Editor | Bowen@Web3CN.Pro
Table of contents
1. Project Introduction
2. Project Vision
3. Features and advantages
(1) Meta system
(2) Move language
(3) Block-STM technology
(4) Account management is more secure
(5) Support frequent upgrades
(6) High-performance sparse Merkle tree
(7) Comparison of Meta public chains
IV. Development History
5. Team Background
VI. Financing Information
VII. Development Achievements
(1) Technological progress
(2) Market conditions
(3) Ecological development
8. Economic Model
IX. Risks and Opportunities
1. Project Introduction
Aptos is a brand new independent public chain project established in 2021, a first-layer public chain focusing on security and scalability. Its consensus mechanism adopts Proof of Stake and has attracted much attention due to its Meta background, Move language and high TPS.
2. Project Vision
Aptos' vision is to provide a blockchain that can bring mainstream adoption to web3 and enhance the ecosystem of decentralized applications to solve real-world user problems. The team is committed to developing products and applications that "redefine the web3 user experience" on the Aptos blockchain.
Aptos' mission is to advance the state of the art in blockchain reliability, security, and performance by providing a flexible, modular blockchain architecture that supports frequent upgrades, rapid adoption of the latest technological advances, and best-in-class support for emerging use cases.
3. Features and advantages
(1) Meta system
Aptos, Sui, and Linera are often discussed together because the co-founders of these three projects all have experience working on projects at Meta.
Aptos' team is composed of the original creators, researchers, designers, and builders of Diem, the stablecoin project of the original Facebook (Meta), formerly known as Libra. Libra is a digital currency project for payment transactions that started in 2019. Due to regulatory reasons, it was transformed into a stablecoin and renamed Diem, but it has not been well launched.
For Aptos, the Diem team background is one of the reasons why it has attracted attention.
(2) Move language
In theory, using the Move language, Aptos can have both high transaction throughput and scalability without sacrificing security.
Move was inspired by Rust, a new programming language developed for the development of Diem at the time, which is different from Solidity used by Ethereum.
Ethereum was mainly solving the problem of the difficulty of writing smart contracts on Bitcoin, so Solidity is a programming language for blockchain smart contracts. It treats tokens as variables such as value, which can easily lead to asset security issues, and assets may appear or disappear out of thin air.
Move is not a programming language for smart contracts, but a programming language for blockchain assets. It treats tokens as resources, encapsulates them at the bottom layer, and must be bound to an account. An account can only have one type of resource at a time, and when it is taken out of the account, it must be used, and as much as is taken out can be used.
The Move module defines the validity period, storage and access mode of each resource, which can be labeled. For example, store means storage and key means indexing, so tokens can be stored and transferred securely and will not be generated, disappear or reused without proper credentials.
Currently, the projects using the Move language include: Aptos, Sui, Starcoin, 0L Network, etc.
(3) Parallel transactions: Block-STM technology brings high TPS
Currently, most blockchains use a serial transaction execution method, that is, transactions are included in the block one by one, and the next transaction must wait for the previous transaction to be completed. The advantage of this is that it is easier to confirm the transaction status, but the scalability will be limited.
Parallel execution means that multiple transactions can be executed at the same time. Generally, a snapshot of the current state is taken, and then multiple transactions are processed at the same time. This obviously increases transaction throughput, but the difficulty lies in how to prevent different transactions from affecting each other.
Block-STM is a technology that accelerates the execution of smart contracts, which originated from Diem. Block-STM increases throughput through parallelism and is the core technology of Aptos. Aptos achieves high TPS by allowing new nodes to participate in state synchronization through Block-STM.
As shown in the figure, Aptos consists of a group of validation nodes that jointly receive and process transaction requests from users using the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) and Proof of Stake consensus mechanism (PoS).
Unlike other blockchains, most blockchains are hierarchical structures. The core of the network is a group of active validators who are responsible for processing transactions, generating blocks, and reaching consensus. The Aptos network allows active nodes to synchronize their status to new validation nodes (inactive validation nodes). The goal is high throughput, low latency, fast synchronization time, resistance to failures and malicious behavior, and tolerance of resource constraints and heterogeneity.
(4) Account management is more secure
The Aptos data model supports flexible key management and hybrid custody options. This, together with pre-signature transaction transparency and a practical light client protocol, provides a more secure and trusted user experience.
