WELCOME TO APTOS

ABOUT THE APTOS BLOCKCHAIN:

HISTORY:

The Aptos blockchain genesis event took place on 12th October, 2022. This was after raising $350 million in 3 funding rounds. The blockchain is a project by Aptos Labs, which is co-founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching.

Following the genesis event, the Aptos blockchain was finally launched on October 17th, 2022. There was a concurrent launch of the Aptos Bridge by LayerZero in order to facilitate the transfer of funds between Aptos and other chains. The bridge enabled interoperability between Aptos and other blockchains, while also allowing inflow of liquidity to Aptos from more established blockchains.

This paved way for the release of the Aptos Names Service the following month. The new blockchain achieved a remarkable peak of 30,000 TPS (transactions per second) in testing environments. 2023 saw the establishment of the Aptos Foundation to further promote the blockchain development.

Since establishment, the Aptos Foundation has initialized several grant programmes to enable development on the Aptos blockchain. It has also achieved the incredible feat of partnering with Google Cloud with an accelerator program for Web3 entrepreneurs and developers. Because this is not enough in the competitive Web3 space, the foundation introduced 8 key innovations including a proposal based reward system to incentivize community participation and contribution.

As a testament of its desire for decentralization, community participation and inclusivity, the foundation airdropped a whopping 20 million APT (Aptos tokens) which had a value around $240 million around the drop time in October 2022.

Presently, the Aptos token is the 22nd token in market capitalization. With a lot of the grants and community events still ongoing including a collaboration with StackUp to introduce new developers to the Aptos chain. The Aptos foundation has even partnered with microsoft to combine blockchain and AI.

FEATURES:

⦁ The primary objective of the Aptos chain is to provide users with higher scalability, security, usability, and reliability. Due to the blockchain trilemma, the Aptos Foundation collaborates with the Aptos community and Aptos mining node operators to improve decentralization.

⦁ APT: The Aptos governance token which is currently trading around 17 USD (100% increase since launch in 2022) and is used to settle blockchain transaction fees and for governance. Users can also stake APT to earn block mining fees and rewards.

⦁ The Move language: Aptos utilizes this programming language to develop smart contracts (modules and packages) for the Aptos blockchain. This language prioritizes safety and flexibility. It uses modules that clearly define the rules governing transactions with Aptos contracts. Move focuses on robust security, using a bytecode verifier to ensure memory and type safety in order to prevent hacks and exploits.

⦁ Plans to develop EVM compatibility: Unfortunately, Aptos does not feature EVM compatibility. Due to the large number of developers who are familiar with Solidity and the large Solidity codebase, there are efforts to introduce a Move compatible EVM in order to improve developer experience. However, it is safe to say that the Aptos engine is faster and safer than the EVM.

⦁ A novel data model: Aptos features a novel data model for transactions that enables the network to potentially process transactions simultaneously if the said transactions are mutually exclusive (do not affect the same accounts or data).

⦁ Upgradable smart contracts: Aptos smart contracts are open to change. This allows easy evolution of dApp features and bug-fixes without the cumbersome and risky process of dApp migration.

⦁ The novel Block-STM: Aptos features a parallel execution engine (allowing multiple transactions to be executed). This engine is built around software transactional memory (STM) and optimistic concurrency control which ensures faster transaction processing without negatively affecting the user and developer experience with higher latency and complicated code.

⦁ Consensus mechanism: Aptos blends Byzantine Fault Tolerance with Proof of Stake in the innovative AptosBFTv4 consensus protocol. It ensures high throughput and low-latency and is an improvement of HotStuff, a consensus mechanism developed by Facebook (Meta).

TOKENOMICS:

⦁ At launch, the total supply of Aptos tokens was 1 billion APT.

⦁ A massive portion of these tokens were allocated to the community to fund initiatives to grow the Aptos ecosystem, such as grants and incentives.

⦁ 19% of tokens were given out as a reward to Aptos core contributors who worked to build the Aptos blockchain.

⦁ Another 16.5% was allocated to the Aptos Foundation to promote the long-term development of the project.

⦁ Early investors who believed in Aptos received 13.48% of the initial supply.

⦁ Another 2% was airdropped to the community (NFT holders and testnet participants).

⦁ The Aptos token has a yearly inflation rate of 7%. New tokens are generated as block mining rewards.

⦁ The inflation rate is set to decrease by 1.5% yearly until a target rate of 3.5% is reached in 3 years.

BUILDING ON APTOS

WHY SHOULD YOU CONSIDER APTOS AS A DEVELOPER:

If the features stated above were not enough to convince you, I can give you some good reasons to consider building on Aptos:

⦁ The large community allocation of tokens (in the value of about $9.2 billion) which you are entitled to a piece of, if you build innovative dApps on Aptos.

⦁ The Aptos Foundation grants to support whatever dApp organization you are interested in establishing.

⦁ Overmind, a novel platform for learning the Move language (especially for Solidity developers who have to worry about the learning curve transitioning from Solidity to Move. This platform rewards users with tokens in a learn-and-earn system for writing simple to complex smart contracts for training purposes.

⦁ Proper documentation and educational programs and content on the Aptos blockchain and the Move programming language, which is a feature lacked by several competitors.

⦁ High transaction throughput and safety ensured by the Move language, the AptosBFTv4, and the Aptos Block-STM.

⦁ Low gas fees which are a direct consequence of the above statement as users don’t have to compete to get their transactions executed.

⦁ Significant untapped potential of the Aptos blockchain as it is relatively new in the blockchain space.

WHAT WOULD I BUILD ON APTOS

Personally I find interest in building a memecoin on aptos. This is to attract new users to the aptos blockchain by using the hype train. The aptos blockchain is new and needs to earn a name for itself using marketing gimmicks like airdrops and memecoins (following the footsteps of the solana blockchain).

A lot of the people I know don't know about Aptos, but are familiar with bitcoin, ethereum and solana. I believe building an aptos memecoin and driving it to the moon will popularize the aptos blockchain on crypto-twitter and drive in new liquidity, users and user wallets to interact with the aptos ecosystem.

IMPORTANT LINKS FOR APTOS:

⦁ aptos bridge to try out aptos: https://theaptosbridge.com/

⦁ aptos (APT) price: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/aptos/

⦁ documentation for move: https://aptos.dev/move/move-on-aptos/

REFERENCES:

⦁ The Aptos blockchain genesis event: https://blockworks.co/price/apt

⦁ founders of Aptos : https://blockworks.co/price/apt

⦁ Aptos funding rounds: https://medium.com/aptoslabs/entering-the-next-phase-of-the-aptos-journey-with-added-funding-and-new-partners-d4daa03dd17c

⦁ aptos bridge: https://theaptosbridge.com/

⦁ aptos name service: https://tokeninsight.com/en/news/aptos-name-service-live-on-mainnet

⦁ establishment of aptos foundation and grants: https://aptosfoundation.org/grants

⦁ microsoft and aptos: https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/08/09/microsoft-and-aptos-labs-partner-on-new-ai-blockchain-solutions/