coinculture.com
Solana is the already-aged upstart but prone to overpromising and grinding to a halt sometimes.
In 2019, Meta (formerly Facebook) attempted to launch a blockchain, Libra (later rebranded as Diem), but it was cancelled due to regulatory objections.
So, how can we create a decentralised, safe, and speedy blockchain? Is it conceivable? The practical application of one of these factors will inevitably come at the price of another.
Nonetheless, the Aptos developers believe they have found the solution in an experimental transaction-ordering algorithm that is the successor to the Diem experiment.
What is Aptos?
Aptos is a newcomer on the scene. In late July, the fast blockchain received a $150 million investment round headed by FTX and investors, including Parafi. In March, the blockchain received another $200 million strategic round from prominent players, including Andreessen Horowitz, Haun Ventures and Multicoin Capital.
Aptos, founded by Avery Ching and Mo Shaik, who worked on Diem’s Novi wallet, uses a technology known as parallel execution that claims to increase transaction speeds while keeping them affordable.
1/ Today, we announced our $150M Series A funding round. This is a testament to our team’s technical expertise, the strength & activity of our ecosystem and the vision & ethos we all share. https://t.co/GGnn4TY9Lw
— Aptos (@AptosLabs) July 25, 2022
Like another project, Sui boasts of being the heir to Diem’s legacy and employs Move, the blockchain’s programming language.
It’s getting a lot of attention, although it doesn’t have a token yet, and has merely raised money from venture firms.
There are still uncertainties about how Aptos differs from previous blockchains, if “parallel execution” works as advertised, and how the new blockchain will attract a large enough ecosystem of programmers ready to master its relatively obscure programming language.
How does Aptos work?
Aptos’ fundamental characteristic, as previously stated, is parallel execution. Most blockchains employ a transaction ordering method known as sequential or serial execution, in which a single chronology of transactions is constantly updated. Whenever you make a trade or purchase something, that transaction is added to a single long ledger containing every transaction executed on the network and updated by thousands of nodes.
Because they are all added one at a time, it is required to wait for each new transaction to be verified: this takes a long time and is the reason for the slow speed of settlement in most blockchains.
On the other hand, parallel execution executes many concurrent chains in parallel, enabling more to be processed at once (theoretically). Indeed, Aptos boasts that its testnets have already reached 130,000 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum’s more sluggish 30.
Is Aptos reliable?
We don’t know yet: parallel execution is debatable. Whatever advantages it provides for efficiency come at the expense of security. Blockchains are designed for a reason: a single chronology of transactions makes it easy to validate the chain’s contents against itself; there is only one possible path for a transaction.
Adding parallel chains complicates everything. With additional chains, it is more difficult to obtain a complete picture of the transaction history, and transactions may need to process via numerous chains simultaneously, causing them to fail (and perhaps attracting opportunists to attempt a fraudulent “double spend”).
Aptos’ solution is to wait until the transactional dust settles before verifying all chains: properly arranged transactions will pass, while unsuccessful ones will be “re-executed.”
It’s a policy of executing first, asking questions later, and it appears to be working.
What is Aptos’s future?
Aptos’ critics have questioned if its developers can escape the stigma of having worked at the multinational once known as Facebook.
The evidence implies yes: Aptos claims to have absorbed many of the Libra projects into its ecosystem, and it appears that they are content to build purely in Aptos’ comparably untested programming language.
We recently concluded a successful AIT2 that brought the Aptos community closer together. Thank you for participating and making AIT2 even more successful than AIT1! Read more about the road ahead here: https://t.co/DZ6ECzC9zX
— Aptos (@AptosLabs) August 1, 2022
Aptos’ founders’ fame and experience also attract new developers: Aptos’ Discord already has over 63,000 users, around 8,000 of whom are developers, and over 20,000 nodes support the protocol.
Aptos just completed a testnet update, and a mainnet launch is scheduled for later this year. However, the token will not be accessible in the United States due to regulatory considerations.