Pontem is much more than Pontem Wallet and Liquidswap DEX: it’s also responsible for some of the most successful NFT projects on Aptos. Let’s look back at our main NFT milestones of the past months!

Nov 2, 2022: Space Pirates Sell Out in Under 10 Seconds

Pontem’s Space Pirates are the first-ever Mint-to-Earn NFT collection on Aptos. Not only was the mint free - every whitelisted users who minted a Pirate received 1 APT as a reward. Pirates were designed completely in-house, by the way - Pontem has really talented graphic designers on the team.

To get whitelisted, users had to have interacted with Liquidswap between the Aptos mainnet genesis and October 30, 2022. After a snapshot, we had a list of 40,000+ whitelisted addresses and only 1,000 Space Pirates – so the competition during the mint was fierce. The whole collection was minted out on Topaz in seconds!

November 2022 – February 2023: Space Pirates Stay in Top 10 with One of the Highest Floor Prices on Aptos

The excitement around the Pirates mint was huge, but what’s more important is the excitement *after* the mint. From day 1 and still until today, Pontem Space Pirates haven’t left the top 10 by trading volume on Topaz. The total volume is already over 55,000 APT, or more than $800k (and would be over $1 million at APT = $20).

Pirates’ floor price is currently the highest after Aptomingos: 35 APT. It’s very rare to see such consistent interest in an expensive collection.

January 2023: Space Pirates Utility: A 50% Bonus on Farming Rewards + Dark Ages WL

Pontem was the first to launch a DEX on Aptos (Liquidswap), and in January 2023 we became the first to launch a liquidity mining program with NFT boosts: Hydroponic Farms. If you have a Space Pirate, you can deposit it in the farm to earn 50% more rewards.

So far, we have two active farms: USDC/APT and USDC/WETH. In the future, we plan to allow projects to start their own farms and decide which NFT collections can be used for APY boosts. Liquidswap’s codebase already provides for this.

Also, all Pirate holders were automatically whitelisted for the Dark Ages NFT mint (see below), and we might do the same for our upcoming collections. So definitely hold on to your Pirate, deposit it in a farm, and make it work for you.

December – February 2023: Pirate Buybacks & Collabs With Top NFT Collections

Space Pirates are among the most valuable NFTs in the Aptos ecosystem. So when we want to reward someone for a job really well done, we give them a Pirate. In the past few months, we have bought around 10 Pirates off the secondary market and distributed them to community members who provided very valuable services or won contests.

We also partnered up with some of the biggest NFT projects on Aptos, including Aptomingos and Bruh Bears. Some of their NFTs wore pirate eye patches. We also held a bingo contest with Aptos Monkeys where users could win a Pirate as well as a Monkey.

January 2023: Dark Ages NFT Collection Mint

Our second NFT collection is a dedication to all those who have grinded through the dark crypto winter. It features 1,000 medieval characters with fun twists – and was drawn by one of Pontem’s talented graphic designers, Ilya.

Dark Ages is the second Mint-to-Earn NFT collection on Aptos: every minter received 0.5 APT. To get whitelisted, you needed to either 1) own a Space Pirate (those staked in Hydroponic Farms were included), 2) be a farmer in Hydroponic Farms, or 3) hold a pirate NFT from collaborating collections (BruhBears, Aptomingos, and Aptos Monkeys – all with eye patch properties).

There was also a secondary whitelist for all Liquidswap users who had swapped over 100 APT in the preceding 30 days or whose 0x address had been on the first mint’s WL.

Dark Ages is trading in the top 10 on Topaz. This makes Pontem the only project with two NFT collections in the top 10. We are already working on fresh utility cases for Dark Ages, so stay tuned.

February 2023: Joint Campaign with Port3, Pontem Tickets and Pirate Swords Coming Soon!

This February, we’ll hold a joint campaign with Port3, a platform for building Web3 identities. Their SoQuest platform is a hub for community quests where you can win rewards for completing simple tasks. In Pontem’s campaign, your reward will be Pontem Tickets.

Pontem Tickets work a bit like raffle tickets, but with much more varied utility. As a first experiment, we’ll hold a Dark Ages NFT raffle, but in the future you’ll be able to get various other rewards as well.

