DEVELOPMENT
Let’s uncover the topic of Aptos blockchain: what kind of network it is, what are the results for 2022, development plans for 2023.
About Aptos
What is Aptos
Aptos is a scalable L1 proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain that uses the Move programming language and promises increased reliability, usability and security. The Aptos core network was launched on October 17, 2022.
Key features of Aptos include a parallel execution mechanism, low transaction costs and high-level security features.
Founders of the project
Aptos is a byproduct of Facebook’s attempt to use the Diem blockchain, which was forcibly shut down by regulators. Two members of Diem’s leadership team, Mo Sheikh and Avery Ching, later founded Aptos, a decentralized version of the abandoned blockchain project.
Mo Sheikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos. Mo Sheikh is a three-time founder with more than a decade of experience in financial services and blockchain and crypto technologies. He has also worked on strategic partnerships with blockchain for Novi, the Meta wallet, and was director of strategy at ConsenSys.
Ecosystem and Applications
All applications can be viewed on Movemarketcap and on GitHub.
TVL
Aptos’ current TVL is $42 million.
The peak TVL was $64 million in January 2023. From the peak TVL has fallen by 35%.
Top 10 DeFi projects. PancakeSwap project with DEXes theme is on the 1st place with 72% dominance (from all TVL of Aptos ecosystem).
Network analytics
You can see all the activity here.
The current TPS is 7, and has peaked in the last 30 days at 458 TPS (transactions per second). Which is very low compared to the claimed 160k.
There are 104 active validators in total.
To understand whether it is a lot or not, I suggest to compare the number of Aptos validators with other blockchains.
The top countries by geographical distribution are: South Korea, Germany, Ireland, USA, Singapore.
Of the total number of tokens (1 billion APT), 83% of all tokens are zastakany
Over the past month, the average number of transactions was about 100 thousand.
The number of active accounts is at the level of 16-20 thousand with a tendency to increase.
The number of new accounts is at the level of 3-7 thousand with a tendency to increase.
How much invested
The current price of the APT token is $11.44. The price has fallen 42% from the highs.
There are 18% of tokens in circulation.
Current capitalization is $2 billion.
Total capitalization is $11.8 billion.
According to the known information, about $350 million were invested in Aptos.
Development activity
Among the largest blockchains (Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, Chia, Aptos, Near) Aptos is in 4th place by development activity.
Development activity – shows the project’s development activity over time based on a number of purely development-related “events” in the project’s publicly accessible Github repository. (does not take into account: release comments, forks, stars, etc.).
Aptos Token
APT is Aptos platform’s own token. The APT token is used to pay transaction and network fees.
Validators can prioritize transactions with the highest value in the Aptos network and discard transactions with lower value. In this way, the blockchain works efficiently when the system is loaded.
The token, is also a management token that can be used to vote on protocol updates and proposals and processes on and off the network.
How it works
Aptos is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain that combines parallel transaction processing to achieve a potential throughput of 160,000 TPS (transactions per second). However, it currently only processes 7 transactions per second, contrary to what is claimed.
Most blockchains either execute smart contracts sequentially or require a significant parallel workload to increase performance, which requires a significant amount of power. Aptos differs from other blockchains in that one failed transaction does not stop the entire blockchain. Instead, all transactions are executed simultaneously and then validated.
Architecturally, the Aptos blockchain is a set of validators that receive and process transactions using consensus. Holders place tokens at the validators. The strength of the consensus voting depends on the amount of tokenized coins. Validators can be active and inactive.
Clients can be full nodes or light nodes. Full node clients replicate transactions and blockchain state, while light clients (e.g., wallets) maintain only the current set of validators.
From a high-level perspective, the Aptos network works as follows:
- A flexible and simple Move language for custom smart contracts, security, and auditing.
- A logical data model that leverages resources.
- Parallel transaction mechanism with Block-STM to increase throughput.
- Parallel execution of all key steps.
- Consensus and stacking validators.
- Segmentation into full nodes and light clients
- Modular design where changes are made to individual nodes.
- Structured path for adding validators.
