: "decentralized launch," "staking," "governance and upgrades," and "dynamic validator topology." On July 1, the second phase of the Aptos incentive testnet opened for registration, during which the Aptos team airdropped sufficient test tokens to selected participants. Participants who complete the testing will receive a reward of 500 Aptos tokens, which will be distributed after the mainnet successfully launches, with a minimum one-year lock-up period.

Aptos is currently in the incentive testnet phase

According to Aptos's blog post, its test network has now reached over 20,000 nodes, making it the largest known proof-of-stake node community today. Aptos candidly stated that the community's development has far exceeded their previously wildest expectations. According to the plan, the remaining two phases of the Aptos incentive testnet are expected to be completed in the next two months, and by the end of September, Aptos will launch its mainnet.

Aptos Testnet Has Gathered Hundreds of Applications

As the date for the mainnet launch approaches, Aptos is currently allocating more energy to early ecosystem building.

At the end of June this year, Aptos launched a $200 million ecosystem grant program, with funding categories including six types: developer tools, SDKs, libraries, documentation, guides, and tutorials; tools and frameworks for development, governance, DeFi, and NFTs; core protocol contributions: token standards, libraries, protocol upgrades, etc.; open-source and public goods; educational initiatives; and applications.

Aptos launches ecosystem grant program

Aptos stated that the funding for this ecosystem grant will be distributed in US dollars, but in the future, it may choose to distribute tokens to help incentivize long-term ecosystem growth.

Compared to networks like EOS and ETH that conducted public fundraising through token issuance before their mainnet launch, Aptos has not yet disclosed its mainnet token's economic model and distribution. From this perspective, Aptos prioritizes public chain development far more than token issuance.

According to Aptos's blog post, its ecosystem currently has over 100 projects being built on the network, covering use cases in DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and more.

On July 21, Aptos announced some specific early ecosystem projects on Twitter, including the ultra-parallel CLOB protocol Econia, the mobile multi-signature wallet Hive, the crypto wallet Martian that integrates applications, the lending protocol NjordFinance, the trading aggregator Hippo Labs, and the AMM trading application Pontem Network.

In addition, known projects on Aptos include the blockchain explorer Aptosscan, the NFT marketplace Topaz.so, the project metrics dashboard platform Dapptos View, the NFT minting project Aptos Crown Masks, and the decentralized cross-chain wallet ONTO Wallet.

From an ecological layout perspective, Aptos still focuses on infrastructure construction, with application deployment scenarios primarily involving wallets, DEXs, and lending protocols.

It is worth noting that since Aptos uses the Move smart contract language, it is not compatible with mainstream DApps developed based on Solidity, meaning developers need to rewrite code to build applications on Aptos. This may slow down the pace of application establishment in the Aptos ecosystem.

However, Austin, the former marketing director of Solana, recently announced that he will officially join Aptos next month as the ecosystem director. Based on Austin's past experience, he has focused much of his career in the Web3 field on incubating and expanding global communities, and his experience may help expand the Aptos ecosystem.

Overall, Aptos has a development team with deep technical accumulation and a luxurious funding matrix. Its public chain development and testing are ongoing, and it has attracted many projects to "settle in." These are all factors contributing to external expectations for it. Whether Aptos can meet these expectations will need to be evaluated after its mainnet launch.