Aptos is a scalable Proof-of-Stake Layer 1 blockchain that uses Move, a novel smart contract programming language.

Built by a team of more than 350 developers over the course of the last three years, it aims to revitalize the layer-1 space with novel ideas for consensus mechanisms, smart contract design, system security, performance and decentralization. Aptos blockchain uses a combination of parallel transaction processing with the earlier mentioned smart contract language (Move) to achieve a theoretical transaction throughput of over 100,000 transactions per second. The ecosystem first made waves in the industry in March after raising $200 million in a seed round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Also in July, Aptos raised another $150 million at a $1.9 billion pre-money valuation in a Series A funding round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, before its valuation hit $4 billion two months later in a venture raise led by Binance Labs.

The project is developed by Aptos Labs, a blockchain startup led by two former Meta engineers, Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching. This is why it is considered in some quarters as the technological successor of Meta’s abandoned blockchain project — Diem.

The Aptos genesis took place on Oct. 12, 2022. The launch of the project’s blockchain mainnet, “Aptos Autumn” followed shortly after on Oct. 17.

To reward the early users of its testnet and distribute the initial token allocation, Aptos airdropped 150 APT tokens (worth approximately $1,237 on launch but surged as high as $7,000 subsequently) to 110,235 eligible addresses.

The project promises several advantages, including:

Aptos network leverages all available physical resources to process many transactions simultaneously. This results in a higher network throughput and transaction speed, amounting to lower costs and a better experience for the blockchain users.

ii. How Does Aptos Work?

Aptos uses a byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and is built around several design principles, namely: fast and secure execution with simple auditability and mechanical analyzability.

Aptos uses Move, a new smart contract programming language based on Rust, emphasizing safety and flexibility. It focuses on resource scarcity, preservation and access control and was enhanced by the Aptos team with support for broader web3 use cases. For instance, DAOs can collaboratively share accounts, and NFT collections can be minted in a single account.

Since Aptos is built using Move, the project claims to offer several advantages that Ethereum does not. For instance, blockchain commands can be easily verified, and Aptos allows users to modify their private keys. Furthermore, the modular design of Aptos allows it to upgrade without disconnecting the entire network.

Second, Aptos’ batched, pipelined and parallelized approach to transaction processing allows for extremely high throughput and low latency. Put simply, each transaction stage on the Aptos blockchain is completely independent, to aid speed and facilitate frequent updates through faster release cycles.

The low-latency BFT consensus mechanism secures the blockchain, while simultaneously allowing it to hit transaction speeds of up to 150,000 transactions per second (tps) in testnet conditions. By comparison, Ethereum mainnet’s current tps is around 12 to 15.

Finally, the upgradeability and configurability of Aptos allow it to embrace new use cases, while the horizontal throughput scalability preserves decentralization. In doing so, Aptos natively implements design features like sharding that other blockchains have to add through improvement protocols, like future planned Ethereum upgrades.

iii. The Aptos ecosystem

As of October 2022, the still-nascent Aptos ecosystem comprises the following elements:

Validators

Public full node

Indexer full node

Aptos explorer

DApps

Now, we’ll give a quick rundown of each of these elements:

iv. Aptos token

The Aptos token (APT) is the native cryptocurrency in the Aptos ecosystem. At one stage, the project found itself mired in controversy after it prepared to launch the Aptos token without any public information whatsoever — no data on total supply or distribution, not even a general overall plan. However, after facing community backlash, the Aptos team course corrected and shared most of the details via a blog post.

The Mainnet officially launched on Oct. 12, 2022, with an initial token supply of 1 billion. APT has eight digits of precision, and each minimal unit is called an Octa.

The token distribution is currently along the following lines:

As per the vesting schedule, core contributors and investors have a four-year lockup on their tokens, excluding token rewards. The lockup period begins from the Mainnet launch date (Oct. 12, 2022). About 82% of the circulating APT supply is currently staked on the network. Click here for more details about the Aptos token and its underlying tokenomics.

v. Pros

vi. Cons