- Unified state exchange for improved performance of validators.
MOVE programming language
One of the things that makes Aptos so appealing is Move, a special programming language that was first developed for the Diem blockchain.
It is flexible enough to meet the unique needs of Aptos developers, and its global storage is more secure than a conventional programming language. Move allows users to define their own resources that cannot be copied or deleted, making it much more difficult for attackers to control the Aptos blockchain.
The language is designed to emphasize resource scarcity as well as preservation and access control. It uses verified bytecode, which guarantees type and memory security even if there is untrusted code.
On the other hand, to help write more robust code, developers have access to Move Prover, a formal verifier that can authenticate the functional correctness of a program according to a predefined specification.
The Aptos data model
The Aptos blockchain has defined the state of its entire registry as the state of all accounts. Anyone can send a transaction and therefore change the state of the registry. Once executed, a transaction output is generated that contains zero (or more) transactions to manage the state of the registry. These are called record sets and represent a vector of resulting events, the amount of gas consumed, and the state of the executed transaction.
The transactions themselves provide the following information:
- Transaction Authenticator.
- The sender’s address
- Utility load
- Gas price
- Maximum amount of gas
- Serial number
- Expiry time
- Blockchain identifier
It is also worth noting that the data model initially supports global addressing of both modules and data. Those transactions that do not have overlapping conflicts in their data and accounts can also run in parallel.
The main feature of Aptos is resources. Resources are objects that cannot be copied or deleted. Each user account stores resources, which allows decentralization. Only the user can register resources in their account, making it impossible to spam tokens.
Block-STM Technology
Block-STM technology creates a mechanism that efficiently processes smart contracts. The Aptos blockchain engine uses parallel execution to process multiple transactions simultaneously.
This speeds things up considerably because a single failed transaction will not stop the entire blockchain. Instead, transactions can be processed simultaneously, and all of them are checked after execution. To further improve efficiency, the collaborative scheduler works to prioritize certain transactions in the Aptos blockchain and efficiently process important checks. Ultimately, up to 160,000 transactions can be processed simultaneously.
Unlike parallel execution mechanisms that break atomicity of transactions by requiring prior knowledge of read/write data, Block-STM allows developers to code without constraints and achieve higher throughput and lower latency for real-world use cases.
Consensus Protocol
Instead of using a consensus protocol which must follow the order of the transactions, Aptos separates the two processes and allows them to run in parallel to each other. This reduces latency (the time it takes to validate network transactions) while increasing speed. To ensure accuracy, Aptos has created a mechanism that analyzes individual states in the blockchain and then automatically updates validators as needed.
Aptos ensures that the entire network runs smoothly even when individual users are idle. This is supported by a reputation system on the network. The reputation system treats past availability and performance as indicators for the future, which automatically minimizes the negative impact of unresponsive and inefficient validators.
Features of Aptos
Aptos has several unique features related to consensus, smart contract design, system security, performance and decentralization. Let’s look at the main unique aspects of Aptos below.
Move’s flexibility and security
Move is an expressive and accessible programming language that emphasizes security and is designed for secure asset management. Move brings to Web3 what Rust brought to infrastructure design – a secure, fast and expressive method of mapping interactions.
Parallel transaction processing
This new approach to transaction parallelism enables faster transaction processing without impacting developers. Unlike parallel execution mechanisms that break the atomicity of transactions by requiring prior knowledge of read/write data, Block-STM allows developers to code unconstrained and achieve higher throughput and lower latency for real-world use cases.
Consensus for maximum efficiency
Consensus has CPU-like pipeline processing to ensure maximum use of resources at every stage. As a result, a single node can participate in many aspects of consensus, from selecting transactions to include in a block, executing another set of transactions, writing the output of another set to the repository, and certifying the output of another set of transactions.
Onchain management and decentralization
Aptos has built-in blockchain management that enables seamless reconfiguration of the network and virtual machines.
Enhanced consumer trust assurance
Aptos allows you to separate the account from the key, and thus easily add new digital signature algorithms to support public and private key types. A hybrid storage model enables advanced account recovery and management solutions to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3.
