1. What is Aptos?

Aptos, based in Palo Alto, California, is a public blockchain that aims to solve reliability, scalability, and usability issues that have plagued existing Layer 1s, whilst possessing security features lacking in EVM-based blockchains. Aptos uses Move, a Rust-based programming language created for Diem, a now abandoned blockchain project by Meta.

The Aptos network can achieve over 130k transactions per second thanks to its parallel execution engine (Block-STM). This high throughput naturally results in low transaction costs for users on the network.

2. MOVE

The Move is based on the Rust programming language, which is a well-known and supported programming language. MOVE was designed for the Diem blockchain by Facebook, which serves the function of implementing smart contracts and custom transactions. origins of Move largely arise from the known issues in the existing blockchain programming languages such as Solidity, which has security and verifiability issues. Any asset in Move can be represented by or stored within resources while scarcity is enforced by default since structs cannot be duplicated.

2.1 Comparison to other VMs

3. Team

Aptos is founded by Aptos Labs and co-founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching. Mo Shaikh, Avery Ching, and a few other team members worked together at Meta on the Diem blockchain project before. They founded Aptos Labs together to continue building on the technology they had originally developed for Diem. Austin (@austinvirts), the former head of marketing at Solana, is currently working as director of the ecosystem in Aptos Labs. The Aptos Team also has many experienced designers, analysts, engineers, and so on. Obviously, it is a professional team, with the ability to develop the Aptos very well.

4. Aptos Investors & Funding Round

4.1 Seed Round

• Announced Date: Mar 15, 2022

• Money Raised: $200M

• Pre-Money Valuation: $800M

• Lead Investor: a16z

• Famous Investors: Multicion capital, Kathryn Haun, 3 Arrows Capital, ParaFi Capital, IRONGREY, #Hashed, Variant, Tiger Global, BlockTower Capital, FTX Ventures, Paxos Global, and Coinbase Ventures

4.2 Series A

• Announced Date: Jul 25, 2022

• Money Raised: $150M

• Pre-Money Valuation: $1.9B

• Lead Investor: FTX Ventures & Jump Crypto

• Famous Investors: Apollo, Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures, Superscrypt founded by Temasek, and continued support from a16z crypto and Multicoin.

5. Aptos speed

How to define the speed of a blockchain? It depends on two aspects: transactions per second (TPS) and time to finality (TTF). For blockchains, transactions per second (TPS) refers to the number of transactions that a network is capable of processing each second.

Here is the equation of TPS:

TPS = (number of tx in a block)/(block time in seconds)

Finality is the assurance or guarantee that cryptocurrency transactions cannot be altered, reversed, or canceled after they are completed. The latency level of a blockchain will ultimately affect the chain's finality rate. For users, the definition of a blockchain’s speed is time to finality (TTF), the amount of time needed to fully confirm a transaction.

Let’s compare the TPS and TTF between some blockchains:

From these blockchains, Aptos has the shortest time to finality and a very high TPS. The TPS for Aptos can reach at least 130k, because of the highly efficient, multi-threaded, in-memory parallel execution engine. Aptos blockchain has sub-second finality, which means that a transaction will take less than 1 second to be fully confirmed. Such a fast speed can give users a better experience than other famous blockchains.

6. Ecosystem Projects

Although the mainnet of Aptos has not been launched, there are many projects that have joined the Aptos.

6.1 Econia

The Econia is a protocol that lets anyone in the world trade a digital asset with anyone else in the world, at whatever price they want. More specifically, Econia is a central limit order book (CLOB), a fundamental financial tool utilized by financial institutions like stock markets, except unlike the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, Econia is open-source and decentralized.

This version 1 minimum viable prototype (v1 MVP) introduces a key innovation for on-chain trading, Econia's atomic matching engine, which settles market orders with finality during the transaction in which they were placed.

6.2 Martian Wallet

The Martian wallet is a crypto wallet that can be used to manage digital assets and access decentralized applications on the Aptos blockchain. Martian wallet is currently available as a Chrome extension and soon will be available as an IOS app.

At its core, Martian wallet works by creating and managing private keys on behalf of its users. These keys can then be used within the Martian wallet to store funds and sign transactions.

To interact with web applications, the Martian wallet extension injects an Aptos object into the JavaScript context of every site the user visits. A given web app may then interact with Martian wallet, and ask for the user's permission to perform transactions, through this injected object.

6.3 Liquidswap Dex

The Liquidswap is the first AMM for Aptos - the most performant & reliable L1 built with Move VM. Liquidswap is a product developed by Pontem, which is a studio working toward global financial inclusion powered by blockchains. Pontem team is going to first build the next generation of Dapps with streamlined experiences enabled by Aptos and Move. Starting with the key foundational protocol of an AMM for correlated and uncorrelated pairs. This will enable liquidity and discoverability for protocol tokens in the Aptos ecosystem. Liquidswap is the uniswap on Aptos.

6.4 Aptos Name Service

The Aptos Name Service is a smart contract that maps a name to an Aptos address. Claiming a name mints you a special NFT Token that gives you the sole power to edit the address of that name. That Token is composable and can be bought, sold, and traded as you see fit. It’s a decentralized, composable identity layer of Aptos. ANS is the ENS on Aptos.

6.5 Topaz

The Topaz is an NFT marketplace built on the powerful Aptos blockchain, with a focus on safety and scalability. Topaz is the Opensea on Aptos.

6.6 Vial

The Vial is a pooled interest rate protocol that allows users to lend or borrow assets on Aptos. Interest rates are determined algorithmically based on pool utilization: the ratio of borrowed to supplied assets. Vial is the AAVE on Aptos.

Written by: Lucio Lyu

Twitter: @imLucio_eth