Aptos, now dubbed as yet another Solana killer, promises a highly secure, upgradeable, and scalable web3 ecosystem.
Blockchains are yanked to be the future but it is still experiencing several malfunctions and issues concerning security, usability, and scalability. Aptos is a newly launched powerful blockchain designed to solve the numerous pain points of blockchains on sluggish networks as well as scalability problems and security risks.
Aptos system comes from the word “Ohlone” which means “The People”.
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What is Aptos?
Aptos is a venture capital-backed layer 1 blockhain. It uses the Rust-based programming language Move which was originally intended for Diem. The platform promises amazing features with a cloud infrastructure that provides cost-efficient, reliably low transaction costs, speedy processes, scalable, upgradeable platforms, and high-level security.
The Aptos blockchain is the brainchild of more than 350 developers from all over the world. Aptos Founders, Mo Shaikh (CEO) and Avery Ching (CTO) are former Meta employees, who were once the proponents of Meta’s supposed Novi crypto wallet and Diem blockchain, which are now abandoned projects.
Even though the Meta project has been canceled in entirety, the technology, skills, and expertise are now being poured into this new project.
Hence, for over three years, the revolutionary blockchain has been intricately designed and built using new technologies, upgrading its consensus, system, performance, smart contract design, decentralization, and security.
Aptos is currently using Move, the language that was originally designed for Meta’s Diem. The ideas from Meta are still burning, alive, and relevant now for Aptos because it serves as its strong foundation for a secure, reliable, and scalable web3.
The Aptos team is continuously moving forward with its permissionless access and decentralization plans. Aptos is designed primarily to run non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as well as decentralized applications (dApps) within a secure recovery system.
The Aptos Cryptos
Aptos was launched on October 19, 2022. The Aptos whitepaper revealed that there are actually two Aptos cryptos – the Aptos Coin and the Aptos Token.
The Aptos Coin is referred to as a lightweight standard designed for typesafe, simple, and fungible assets. On the other hand, the Aptos Token is designed to be flexible and can be an NFT and then work with other non-fungible tokens. Moreover, the token standard is geared towards creating a fungible, semi-fungible, or non-fungible non-decimal token equipped with rich functionalities plus metadata making it extreme easy to use.
Upon the launch of Aptos (APT) on October 19, 2022, things were not smooth-sailing with the coin nosediving from $13.85 to $9 and further dropping to around $7.30 on October 21. Following the APT launch, Shaikh announced on Twitter that they have muted their Discord channel to safeguard the platform from any malicious threats or scams.
What Is Aptos Labs?
The Aptos Project is backed by the Aptos Labs. The Aptos Labs team is composed of a diverse experts rangings from engineers, developers, designers, and strategists who are under the leadership and direction of co-founders Avery Ching and Mo Shaikh.
Shaikh and Ching originally met and worked together on Meta while they were developing the Diem blockchain project. At that time, Shaikh was handling the scalability aspect of the project and at the same time experienced with venture capital and private equity markets.
On the other hand, Ching worked as one of Meta’s lead software engineers and has extensive experience with leading varied development projects. When Meta decided to abandon or terminate the Diem project, it was then that Shaikh and Chings decided to collaborate and created Aptos Labs.
The ultimate goal of Aptos Labs is to create a Layer 1 blockchain for everyone. The Aptos Labs team wanted to create a fast, safe, reliable network that everyone deserves to have. While the team is relatively new, their concept generated a lot of support and in fact, with just two financing rounds, Aptos Labs was able to generate funding of over $350 million. They then went on to launch their developer testnet and has since then handled roughly millions of nodes and transactions.
How Does Aptos Work?
At press time, Aptos is able to process roughly 130,000 transactions per second (TPS), all while enjoying optimum reliability, speed, and security. A couple of innovative technological concepts are at work behind this while maintaining security and reliability. Below are the revolutionary tech concepts that support the Aptos model:
Move Programming Language
Aptos is powered by the Move programming language which was designed primarily for Meta’s Diem blockchain. Move is a more flexible and executable programming language with a relatively more robust and secure global storage compared to other programming languages.
These characteristics make Move suitable to the unique needs and design of Aptos. With Move, users can easily define or customize resources which are secure enough to not be prone to malicious hacks or attacks on the blockchain.
Block-STM Technology
With the Block-STM technology, managing smart contracts becomes quick and easy. This technology enables parallel execution allowing handling of multiple transactions with ease making the process faster and with fail-proof transactions. With this technology, all transactions are processed and validated prior to execution.
In order to bolster efficiently, a collaborative scheduler is set in place to prioritize certain transactions and handle important validations on the Aptos blockchain. To date, around 160,000 transactions can be processed simultaneously with 100% accuracy and ease.
BFT Consensus Protocol
While other blockchains are using consensus protocol that follows a specific route or order of transactions, Aptos blockchain separates the two processes allowing them to run in parallel lines which help decrease latency or the amount of time it takes for confirming or verifying network transactions, thus increasing speed.
More so, a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) engine is also created to automatically analyze and update validators whenever necessary, thus optimizing accuracy.
Aptos NFTs
While NFT support isn’t a priority for Aptos, their engineers have recently discovered that the blockchain is redundantly capable of handling NFTs due to its parallel execution engine, which also provides another investment opportunity apart from the Aptos crypto.
The parallel execution engine helps speed up the ability of users to mint NFTs and fund new accounts. Moreover, Typescript SDK allows users to write scripts needed for minting NFTs.
All of these in fruitions allow a single user to create multiple or several NFTs simultaneously on multiple platforms. So, instead of using a lot of resources to design and create NFTs, users can now enable multiple or recurring transactions at one time.
In fact, recent testing has shown that it’s possible to mint millions of NFTs in a fraction of an hour. Developers are looking to build on these features to enable a quicker, simpler, and more secure NFT space for many users. Aptos is also planning to create and release their NFTs.
Aptos Attracting VC Attention and Funding
The Aptos blockchain is relatively new but it has been amassing a lot of funding from venture capitalists. Aptos has recently received some large investments in March 2022 wherein giant venture capital groups that include Multicoin Capital, Three Arrows Capital, FTX Ventures, Hashed, and Coinbase Ventures has given a total of around $200 million.
Aptos then received another round of funding from Jump Crypto and FTX Ventures with a total of $150 million.
Should You Invest in Aptos?
Well, if the biggest venture capital firms are investing in the Aptos blockchain then there must be something really golden about this opportunity.
Aptos appears to be one of the most secure and reliable crypto opportunities to have in 2022. It’s a solid investment because of its fast TPS rates shown during testing and also its stellar and experienced team of developers, and of course having founders who are from Meta and developers of Diem.
Further, Aptos also boasts of its unique and robust architecture which alienates consensus from execution and also in using Move as a primary programming language to beef up security, making Aptos stand out from all the other layer 1 projects.
Note that being investable doesn’t mean that there is a guarantee of return. One should always do their own research and manage their own risks when it comes to cryptocurrencies.