With the world of blockchain continuously evolving, thousands of decentralized applications are being built by devs. As the dApp market continues to grow, a new wave of Layer 1 blockchains has sprung up from the former team behind the Diem project. Let’s take a look at one of the more popular chains from this next wave in the evolution of Layer 1s-Aptos.
What is Under the Hood?
Aptos is built using a smart contract programming language called Move. It’s based on Rust and places a lot of engineering emphasis on safety and flexibility. One of its unique selling points on the security side is that it is designed to reduce the risk of unexpected smart contract executions, utilizing a feature called transaction pre-execution. This feature displays the outcome of a smart contract call to the user before they approve its execution. Design changes like these will have subtle, but profound implications on the daily UX of end users, like requiring approval from users the first time they receive incoming tokens from a new wallet address.
Scalability is another end of the trilemma Aptos is designed to tackle. The chain combines Proof of Stake consensus and parallelization. Most blockchains execute transactions serially- that means every time a transaction is executed on the network, it is added to the single long ledger and updated via thousands of nodes. When so many transactions take place at the same time, it becomes necessary to wait for each transaction to be verified, thus subsequently decreasing the throughput.
Parallel execution, on the other hand, helps to run these transactions in a simultaneous manner. You may have come across this concept before on chains like Solana, which handles it at each node. NEAR also utilizes parallel execution to scale with its sharding mechanism, Nightshade.
What makes Aptos unique?
The Aptos approach to scaling uses its own parallel execution engine, called Block-STM.
Block-STM allows transactions to be executed optimistically, in a parallel manner, and then validated post-execution. Any unsuccessful validations trigger a re-execution. While other parallel execution engines require upfront knowledge of data locations to be read and written to the chain, Block-STM allows Aptos to dynamically extract parallel transactions and execute them concurrently. This leads to fewer, yet more efficient transactions, decreases costs, and results in lower latency for users.
Block STM performance with different contention levels
To reach network consensus, Aptos uses the DiemBFTv4, a BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant) consensus protocol. To reach a network consensus, two network round trips are required, taking roughly 300 seconds. DiemBFTv4 promotes the most performant nodes, which helps to decrease the time to finality.
With web3 evolving every day, and more and more technological advancements occurring, it becomes crucial to adapt to new demands. Aptos aims to support this with seamless upgrades without interrupting users or halting transactions on the chain.
Aptos has already attracted many developers for a testnet chain. Dozens of projects are underway at present. Let’s take a quick look at some Aptos projects and what they are building.
1. Pontem Network: Product Development Studio for Aptos dApps
Pontem Network is a product development studio for Aptos, working on building a suite of dApps enabled by Aptos and Move. Among their most prominent products is Liquidswap, an Automated Market Maker (AMM) where you can trade, pool, and farm on Aptos. Pontem has also just launched their Pontem Wallet, one of the most downloaded wallets at present in the ecosystem. They are also working towards making Move VM compatible with EVM to enable easy deployment with a solidity codebase.
2. Martian wallet: An Aptos Native Wallet
Martian Wallet is a non-custodial wallet used to manage digital assets and access decentralized applications on the Aptos blockchain. It operates by generating and storing private keys for users, which can then be used to store tokens and sign transactions inside the wallet. The wallet is currently available as a chrome extension and currently has over 100,000 downloads. Martian wallet can be used like another custodial wallet to send and receive assets.
3. Imperi: Token Vesting and Analytics
Imperi is a token vesting and analytics tool launching first on Aptos. It offers an institutional-grade token management solution comprised of three distinct core products meant to provide projects with all of the tools they need to generate, distribute, and manage their token during the project’s lifespan.
Imperi provides its users with a Token Vesting and Distribution Dashboard, Allocations Tracker, and Unlock Analytics. Imperi is designed to relieve projects of the friction and intensive resource requirements associated with token management, enabling them to concentrate on their primary product instead. The core features of Imperi allow projects and investors to:
- Quickly and safely handle token minting and distribution all in one vertically integrated, fully audited dApp.
- Customize unlock schedules and tailor emission rates to optimize for minimal price volatility and impact.
- Utilize analytics to assess the historical impact of unlocks on price performance and make informed decisions about future unlocks.
- Easily track and monitor allocations across multiple projects, making compliance with reporting standards super simple through dashboards.
Wrapping Up
Now is a fascinating time to explore the Aptos ecosystem and get involved in its growth. The features built into the Aptos blockchain offer improvements and advancements for developers and end users alike. Features like transaction pre-execution and upgradability bring safety and security to the forefront of the UX.
As the ecosystem rapidly evolves, you can follow us here as we explore the landscape of core primitives, like wallets and DEXs.