Wallets can use pre-execution of a transaction to explain the outcome of a transaction to users before the user signs it. Evaluating transactions before signing reduces security risks such as phishing attacks, which are becoming increasingly common in Web3.
Modular architecture has flexible upgrade options
From the beginning, every area of the system has been designed with modularity and flexibility in mind. This allows the Aptos architecture to support frequent upgrades, which in turn means that the blockchain can quickly adopt the latest technological advances and provide first-class support for new and emerging use cases.
There are also several factors affecting Aptos’ ability to obtain funding
- Experienced, respected founders: One of the main factors in Aptos’ success is its founders. The co-founders of Aptos Labs have years of experience. Not only do they have a solid reputation for creating cryptocurrency and other projects, but their general experience in venture capitalism has helped them find investors.
- Unique architecture: Venture capitalists tend to look for the new and original. This is an area where the Aptos blockchain really shines: its combination of Block-STM technology, Move programming and consensus sets it apart from other L1 blockchains looking for funding.
- Impressive performance: With the ability to process up to 160,000 transactions per second and complete transactions in less than a second, Aptos can quickly outperform its competitors.
- Facebook-related backstory: Aptos’ connection to Diem is another reason investors see the company as a safe bet. In fact, it is an extension of the project that Meta/Facebook launched before focusing on its “meta-universe.” Aptos’ provenance gives investors confidence in what the company offers.
Comparing blockchains
Let’s compare 4 blockchains with each other: Aptos, Solana, Avalanche and Ethereum.
Aptos versus Solana
One of the main competitors to the Aptos blockchain would be Solana, which is one of the most popular high-performance L1 blockchains.
Both blockchains rely on mechanisms that can perform calculations in parallel. However, when comparing the Solana and Aptos blockchains, Aptos seems more reliable. Solana is prone to crashes and blockchain shutdowns.
The Aptos blockchain adds redundancy to its network, making it less prone to failure. Each block in Aptos is synchronized with leader nodes and neighboring nodes. If a leader node fails, one of the other nodes can take over. This results in slightly higher computational requirements, so the hardware requirements of Aptos are slightly higher than those of Solana. Ultimately, Aptos provides more reliability than Solana in exchange for slightly higher hardware requirements.
Aptos versus Avalanche
Aptos outperforms Avalanche in optimal testing conditions. Avalanche can complete a transaction about 0.7 seconds faster than Aptos. However, under real-world conditions, Avalanche’s completion time is typically about 0.3 seconds less than Aptos.
When it comes to TPS, Aptos outperforms Avalanche. Avalanche manages about 4,500 per subnet, while Aptos’ blockchain reaches up to 160,000.
Both Avalanche and Aptos have very impressive features, but the Aptos blockchain is notable for its usability. Avalanche tends to have very high gas fees, especially when games/NFT cause transaction cost spikes. Meanwhile, Aptos favors low user fees. Its unique Move-based storage methodology allows users to group items together to minimize fees.
Aptos vs. Ethereum
Aptos blockchain has already managed to outperform Ethereum in terms of speed. While Ethereum’s completion time is over a minute, Aptos can complete transactions in less than a second because of differences in both hardware and design. Ethereum works with only one processor core, while Aptos works with 16 cores.
However, the reliability of Ethereum is undoubtedly higher. While Aptos does not have as many issues with outages, it cannot compare to Ethereum’s stability: its performance is almost impossible to disrupt. As long as users agree to pay more fees and wait longer, Ethereum is still the more popular choice.
The bottom line for 2022
After more than four years of development, Aptos Mainnet was launched in October 2022.
The launch took place with 102 validation nodes in 22 countries in 39 cities.
In the first days after the launch, the network demonstrated the necessary performance at the startup stage:
- Peak TPS of 2,100.
- More than 10,000 full nodes connected to the core network
By the end of 2022, more than 29,000 full nodes on the core network
Community
The Aptos community has the following successes:
- 4.7k stars/vices on GitHub (a star is an expression of gratitude, in this case)
- 2.7k GitHub forks (forks allow you to make changes to a project without affecting the original repository)
- 340k followers on Twitter
- 155k Discord members
- Coverage of over 35 languages worldwide!
