Aptos, the much-anticipated blockchain built has become last week’s punchline in crypto. To kick off its mainnet launch with a bang, the Aptos foundation shared that it had allocated an estimated 20 million APT tokens last week. It represents 2% of its initial total supply of 1 billion APT, to about 110,235 eligible participants. The airdropped tokens had an estimated value of about $200–$260 million USD based on the token’s market price at the time the drop took place.

What is Aptos?

Aptos was launched by former Meta employees Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching. The founders also had a role in advancing Mark Zuckerberg’s failed Diem project. The Diem Association and its subsidiaries wound down operations in February of this year, with Meta moving to sell the project’s intellectual property and other assets.

Aptos’ blockchain uses Diem’s programming language, called Move, which makes transactions cheaper and more efficient. Mysten Labs, another blockchain project to emerge from the ashes of Diem, also utilizes the Move programming language.

The debut of FTX- and A16z-backed new layer 1 blockchain Aptos caught the industry’s attention this week

The Aptos blockchain was just announced this year, but it’s already receiving impressive funding. Aptos accepted its first big set of investments in March 2022. Several large venture capital groups, including a16z Crypto, Multicoin Capital, Hashed, Tiger Global, Three Arrows Capital, FTX Ventures and Coinbase Ventures contributed a total of $200 million. Aptos then went on to receive another $150 million in June from FTX Ventures, Bixin Ventures, and Jump Crypto. Previous investors, such as a16z crypto and Multicoin Capital, have contributed to multiple rounds of funding.

The Move Language

To represent the state of the ledger, Aptos uses Move’s object model. Move is a new smart contract programming language, and its main focus is on both safety and flexibility. It uses Move modules to encode the rules of state transactions.

Users submit transactions that can publish new modules, upgrade ones that already exist, execute certain entry functions that are defined within this module or contain scripts that are able to interact with the public interfaces of various modules.

The programing language is designed to put a strong emphasis on resource scarcity, as well as preservation and access control. It leverages a bytecode verified that guarantees type and memory safety, even when there’s code that’s untrusted. On the other hand, to help write code that’s more trusted, developers have access to the Move Prover – it’s a formal verifier that’s capable of authenticating the functional correctness of a program against a pre-set specification.

Bixin Wallet – Secure Your Bitcoin In An Easier Way. Launched in 2014, 8 years of safety and 0 accidents! Welcome to “Bixin Q&A”, a talk show launched by Bixin Wallet, mainly focused on the cryptocurrency market. Bixin will invite friends in the industry to express their opinions together. Some of them are senior practitioners, some are technical developers, and some are market traders. They are all active in the market and can provide the latest valuable information in the market. In each issue, Bixin Talk will select a hot issue to discuss, analyze it from multiple dimensions, and help you filter the value points. Our aim is to “gather more views and seize more opportunities!” Bixin also welcomes you to use Bixin wallet to manage cryptocurrency assets, Website: www.bixin.com In this issue, Bixin Talk interviewed two Web3ers from the top 100 universities in the world. The first is Mask, an MIT  Alumni who is a developer on move language crypto researcher. And the second is Justin, a UCB Alumni who is a crypto researcher. They are both active members of the Bixin community.

What is the difference between Aptos and other chains?

Mask: Ethereum is a one-lane road where all the cars must travel in a single line behind one another, whereas both Solana and Aptos are four-lane expressways. This obviously speeds things up. But the question is, how do the cars travel on the expressway? In the case of Solana, each car is essentially assigned a specific lane, and will always drive along the lane. This is very fast and efficient in the best-case scenario. On the other hand, in the case of Aptos, the cars are first assigned some lanes, but if this doesn’t work, then the cars are allowed to swerve into other lanes to prevent accidents. Therefore, even though Aptos may not run as fast as Solana in the best-case scenario, it is more reliable than Solana and has a better worse-case scenario.

Justin: There is a lot of crypto news, Aptos crypto might sound somewhat familiar. It’s definitely true that a lot of new blockchains claim to be exciting Layer 1s that will solve all scalability problems. While it’s understandable to approach Aptos with some caution, it actually does justify some hype. A very active community, plenty of investors, and access to unique engines and programming languages all help the Aptos blockchain stand out. If it delivers on its promises, it will be very different indeed from existing Layer 1 chains.Aptos’ is currently the first and only major Move-based L1 chain that has launched a mainnet. As such, Aptos’ mainnet release is an incredibly symbolic event; the money and media attention that Aptos has attracted is not necessarily commensurate with its inherent technical innovation.

Why Aptos Has the Attention of VCs?

Mask: One of the main factors behind Aptos’ success is its founders. The co-founders of Aptos Labs have years of experience producing impressive work. Not only do they have a solid reputation for creating crypto and other projects, but they also have a collective background in venture capitalism that’s helped them connect to investors. Aptos’ connection to Diem is another reason that investors feel the company is a solid bet. It’s essentially a continuation of a project that Meta/Facebook launched before pivoting to focus on their “metaverse” instead. Aptos’ origins have investors feeling confident about what the company is offering.

Justin: Aptos really started to pick up steam after launching their testnets. Users began reporting TPS and time-to-finality rates that blew other cryptos out of the water. With the ability to process up to 160,000 TPS and finalize transactions in less than a second, Aptos has the potential to quickly outrank its competitors.

Any concerns with Aptos?

Mask: The primary technical innovation that Aptos itself has made is in its Block-STM parallel execution engine. Most of the other technical aspects, including its consensus mechanism and use of the Move language, are marginally improved legacy products inherited from Meta [14]. Regarding the Block-STM parallel execution engine, it is unclear whether this will cause a qualitative difference between the user-experience on Aptos versus the user-experience on Solana; if the user-experience is the same, the user won’t care how it is implemented on the technical level.

Justin: The developers building protocols on the Aptos chain are more like speculators in the new ecosystem – the previous developer base shows that a large portion of the developers of the new language Move came from Polkadot and Solana, and even Austin Virts, formerly Solana’s marketing director, moved to Aptos in August to become Aptos’ director of eco-development.

This has also created a new problem: Aptos developers are less loyal, and the group tends to be made up of developers from other public chains, like the mobility mercenaries, loyal to mobility and incentives rather than to the public chain itself.

Evaluating the future of Aptos

Mask :For a Layer 1, the logic of the value of Apots token is summed up as “hype in the short term, narrative and expectations in the medium term, and ecology and adoption in the long term”.

As the first Layer1 to launch the mainnet based on the Move language, Aptos deserves our long-term attention. But as a “centralized blockchain controlled by capital”,the success or failure of Aptos will have to be judged in the future.

Justin: Move’s unique language features mean that there inevitably will be DApps that are far better to be implemented on Move rather than on Solidity or other smart contract languages. But will those projects necessarily be implemented in the Aptos ecosystem? No one knows. Aptos may enjoy some first-mover advantages of being able to bring Move into production and tying its name with the Move language.

The above is all the answers of the two interviewed guests in this issue. Aptos’ is currently the first and only major Move-based L1 chain that has launched a mainnet. As such, Aptos’ mainnet release is an incredibly symbolic event; the money and media attention that Aptos has attracted is not necessarily commensurate with its inherent technical innovation. The Aptos project promises to increase blockchain scalability and reliability. So far, Aptos has attracted a lot of investors and industry attention. Only time will tell if Aptos is as revolutionary as it claims, but their lightning-fast transaction times and experienced dev team are making them look like a solid investment.

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