To get a Pontem Ticket, you’ll need to connect to SoQuest and complete all the tasks: follow Pontem’s socials and engage with Liquidswap (swap, add liquidity, join a farm). We’ll publish all the details in the coming days.

As for Pirate Swords… well, they are swords for Space Pirates, they look really cool, and they will have utility of their own. The rest will be revealed very soon.

Oh, and we are also planning a joint collection with Aptos Monkeys… But shhh. Follow the updates.

We’d love your feedback on the NFT retro map and our upcoming NFT plans. Join Pontem on Telegram, Twitter, or Discord and post your comments – they help us become better every day!

Source of information

https://pontem.network/blog

Vitalik Buterin

He was born in Russia, and as a child emigrated with his family to Canada. A brilliant programmer, he dropped out of the University of Waterloo (Canada) against society's standards and now lives in Singapore. Instead of getting an education, Vitalik delved into blockchain projects and co-founded Ethereum, the largest blockchain platform and altcoin. He then became co-founder and editor of Bitcoin Magazine, a magazine about cryptocurrency. In 2018 he received his doctoral degree from a Swiss university.

In 2021 he was awarded the title of the youngest cryptocurrency billionaire in the world.

Vitalik Buterin's latest statement touched on the metaverse. He believes that the Metaworld will happen, but all existing attempts by corporations to intentionally create a Metaworld now will not bear fruit.

Changpeng Zhao

Born in China, then emigrated with his family to Vancouver. Life was not so sweet: future CZ worked in a famous fast food chain, and at night he worked part-time at a gas station to make ends meet. As a teenager, he took courses in programming, then a university application, and internships in Montreal and Japan. A painstaking, arduous journey! Then he joined Blockchain.info, and decided to get into the exchange business. Changpeng launched the Binance platform in 2017.

This individual has an interesting philosophy about finance. He is not interested in investing in real estate, cars, or anything else. He believes it does not meet the criterion of liquidity at all, which is not the case with cryptocurrency. Fiat assets are not important to him.

In a recent statement, Changpeng Zhao sued Bloomberg for defamation. According to him, one of the recent issues of the Chinese version of the publication called "Changpen Zhao's Financial Pyramid" contains defamatory and damaging materials to the image of the CEO of Binance.

Sam Bankman-Fried

There's a life story here without drastic permutations. Sam was born in Stanford, California. He graduated with a degree in physics and then began a career as a trader in a New York company.

After working there for a while, in 2017 he decided to start his own investment company, hooking up his programmer friend Gary Wang. He moved to live in Hong Kong. And then, inspired by bitcoin, in May 2019 he founded and launched FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange.

Sam is vegan and altruistic by nature, as the interview he gave to Forbes shows. He believes in spreading goodness, goodness, and eco-friendly technology into the world. It is pleasantly surprising that the billionaire has a positive attitude toward charity and agrees that it is necessary to give money to good causes.

Sam has amassed quite a fortune (more than $11B), but the company donates 1% to charity.

Justin Sun

Justin was born in China and graduated from Peking University with a degree in art history. It would seem that humanities education is infinitely far from the cryptocurrency sphere. But after getting several educations, by the age of 23, Justin Sun started working in technological development.

Like all newcomers, he became interested and began to study BTC (Bitcoin). Application development gave him some success, and he decided to go further - he founded the company TRON Foundation (a decentralized platform on blockchain technology).

Last year, Justin left his position as head of Tron, and moved to the post of Ambassador of the Government of Grenada to the World Trade Organization. The next goal is to take steps to make blockchain technology work at the state level. There is a future behind it.

In light of recent events, Justin Sun is ready to allocate an impressive sum ($5 billion) to help cryptocurrency companies in decline. An act worthy of respect!

Gavin Wood

Originally from England, he has a Ph.D. in engineering in computer systems and software development (York University). Before diving into cryptocurrency, he worked at Microsoft. And then, together with Vitalik Buterin, about whom we told above, he co-founded Ethereum. They did a lot of work, and Gavin generally doubted that the project would bear fruit. He developed Solidity, a programming language for smart contracts.

