The Ethereum blockchain’s well-known scaling problems have opened the door to competing Layer-1 networks bidding to provide a more capable foundation for decentralized applications. There has been a lot of interest in these alternative blockchains, with the likes of Avalanche, Solana, Fantom and others all getting a lot of attention. But one of the most promising competitors to emerge could well be Aptos, an up-and-coming blockchain that’s based on a more advanced programming language called Move.
What’s Aptos All About?
If you haven’t heard about Aptos yet then start paying attention. Still under development, Aptos promises to be a faster, more scalable and more secure blockchain than its existing competitors. Notably, Aptos was conceived and built by experienced engineers who formerly worked on Meta Platform’s Diem blockchain, the same people who created the Move language.
Those engineers are Mo Shaikh, Aptos’s CEO, and Avery Ching, the CTO, who previously also worked together on the Novi crypto wallet. With Aptos, they say they’re focused on creating a Layer-1 network that can advance decentralization without sacrificing its reliability, usability and safety. These are the main problems that are holding back adoption of blockchain, they say. To overcome these challenges, they have reassembled many of the original designers and creators who were involved with the Diem project, which was ultimately sidelined by Meta not because it didn’t work, but rather due to regulatory concerns.
Aptos’s technology foundation clearly has a lot of potential, and that has been recognized in a big way. The project has raised some serious capital, with an initial $200 million funding round led by a16z crypto, Multicoin Capital, ParaFi, Haun Ventures, PayPal Ventures, FTX Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and others, then a $150 million Series A round led by Sam Bankman-FTX Fried’s Ventures and Jump Crypto, and finally, an undisclosed investment from Binance Labs. Aptos has consequently been valued at more than $1 billion, despite not even launching its mainnet yet.
Move: Aptos’s Secret Sauce
The newly developed, Rust-based Move programming language is the key feature of Aptos. Move was first developed by Meta to enable greater scalability and security for Diem, and now it’s being used by Aptos for exactly the same reasons.
The Aptos team says the main advantage of Move is the way it uses system resources. For the uninitiated, resources refer to a protected method of storing data within a system. With Move, these resources have a higher status within the code’s architecture than they do with alternative languages like Solidity. This means that resources cannot be copied or accidentally deleted.
In an interview, Hsuan Lee, co-founder and CEO of the Blocto smart contract wallet and portto, the company that built Blocto, told us that Aptos’ decision to embrace Move will provide it with key advantages that no other blockchain can offer.
“The Move language and resource model solves a lot of performance and security problems that are seen in most other Layer-1 protocols,” Hsuan said.
He explained that the key thing to understand with Move is that essential information such as tokens and smart contracts are stored as resources, ensuring that these assets are much more secure than with other blockchains. The Move language is used to implement the key elements of Aptos, such as user accounts, transaction fees, validator node management, configuration and a standard library.
Upgraded Security
There’s more to Aptos than just Move, however. Security was one of the main considerations for its designers and they have incorporated numerous other features beyond what Move provides. For instance, Aptos relies on a powerful consensus method called DiemBFT v4, which is derived from Diem’s HotStuff protocol.
DiemBFT v4 is notably Byzantine Fault Tolerant. This means it solves the Byzantine General…
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