Aiming to provide “the most secure and scalable level 1 blockchain”, Aptos (APT) released its mainnet after four years of technical development and a valuation of one billion dollars.
Aptos is the latest effort by high-profile individuals and organizations to create the perfect blockchain for smart contracts, a code that supports the expansive world of NFT, DAO and DeFi.
While the “king” of smart tokens, Ethereum, has made a significant leap forward with the successful implementation of the Merge, the other level-1 blockchains have so far failed to challenge its dominance, leaving the door open to newer platforms such as Aptos.
The parallel execution
In 2019, Meta (Facebook at the time) was working on its own blockchain project called Libra, which was later renamed Diem.
However, pressure from government regulators, as well as criticism from the cryptocurrency community, prompted the tech giant to abandon the project.
The actions at the time were enough to make its developers see value in its key differentiator which was “parallel execution” or a method of ordering and combining transactions to rapidly speed up the process. Thus, they went on to create Aptos.
In tests, Aptos claims to have handled 130,000 transactions per second, compared to 30 per second handled by Ethereum.
Also key to the nascent Aptos ecosystem is the associated Move programming language, which prioritizes scarcity and access control.
The attention of venture capitalists
Prior to its release, Aptos had already attracted the attention of venture capitalists. Indicative of this was the fact that it closed a $200 million strategic funding round in March from major industry players such as Andreessen Horowitz, followed by another $150 million round led by FTX.
Aptos selected Anchorage Digital last month as one of its institutional custodians after years of collaboration, as its co-founder and Chairman, Diogo Monica, had previously served on Diem’s technical steering committee.
Mass adoption of Web3
Aptos described its launch as a milestone in the drive for mass adoption of Web3:
“We’re proud to get here together, for the people,” Aptos wrote on Medium, adding: “This is the first step in a long journey to create universal and equitable access to decentralized applications for billions of people through a secure, scalable and upgradable blockchain.”
Time will tell.
Time will tell whether Aptos’ approach to transaction execution will prove instrumental to its success or whether it will attract a sufficient community of blockchain developers to build on the network.
Following the release of Aptos, many developers are also awaiting the imminent release of the Sui blockchain, which also uses the Move language and shares much of Aptos’ DNA.
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