After some time, he left Ethereum and co-founded Parity Technologies, developing software for blockchain companies. Also, his brainchild is the Web3 Foundation, a non-profit organisation. It is based on decentralised Internet infrastructure and technologies, starting with the Polkadot network (also designed by the way by Gavin), and everything is based on the concept of Proof of Stake. In 2019, he founded Kusama. You can say that many crypto-applications and platforms have emerged from his projects. In a word - a fanatic of his business!

At the International Economic Forum, held in May 2022, Gavin Wood assured us that one should not fall into the power of panic and dejection due to the precarious position of the crypto industry. Perhaps the position will soon strengthen, it is important to keep a cool mind.

Brian Armstrong

He was born and lived in California and has a master's degree in economics and computer science. He started his career as a developer at IBM and a consultant at Deloitte, then worked at Airbnb as a software engineer and in payment systems.

In 2012 Brian co-founded Coinbase for trading cryptocurrency and other digital assets. He is a philanthropist and does not tolerate political or racial issues in the workplace.

Brian recently predicted the fate of cryptocurrency. He thinks that "in 10-20 years, we'll see a significant portion of GDP coming from the crypto economy.

Mo Shaikh

Let's wrap up this list of talented individuals with the co-founder and CEO of Aptos. Mohammad Shaikh was born in Brooklyn into a simple family. Having worked on many projects, he has gained tremendous experience in the field of IT technology.

In particular, Shaikh  worked on the Novi Wallet for Facebook, founded Meridio (blockchain based project that released the world's first real estate fractional share). A distinguished man, he consulted for Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Mo Shaikh’s principle is to make the financial system accessible, not just to the cream of society.

Mo recently traveled to Korea and got to know the Korean Web3 system in person and opened a few jobs.

Only one thing remains to be added. What all these people have in common is that they had a specific idea and also put in a lot of effort and work. Education, work, regular self-study, and sometimes complete lack of rest. So there is no secret to success!

About Pontem

Pontem Network is a product studio building the first-ever suite of foundational dApps for Aptos. It includes Pontem Wallet, the first wallet for Aptos, which is now in its 1.6 version. Download it from the Chrome Web Store. 

*You can  use Pontem Wallet to store and send any tokens issued on the Aptos testnet. The wallet is integrated with Liquidswap, the first DEX (AMM) for Aptos, also developed by Pontem Network. The DEX features both regular uncorrelated pools and stable pools for correlated assets. It also has an integration with the Topaz and Souffl3 NFT marketplaces for Aptos. *

Pontem’s other products include the browser code editor Move Playground,  the Move IntelliJ IDE plugin for developers and the Solidity to Move translator ByteBabel - the first implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine for Aptos.

Source of information

https://pontem.network/blog

NFT royalties are payouts given to the creator of an NFT each time a secondary sale occurs. These royalties are permanent and are automatically executed by smart contracts. In this article, we'll discuss NFT royalties and how they serve as a source of passive income for NFT creators.

TL; DR

• NFT royalties are proceeds that are automatically sent to the original creators of NFTs whenever they are sold or resold in marketplaces.

• NFT royalties are encoded in smart contracts and are tracked on-chain. Hence once a transaction happens, the desired percentage is automatically transferred to the creators.

• A typical NFT royalty falls between the range of 5–10%. However, the majority of the NFT markets allow creators to select the percentage of their royalties that will be paid out automatically with each succeeding sale in the secondary market.

WHAT ARE NFT ROYALTIES?

NFT royalties are a fraction of the sale price of non-fungible tokens that are automatically given to their creators wherever they are sold or resold on a marketplace.

NFT royalties encourage creators to continue producing high-quality work since they are convinced that they will perpetually share a portion of the amount made via secondary sales.

Numerous creatives have flocked to the NFT domain in an effort to optimize their earning potential and gain access to NFT royalties, which will enable them to continue to profit from their works perpetually. However, not all NFTs provide royalties to their creators since creators must first include the royalty percentage in the smart contract before minting the NFT.

HOW DO NFT ROYALTIES WORK?

