After four years of reflection, development and testing, the Aptos blockchain has entered a new era in its growth process. However, despite the popularity of this project, the lights seem to be red. In this post, we will explore these indicators. But first, let’s see together what Aptos is and what its particularities are.
What is Aptos?
A few days ago, the Aptos blockchain (APT) announced the launch of its mainnet. Indeed, Aptos is a Tier 1 blockchain developed by former Meta employees who worked on the Diem cryptocurrency project. It is powered by the APT token, which is also intended to serve as a governance token. As a result, its holders can contribute to the evolution of the network.
Supported by a large community of developers and projects, this network promises more security, scalability and accessibility. Indeed, at the heart of Aptos’ vision is the need to improve the user experience in order to drive mass adoption of Web3.
In this perspective, Aptos offers a wide range of services. Among them are: a wallet (Petra), a decentralized finance platform (Pontem), an NFT marketplace (Topaz) and a domain name registration service (Aptos Names). In addition, its ecosystem also integrates an over-collateralized stablecoin (Thala Labs), a DeFi aggregator (Hippo Finance), a trading (Tsunami Finance) and a liquidity pool on chain (Overlay).
Some technical specifics
Aptos presents itself as the blockchain of current and future generations. This claim can in particular be supported by a certain number of technical specificities, including:
A modular architecture
The Aptos blockchain separates independent processes such as the broadcast, execution, storage and certification of transactions from the consensus phase. This modular architecture offers the ability to perform tasks simultaneously. This, together with transaction batching, allows for throughput optimization. Therefore, Aptos plans to reach 160,000 transactions per second (GST). However, in the last experiments conducted on the test network, it was able to handle 4200 TPS. Additionally, the network promises a reduced time to finality (TTF) of less than a second. This is significantly less than Bitcoin (60 minutes) and Ethereum (13 minutes).
The AptosBFT Consensus Protocol
To guarantee the robustness of the blockchain, Aptos has designed a mechanism Proof-of-Stake Byzantine Fault Resistant (BFT) (PoS). This identifies failing validators using a leader reputation system. This allows it to react dynamically and consistently to validation failures. This way, their impact on transaction throughput and network latency is limited.
move
move is a Rust-based programming language. It helps to optimize transaction processing and asset security. That said, it is also a development environment that facilitates the creation of decentralized applications (DApps) on Aptos. In addition, Move allows you to write smart contracts modular and compatible with all DApps on the network.
In addition, to guarantee maximum safety, it favors the scarcity and the access control. Indeed, each asset stored in a Move resource cannot be duplicated by default. Additionally, developers can define a privilege model for each smart contract and asset account. For example, they can require the presence of several signatories to carry out a transaction on an account.
Aptos, a dream seller?
On October 17, Aptos officially launched its mainnet. Immediately, many cryptocurrency exchange platforms announced the listing of its token native. Among them, leading exchanges such as Binance, FTX and Coinbase. Which also took part in the financing of the project.
After the launch of mainnet, there was a slight deficit in technical performance and a feeling of hesitation in the market. First of all, the promises of scalability do not seem to be effective. Indeed, at the time of writing these lines, the network is only able to process 11 transactions per second.
In addition, the adoption of the platform currently appears to be limited. Insofar as, to date, the majority of transactions carried out on the network correspond to maintenance operations carried out by the validators.
A tokenomics that arouses criticism
As a reminder, the total initial supply was set at 1 billion tokens. She was distributed between the community (51.02%), contributors (19%), the Aptos Foundation (16.5%) and investors (13.48%).
The tokenomics of the project has been heavily criticized by the crypto community. Indeed, the APT token economy is considered by some to be centralized. This, in the sense that a good part of the tokens is allocated to venture capitalists. To defend themselves, startup argued that the distribution of the funds in question would be spread over four years. And this, 12 months after the launch of the mainnet.
However, on Twitter, a observer insisted that 80% of the circulating supply is currently staked. According to him, this amounts to saying that these tokens are under the control of Aptos and its investors. Furthermore, he suggests that Aptos may have transferred the remaining 20% to wallets exchange like FTX or Binance. The idea being to use them later as part of a dumping. However, this is pure speculation.
According Coinmarketcap, APT tokens are currently trading around $7.2. This represents a decline of 4.27% over the past 24 hours and a decline of 15.8% from their initial price. Furthermore, they occupy the 52nd place in the ranking of the most valuable cryptocurrencies with an estimated market capitalization of $941.6 million.
It is difficult to consistently assess the performance of such a young network. Aptos is still in its infancy. This may explain its current TPS as the network has not yet had a chance to process a large volume of transactions. However, it should evolve in the coming months as developers and projects join the movement. Meanwhile, a hard fork from mainnet will take place between Q4 2022 and Q1 2023. This will integrate a series of major features that may eventually boost the evolution of this blockchain.
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