What Is Aptos?

This year has been a rough one for the crypto market, with the crypto winter taking down many projects. Newer projects have also struggled, but a handful of them have made headlines and attracted a lot of attention.

Among them is Aptos, a project developed by former Meta employees. It's been in the news for both good and bad reasons but nonetheless remains on the radar of many market enthusiasts. Aptos is taking on the task of scalability, among other things, but what exactly does it do, and how exactly does it go about it?

What Is Aptos?

Aptos (APT) is a Layer 1 blockchain built on the Move programming language. It aims to solve the issues of scalability, reliability, security and usability. Some of these features are unique and have consequently attracted attention from the crypto community. It is essentially a rebirth of Meta's cryptocurrency project.

The project was first launched on Oct. 12, with the mainnet launching five days later. The project operates with the motto of "building a layer 1 for everyone," though the actual launch resulted in a fair bit of criticism.

The key characteristic of Aptos that is attracting attention is the fact that it uses something called parallel state execution to improve scalability. We will discuss this in the next section.

The Move language is critical to the design of Aptos. To its credit, the team has provided a good deal of developer documentation, which explains how to get started at length.

How Does Aptos Work?

Aptos is a Layer 1 blockchain built with a Rust-based programming language called Move. Its key features include a parallel execution engine, high-level security features and low transaction costs.

The parallel execution design allows for multiple chains to run in parallel, which should, in theory, boost transaction speed. The team has even stated that the throughout reached 130,000 per second on the testnet.

There have been some doubts about running parallel chains, as it opens up a threat to security. Aptos' solution to this is by re-executing failed transactions and verifying all chains simultaneously.

Another point to note about Aptos' design is the fact that it uses the Move language, which was originally designed for Meta's failed Diem project. The language allows developers to create custom resources that cannot be affected by copies or discarding, which improves security. It also has secure global storage.

Governance on Aptos

Aptos will allow community members to govern the network by creating and voting on proposals. The network uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm that requires a minimum APT staking amount to participate.

Validators decide how the rewards are split between themselves and the stakers. The latter can select how many validators they wish to stake their tokens to and also choose an agreed-upon split prior to it.

The APT Token Controversy and Tokenomics

One matter to note is that Aptos has stirred up some controversy for the initial lack of information surrounding its tokenomics. There wasn't much in the way of information about what the future plan was either.

Following the backlash, the team did release a blog post detailing the information. The initial total supply is 1 billion tokens. The community receives 51.02%, core contributors 19%, the Foundation 16.5% and investors 13.48%.

The team highlighted said that 125 million APT are available initially to support ecosystem projects, grants and other community growth initiatives. Furthermore, 5 million APT will initially be available to support the Aptos Foundation initiatives.

The Team Behind Aptos

Aptos Labs, the company behind Aptos, is a team of former Meta developers who worked on the Diem project. The project was founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, who both worked on Diem. Ching was a principal software engineer at Meta, while Shaikh has experience in venture capital markets.

Aptos managed to raise over $350 million in funding from entities like FTX Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Multicoin Capital and Circle Ventures, among others. All in all, it has managed to attract some big names, which is why retail investors' interests have been piqued.

Can Aptos Make an Impact?

Aptos is competing against some major names in the market, including Ethereum. It is certainly attracting developers, with Discord, filled with many thousands of them. However, it has a tough job if it is to unseat the likes of Ethereum.

Aptos claims will have to be tried in the field and this will take time, as the project's initial launch was botched. The claims of high throughput did not appear, so investors will be cautious regarding any future claims.

That said, the use of parallel execution remains interesting and worth watching. Scalability remains one of the biggest issues in the crypto industry, and there are several projects working on the solution.

For the moment, Aptos remains a project that may or may not succeed at what it does. After all, Ethereum has its own scalability solutions in the pipeline. More importantly, it already has a vast array of DApps and development efforts on its network.

Will Aptos Be the Future of Layer 1 Solutions?

The crypto market continues to see new projects arrive, and many of them do, in fact, have some novel solutions. Aptos is among them, though it has a lot to prove with its ambitious claims. It has a much later start than other cryptocurrency projects, so it will have to play catch up — especially in terms of actual applications on the network.

As always, it's best to keep an eye on such projects and see how they develop. Crypto projects need time to grow and establish themselves, and Aptos deserves that right.