The account-key decoupling approach enables Aptos to seamlessly add new digital signature algorithms to support public and private key types, and the hybrid custody model supports advanced recovery solutions and account management to help bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3. To further enhance the user experience, the Aptos blockchain limits the feasibility of each transaction and protects signers from unlimited validity through three protection areas - sequence number, expiration time and chain ID to prevent errors and attacks.
(5) Support frequent upgrades
Aptos has a history of upgradeability, and every area in the system has been designed from the ground up with modularity and flexibility in mind. This enables the Aptos architecture to support frequent upgrades, which in turn means that the blockchain can quickly adopt the latest technological advances and provide technical support for emerging use cases.
Aptos modular architecture design creates client flexibility and is optimized for frequent upgrades with zero downtime - features demonstrated in mainnet iterations, testnets, and many internal stress tests. The Aptos blockchain includes an embedded on-chain change management protocol to rapidly deploy new technological innovations and support new Web3 use cases.
(6) High-performance sparse Merkle tree
Aptos uses the Jellyfish Merkle Tree (JMT, Sparse Merkle Tree) design, which uses a monotonically increasing version-based key pattern to optimize write scaling on the underlying storage engine based on LSM trees (log-structured merge trees). JMT strikes a practical balance between CPU, I/O, and storage usage, ensuring satisfactory performance without the need to handle large and difficult-to-handle bloated state data on disk.
In addition to using JMT as the persistence format for Aptos state, it also has another in-memory lock-free sparse Merkle tree implementation. It is specially tailored for caching and parallelization, and works with Block-STM to facilitate high-performance global state updates.
(7) Comparison of Meta public chains
IV. Development History
2022.01.31 Meta (formerly Facebook)'s stablecoin project Diem was acquired by Silvergate
2022.02.24 Aptos enters the market, and the founders and other team members are from Diem
2022.03.15 Aptos completes $200 million financing
2022.03.28 BinanceLabs announces strategic investment in Aptos
2022.05.14 Aptos launches incentive testnet
2022.06.29 Aptos launches ecosystem funding program
2022.07.01 Aptos Incentivized Testnet 2 registration opens
2022.07.25 Aptos completes new round of financing of US$150 million
2022.08.19 Aptos Incentivized Testnet 3 Registration Opens
2022.10.18 The public chain Aptos has officially launched the mainnet "Aptos Autumn"
2022.10.18 Aptos announces token economics
2022.10.19 Aptos official domain name service Aptos Name Service is launched
2023.02.17 Aptos launches ambassador program Aptos Collective
2023.03.11 Aptos on-chain transaction volume exceeds 100 million
2023.04.13 Aptos launches $20 million grant program to encourage artists to create on its chain
2023.04.21 Aptos launches the delegated staking feature
5. Team Background
Many key team members of Aptos come from Meta. For example, Aptos co-founder and CTO Avery Ching and Mo Shaikh were both the main builders of Diem and Novi.
In addition, most of the developers and researchers in the development team, such as Alden Hu, participated in the development of Diem and Novi.
Mo Shaikh (left) and Avery Ching (right)
Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos, was responsible for strategic partnerships at Meta from May 2020 to December 2021, and prior to that was founder and CEO of Meridio from October 2017 to May 2020, a blockchain-based platform for investing in and trading liquid fractional real estate.
Avery Ching, co-founder and CTO of Aptos. Avery Ching worked as a chief software engineer at Facebook for more than 10 years from September 2011 to December 2021. He was also the technical leader of the Novi team, a crypto platform under Meta, focusing on the development of various aspects of blockchain technology and also responsible for maintaining the Diem blockchain. He worked as a chief software engineer at Yahoo from October 2007 to September 2011.
Josh Lind - Founding Engineer
Josh Lind, founding engineer at Aptos, is engaged in research on Layer1 blockchain technology. Prior to this, he was a researcher working on the Diem blockchain at Novi. He completed his PhD at the Large Scale Data and Systems (LSDS) Group and the Center for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering (IC3RE) at Imperial College London. His PhD focused on improving the security and privacy of large-scale distributed systems using trusted hardware.