In May 2022, the first hackathon led to interesting projects (AMM, games, NFT infrastructure, order books, wallets, etc.) created in less than 36 hours. Developers from Web2 and Web3 demonstrated how Move on Aptos makes it very easy and efficient to write code in Web3 (even with zero experience).
Ecosystem
The Aptos ecosystem has seen more than 50 projects launched since the launch of the core network and more than 500 Aptos Foundation grant applications submitted at the end of 2022.
Aptos totals as of Dec. 31, 2022, show strong growth in the first two months of the core network:
- A total of 2.85 million unique addresses
- 60.66 million aggregate user transactions.
- 520,000 cumulative NFT transactions
- 507 million cumulative APT token transfers
Aptos projects have also paid off. Aptos native wallet downloads exceeded 1.2 million in 2022.
The NFT Topaz trading platform showed an impressive trading volume: 1,147,575 APT transaction volume with 567 thousand unique visitors – peaking at 100 thousand unique visitors in a single day!
Speaking of NFT, over 9100 different collections of tokens launched on Aptos 5735 by different creators! Projects like Aptomingos and Aptos Monkeys became popular among Aptos community – and all their first coins were sold out!
All of these projects, including NFT, tools, DeFi, wallets, and more, have raised a total of over $50 million.
Network integrations
On the infrastructure side, Google Cloud has been running a validation node on the Aptos network since day one of the core network, helping to ensure a more robust, secure and faster ecosystem. Together, Google Cloud and the Aptos Foundation have also launched a community ecosystem fund to support Web3 entrepreneurs looking to build out-of-the-box apps on Aptos.
As for games, Korean gaming company AAA NPIXEL partnered with Aptos to create the METAPIXEL web3 game universe.
For payments, Moonpay integrated Petra Wallet to transfer fiat to APT.
As for creators, Livepeer’s integration with Aptos has increased the reach and quality of web3 creativity through decentralized streaming services – more opportunities for creators!
Plans for 2023
The Aptos team has not released plans for 2023. There are only reports for January-February 2023.
January 2023. Integration with a leading development platform
Aptos developers will soon be able to build and deploy applications at scale using Moralis’ leading web3 development platform, which offers everything they need to build, launch and develop in one place.
Nearly 300,000 developers using Moralis will be able to take advantage of Aptos blockchain – Aptos’ fast, scalable and secure architecture makes it easy for developers to create
As part of the integration, Moralis will add Aptos support for all existing API node endpoints. Moralis will create specialized, Aptos APIs such as the Aptos , NFT API, the Aptos Token API, the Aptos Transactions API, the Aptos Blocks API.
February 2023. Reaching record highs
Growth in February 2023:
- $63.7 million TVL.
- Real world peak sustained TPS: 2.1k+
- Total transactions (to date): 101 million+
- Total addresses created (to date): 3.2 million.
- Over 100 projects in wallets, games, NFT, DeFi, infrastructure
February 2023. Aptos Software Development Kit (SDK)
Aptos offers new tools for game software developers – the Software Development Kit (SDK) – to work in Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and extending 2D and 3D real-time content.
The Aptos SDK supports the next generation of games to give gamers ownership of in-game assets, the ability to port virtual goods, and to buy, liquidate and trade game items.
In 2023, Aptos will push Web3 options for social media, gaming, NFT and DeFi that will attract attention.
Why the APT token is up 370% in January 2023
Between January 9 and January 25, 2023, bitcoin rose 37% from $17k to $23.3k, sparking a crypto rally across the board.
APT’s price more than quadrupled during the last crypto rally in January 2023, outperforming most other L1 blockchains.
Let’s see what caused this growth.
Reason #1: Startup timing
Bear markets offer tremendous opportunities for startups with strong teams and real practical value. As weaker projects wash out, those that continue to grow can become hugely successful in the next market cycle.
Examples include Axie Infinity, Fantom and Compound Finance: FTM grew 200 times and AXS grew 300 times during the 2021 bull market.
