Aptos Research Notes

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Origin#

After Meta (formerly Facebook) sold its stablecoin project Diem, some core members left and formed a group to develop the Aptos public chain.

Slogan#

Focus on security, scalability, and upgradability

Create a fast-innovating and adaptable blockchain to meet the needs of billions of people

At Aptos Labs, we are building a Layer 1 for everyone.

Design Logic#

Aptos advocates that Layer 1 blockchains should take on more "scalability" responsibilities in order to increase mainstream adoption. Therefore, Aptos does not intend to rely on Layer 2 like Ethereum does to improve performance, but rather considers it in the underlying design. According to Aptos testnet data, the current network can process more than 10,000 transactions per second, and ideally, the Aptos mainnet can process 160,000 transactions per second.

Performance#

20,000 validation nodes, currently capable of processing over 10,000 transactions per second
Many projects have started development and deployment on the test network, including high-concurrency CLOB protocol Econia, mobile multi-signature wallet Hive, and AMM-based trading platform Pontem Network.
Currently, Aptos can process over 10,000 transactions per second, and ideally, after the Aptos mainnet goes live, it can process 160,000 transactions per second.

Features#

Programming Language#

Move Language

Aptos blockchain uses the Move virtual machine (VM) to execute operations. While many blockchains implement a set of native operations, Aptos delegates all operations to Move, including account creation, fund transfer, and module publishing. To support these operations, a blockchain built on top of Move must provide a framework (similar to an operating system or a set of minimal viable features) to interact with the blockchain.

High Throughput and Low Latency#

In addition to the characteristics of the programming language, Aptos adopts an improved Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus called "Proof-Of-Stake Diem BFT" to achieve high transaction throughput, low latency, and energy efficiency. Byzantine Generals Problem.

Upgradability#

Many current blockchains have difficulty making significant protocol improvements after launch, resulting in events such as downtime and network forks. Therefore, Aptos pays full attention to upgradability when designing and building the blockchain. The management and configuration of its block validators are managed through on-chain state, making it convenient for community voting and rapid execution of upgrades. It is reported that Aptos has successfully executed several major upgrades during the development process without downtime.

Timeline#

On March 15, 2022, Aptos completed a $200 million strategic financing round led by a16z, with participation from Tiger Global, FTX Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures, among other well-known institutions in the crypto industry. At the end of March, Binance Labs also announced strategic investment in Aptos' development team, Aptos Labs, to collaborate on development, code review, infrastructure construction, and hackathons.
At the end of June 2022, Aptos launched a $200 million ecosystem funding program, which includes funding categories such as developer tools, SDKs, libraries, documentation, guides, and tutorials; tools and frameworks for development, governance, DeFi, and NFTs; core protocol contributions, such as token standards, libraries, and protocol upgrades; open-source and public goods; educational initiatives; and applications.
On July 21, 2022, Aptos announced some specific early-stage projects in its ecosystem on Twitter, including the highly concurrent CLOB protocol Econia, the mobile multi-signature wallet Hive, the encrypted wallet Martian that integrates with applications, the lending protocol NjordFinance, the transaction aggregator Hippo Labs, and the AMM trading application Pontem Network.

In addition, other known projects on Aptos include the blockchain explorer Aptosscan, the NFT marketplace Topaz.so, the project dashboard platform Dapptos View, the NFT minting project Aptos Crown Masks, and the decentralized cross-chain wallet ONTO Wallet.

From the ecosystem layout, Aptos still focuses on infrastructure construction, and the deployed applications mainly include wallets, DEXs, and lending protocols.
On July 22, 2022, according to sources, Aptos has discussed a new round of financing with investors, and the company's valuation will be $2.75 billion, which may increase as the negotiations progress. Seeking new financing indicates that Aptos is starting to build momentum for the growth of its on-chain ecosystem, which is a positive signal for Aptos followers.

Investors#

On February 24, 2022, Aptos announced a $200 million financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), which has invested in many crypto startups. The funding also includes participation from Tiger Global, Three Arrows Capital, Multicoin Capital, and Coinbase.
On July 25, 2022, Aptos announced a $150 million financing round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, including new investments from Apollo, Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures, Superscrypt founded by Temasek, as well as continued support from a16z crypto and Multicoin.

Aptos' investors are mostly top-tier capital. Interestingly, the capital is mostly the same "team" that invested in Solana initially.

Founders#

Aptos (APTOS) was founded by Mo (Mohammad) Shaikh and Avery Ching. The founding team of Aptos consists of former members of Meta (Facebook) and has been involved in the development of Diem.

Mo (Mohammad) Shaikh is a 0 to 1 and 3x founder and expert in scaling products. He has been invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss cross-industry innovation. Mo combines his knowledge in product building, fundraising, business strategy, and team scaling. He has over a decade of experience in capital markets, private equity, and venture capital in the US, EU, and Middle East markets.
Avery Ching graduated from Northwestern University. He previously served as a Chief Software Engineer at Facebook and is also a member of the Apache Software Foundation. Currently, Avery Ching is the co-founder and CTO of Aptos (APTOS).

When talking about the features of Aptos, Avery Ching, the co-founder and CTO of Aptos, mentioned in "The Aptos Vision" that significant improvements are needed in terms of user experience, security, and scalability.

Aptos uses a brand new language called Move, which is designed specifically for the Diem project.

Aptos uses the Move language, a secure and flexible blockchain language. The Move language is designed for secure resource management and verifiable execution on the blockchain. Aptos implements accounts, transaction fees, standard libraries, validator management, and configuration using Move.

Production-grade, highly secure BFT consensus protocol. Aptos' first implementation of the BFT protocol adds an active pacemaker that synchronizes validators using timeouts, which is much faster than waiting for additional timeouts. With the latest improvements to the protocol, blocks can be committed with only two network round trips, making sub-second finality a common occurrence. The security of the consensus protocol has been audited and formally verified.

Aptos Core implementation and testing. A large number of validators running in different environments are important for decentralization and security.

More secure account key recovery and rotation protocol. To prevent key theft, Aptos supports the ability for any account to rotate its private key.

Multi-agent transactions. Multi-agent transactions leverage Move's signer types to allow arbitrary operations across multiple on-chain accounts in a single transaction.