Alin Tomescu – Researcher
Alin Tomescu, a founding team member and researcher at Aptos, received a Master’s degree in Computer Science and a Doctor of Philosophy from MIT. He has over six years of research experience at MIT and focuses on cryptography, public keys, authenticated data structures, secure communications, and secure web applications.
David Wolinsky - Software Engineer
David Wolinsky, software engineer at Aptos, was previously the technical lead for Meta's Web3, working across multiple organizations and teams to help develop many strategic technology and product initiatives. Prior to this, he worked on the Diem blockchain for nearly two years, including designing governance and genesis programs, establishing security infrastructure plans and principles, and defining integration with Diem. Prior to joining Novi, he was a technical lead/manager at Facebook, responsible for Facebook's advertising growth. Previously, he was a research scholar at Yale University.
Alden Hu——Software Engineer
Alden Hu, software engineer at Aptos Labs, worked as a senior software engineer at Novi from February 2019 to February 2022. He previously worked at Instagram and Baidu.
Rati Gelashvili – Researcher
Rati Gelashvili, a researcher on the founding team of Aptos, holds a Ph.D. from MIT and has extensive expertise in concurrent, parallel and distributed algorithms and data structures. He served as a senior research scientist at Novi from May 2020 to January 2022.
VI. Financing Information
On March 15, 2022, Aptos completed a financing of US$200 million. The round was led by a16z, with participation from Multicoin Capital, Katie Haun, ParaFi Capital, IRONGREY, Hashed, Variant, Tiger Global, BlockTower, FTX Ventures, Paxos, Coinbase Ventures and others.
On March 28, 2022, Binance Labs announced a strategic investment in Aptos Labs, the development team of the public chain project Aptos, and will work closely with Aptos in development, code review, infrastructure construction and hackathons.
On July 25, 2022, Aptos announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$150 million, led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto. Other investors include Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures, Superscrypt, a16z crypto and Multicoin Capital.
On September 15, 2022, Binance Labs announced an increased strategic investment in Aptos Labs to expand its commitment to infrastructure building.
VII. Development Achievements
(1) Technological progress
① Move language: is a next-generation language for secure, sandboxed, and formally verified programming. Its first use case is the Diem blockchain, and Move provides the basis for its implementation. Move allows developers to write programs that flexibly manage and transfer assets while providing security and protection against attacks on those assets. Currently, blockchain projects that use the Move language include: Aptos, Sui, Starcoin, 0L Network, etc.
Move was designed to solve the problem of digital asset protection from the perspective of programming language. Aptos and Move were developed simultaneously more than three years ago. Aptos' accounts, transaction fees, standard library, validator node management and configuration are all implemented in Move.
② Parallel execution engine
Aptos implemented Block-STM in an open source code base, relying on Rayon, Dashmap, and ArcSwap crates for concurrency.
Aptos compared Block-STM to sequential execution of blocks. Each block contained 10k transactions, with the number of accounts determining the level of conflict and contention. Under low contention, Block-STM archived 16x faster than sequential execution using 32 threads, while under high contention, Block-STM archived more than 8x faster. Importantly, Block-STM incurs a small amount of overhead when the workload is sequential in nature. Overall, Block-STM is able to dynamically and transparently (without user prompting) extract inherent parallelism from the workload.
③ BFT consensus protocol
The Aptos team has developed a production-grade, low-latency Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) engine and has been implementing the fourth iteration of the protocol over the past three years.
Aptos added an active pacemaker via the BFT protocol, which uses timeouts to synchronize validators, which is much faster than waiting for an increased timeout. With the latest improvements to the protocol, blocks can be committed in just two network round trips, making sub-second finality a common occurrence.
④ Network
Aptos Incentivized Testnet 1: Successfully launched a node and passed activity checks within 24 hours with over 95% availability
Aptos Incentivized Testnet 2: Testcoins support staking and staking rewards, decentralized faucet support
Aptos Incentivized Testnet 3: Successfully started the node within 12 hours after the node start time and passed the activity check, availability exceeded 97%, etc.
Aptos Mainnet “Aptos Autumn” is launched
(2) Market conditions
On October 24, 2022, Aptos reached a cooperation with PancakeSwap, and PancakeSwap and CAKE tokens will be deployed on Aptos.
On November 11, 2022, Aptos reached a cooperation with Google Cloud and will launch an accelerator program.
On March 9, 2023, Aptos reached a cooperation with the cross-chain bridge Wormhole, allowing users to bridge NFT assets to Aptos.