When the Aptos core network launched on Oct. 17, 2022, BTC was trading at $19,300. By then, Aptos had already generated huge interest, attracting more than 30,000 applications to its incentivized test network. Aptos also had hundreds of thousands of social media subscribers and over 100 teams building dApps on it (over 200 ) – a very large ecosystem for a brand new network.
This combination of high interest and a bear market resulted in Aptos facing a huge unmet demand.
Once the overall market sentiment became more positive, APT was one of the first ones that everyone wanted to buy. This is similar to what happened with SOL in the summer of 2021, when the market recovered from BTC’s shocking drop from $60k to $30k.
Reason #2: Aptos x PancakeSwap
Not only has the APT price reached a new all-time high, but so has the total blocked value of the network (TVL). TVL is probably a better indicator of health than price because it shows real user participation rather than speculative interest.
PancakeSwap explains much of the recent TVL increase on Aptos. It is one of the biggest players in DeFi with TVL of $3.5 billion , so when it first deployed revenue farms on Aptos, the new ecosystem got a boost.
On Jan. 6, 2023, PancakeSwap said its community voted to continue deploying on Aptos. It also revealed a plan to attract projects based on the BNB network to Aptos and vice versa. On January 11, DEX announced that it accounted for most of the TVL on Aptos. From that point on, the APT price began to rise even faster.
In addition, one should not overlook the emergence of other DeFi projects on Aptos. including Liquidswap DEX from Pontem, as well as Ditto Finance, Aries Markets, Tortuga Finance, Argo, Tsunami Finance, Hippo, Kana Labs, AUX, Abel Finance and others.
These protocols attract new users to the ecosystem, which creates organic demand for APT as it is needed for liquid stacking, DEX pools, loans, etc.
Finally, on January 20, 2023, Binance announced Liquid Swap liquidity pools for APT/USDT and APT/BTC. Yields of up to 80% p.a. in BNB. This should attract even more DeFi liquidity to APT, which will ultimately benefit the entire ecosystem.
Reason #3: Eliminate short positions
When APT was shorted on Binance and other exchanges in October 2022, the price quickly rose to $13 and then fell to $8. This is a normal trajectory for a recently poured token as early speculators and airdrop recipients dump their tokens. However, this led some to consider APT to be “overly hyped.”
As a result, many traders expected the same sharp drop when the price of APT approached the old ATH. They began to open short positions in order to earn on the fall of the price.
However the volume of purchases on Aptos remained very high. Traders were forced to cover their short positions by urgently buying APT, or to get a stop loss (in this case APT was automatically bought at market price). Both create even more buying pressure, forcing the price to rise.
CoinGlass data shows a massive liquidation of short positions in APT (including $14 mln in January 20 alone):
HsakaTrades, one of the most respected traders and analysts in the field, noted that a large company was selling APT down to $7 and was liquidated, which partially fueled the rally.
Reason #4: Aptos NFTs
NFTs could be a major catalyst for token demand. Just recently saw this with SOL in 2021. News in the NFT community spreads fast, so word spreads quickly that one can find unique artwork, a very active market and ultra-low commissions on Aptos.
Some crypto-media outlets have cited the surge of interest in Aptos NFT as one reason for the rise in APT prices. Indeed, Topaz, the largest NFT market on Aptos, reported a huge increase in NFT trading volume after the APT price had already surpassed $10. Specifically, the sales volume on AptoPunks increased by 2,500% in 24 hours, and on BabyApetos by 3,200%.
However, the opposite is more likely. The price increase got everyone talking about APT and the Aptos NFT ecosystem. New users flocked to the market, giving early collectors a chance to sell the NFTs they bought when APT was still trading at $4.
Once this sale by early investors was completed, the level of activity dropped. For example, on January 25, the daily volumes of AptoPunks and BabyApetos dropped 92% and 97%, respectively.
Conclusion
Aptos certainly has great potential as the most interesting L1 launched during this bear market. Its large DeFi ecosystem could be a major growth driver in the next market cycle.