As of April 26, 2023, 11 Web3 companies have joined the Google Cloud Startup Support Program, including Aptos, Base, Flow, etc.
On May 11, 2023, the number of applications for the long-term funding program Aptos Grant DAO exceeded 300.
(3) Ecological development
Currently, Aptos officially shows that it has nearly 150 on-chain ecosystems, including cross-chain bridges, DeFi, NFT, games, infrastructure and other fields.
8. Economic Model
(1) Token Overview
APT is the governance token of Aptos, with a total of 1 billion, 8-digit precision, and the smallest unit is called Octa.
51.02% of the tokens will be allocated to the community, 16.5% to the foundation, 19% to core contributors, and 13.48% to investors.
(2) Distribution to the community and foundation
The token pool is designated for ecosystem-related projects such as grants, rewards, and other community development programs. A total of 410,217,359.767 community and foundation tokens are held by the Aptos Foundation and 100,000,000 by Aptos Labs. It is expected to be unlocked within ten years. The specific distribution details are as follows:
125,000,000 APT to support ecosystem projects, grants, and other community building
The initial plan is to provide 5,000,000 APT to support the Aptos Foundation
1/120 of the remaining community and foundation tokens are expected to be unlocked monthly over the next 10 years
(3) Distribution of core contributors and investors
Core Contributors and Investors: All investors and core contributors will be locked for 4 years, no APT will be distributed in the first 12 months, 3/48 of APT will be unlocked in the 13th month after the mainnet launch, and unlocked monthly thereafter, and fully unlocked in the 18th month. Starting from the 19th month after the mainnet launch, 1/48 of the tokens will be unlocked each month so that all such tokens will be unlocked on the fourth anniversary of the mainnet launch.
(4) Token Supply Schedule
More than 82% of the tokens have been locked in the above categories and cannot be released for the time being.
IX. Risks and opportunities
(1) Opportunities
① Market environment:
The public chain track has always been the most challenging and the place with the best value. With the rapid outbreak of applications such as DeFi, NFT, and Web3, the narrative and conceptual nature of the public chain are one of the main concerns of the market. Of course, the competition in the public chain track has never stopped.
Counting the development of the public chain track, from BSC, Solana, Avalanche, Fantom, Near, Avalanche, to Terra, one public chain after another has not only shown good results in the secondary market price, but also ushered in vigorous development in the ecology, leading to a small climax belonging to the emerging public chains.
② Project progress:
Aptos has 108 validation nodes worldwide. The total supply of APT is 1,034,592,689, the staking pool tokens are 877,583,198, and its market value is currently $1,681,095,144, ranking 33rd in the entire network.
APT’s trading volume remains low and the bullish momentum is likely to continue if there is no significant bearish pressure in the market.
(2) Risks
① The effect is not as expected
The results of the Aptos Autumn mainnet launch in October last year were not satisfactory. Aptos official data claimed that it could achieve 160,000 TPS, but according to browser data, the Aptos network throughput was only 30-40 TPS, far from the target value.
② Lack of advantageous projects
Although Aptos is also trying to develop a public chain with its own characteristics, for example, Framework co-founder Vance Spencer and others have questioned on Twitter: What did Aptos do that Solana didn't do?
Since Aptos has a high degree of overlap with Solana in terms of technology, capital, ecological developers, etc., Aptos also needs to face competitive pressure from Solana.
③ Overvaluation
As a star public chain, Aptos has become a darling of capital since its launch. In the financing in July 2022, Aptos' valuation reached US$2.75 billion. Judging from the bear market, Aptos' valuation is relatively high.
④ The Korean market brings potential risks
As one of the hottest crypto trading markets in the world, the Korean market often has higher prices for crypto assets than other countries, a phenomenon known as the "Kimchi Premium". After the collapse of Terra, a vacuum appeared in the Korean local crypto market, which urgently needed a new protagonist, so Aptos seized the opportunity to enter the Korean market. In the white paper released simultaneously on the Aptos official website, Korean is the only language other than English. The madness of the Korean market may pose potential risks to the project.
reference:
Comprehensive Interpretation | Dark Horse Star Public Chain Aptos: Opportunities and Challenges under First-Mover Advantage
What is behind the rise of Aptos?