In contrast to conventional royalty payments, NFT royalties do not require any middlemen. Hence, there are no intermediaries involved in the process. Payouts are perpetually executed by smart contracts which guarantee that creators always receive a cut from the sales of their NFTs. Therefore creators do not need to barter or keep a close check on middlemen, or collectors who resell their works.

NFT royalties often fall between the range of 5–10%. The majority of the NFT markets allow creators to select the percentage of their royalties that will be paid out automatically with each succeeding sale in the secondary market. The platform then executes the contract's conditions automatically. However, the specifics of compensation schedules vary between platforms.

Also, NFT royalties have a somewhat vulnerable technical aspect despite the fact that they are powered by smart contracts. NFT collectors may avoid paying NFT royalties since the smart contracts governing an NFT only function on the blockchain where it was established.

WHY ARE NFT ROYALTIES IMPORTANT?

NFT royalties support content creators as it provides a means for them to make perpetual passive income. However, NFT royalties are also beneficial to collectors as they won't have to be concerned about forgeries saturating the market and devaluing their NFTs since it is easy to identify their original creator.

As a result, NFT fanatics can confirm the legitimacy of an NFT, and the creators can't be swindled since they have access to automated smart contract payments that do not depend on intermediaries they may have to trust.

The ability of NFT creators to retain the ownership of copyrights is another awesome feature that NFT royalties provide. Furthermore, creators have the right to sell their ownership rights to third parties who will subsequently receive royalty payments.

ARE NFT ROYALTIES BECOMING OBSOLETE?

Conversations on NFT creator royalties have changed recently as certain platforms have opted out of royalties, and this has sparked protracted debates over whether NFT artists ought to receive continued royalties for secondary market transactions.

This is because NFT traders do not enjoy any monetary benefit from ongoing resale payments, rather they must pay royalties in addition to the actual cost of NFTs. Considering the pricy nature of  NFTs, this royalty price can add up to a specific amount. Hence, many new NFT marketplaces have ceased paying creator royalties in order to draw in more customers.

Yawww, an NFT marketplace based on the Solana network, launched earlier this year without support for royalties. Subsequently, SudoAMM, an Ethereum NFT marketplace developed by Sudoswap, followed suit and disregarded artist royalties. X2Y2 and Solanart have also joined the bandwagon by deciding to appeal to collectors rather than creators.

In September 2022, MagicEden, the biggest NFT marketplace on Solana in partnership with Coral Cube announced the launch of a tool called MetaShield that locates NFTs listed and traded on exchanges that evade author royalties. The tool also allows creators to “shield” or take other actions such as blurring the image, updating the metadata, or flagging the NFT.

However, a few days later MagicEden announced that royalties are optional and added that they begin a promotion to waive platform fees.

Following their lead, the Ethereum-based NFT platform LooksRare which also once supported royalties and claims to have distributed over $65 million in royalties to creators and artists included a checkbox for royalties at checkout for those who still wanted to pay them. LooksRare also added that 25% of the transaction fees obtained from its marketplace will be distributed amongst creators and collection owners.

NFT creators have expressed their grievances on Twitter, and influencers such as 6529 and j1mmy.eth have aired their opinion on the matter.

According to 6529, it is anti-capitalistic to prevent NFT creators from setting the rules of their game.

J1mmy.eth added that NFT creators should update their terms of use to impose collectors and marketplaces to honor royalties.  

IN CONCLUSION

There are still intense controversies over the effects of NFT royalties on the creative economy powered by Web3, and it may appear that NFT creators are losing the fight to NFT marketplaces that retract royalties to appeal to collectors. However, big NFT marketplaces like OpenSea still believe that creators should have a choice to set royalty fees and intend to enforce creator fees for new EVM collections where the payment of creator fees is enforced on-chain. So, rather than taking place on specific markets, the method for ensuring creator fee payments takes place directly on the blockchain.

As novel technologies continue to emerge it is expected that next-gen layer-one solutions like Aptos will create a balance between creators and users in the Web3 ecosystem while fostering mass adoption.

In addition to aiming to be a layer-one for widespread adoption, Aptos provides the safest and most scalable blockchain that outperforms most contemporary layer-one blockchains in terms of speed, cost, security, and scalability.

Pontem is developing the infrastructure and decentralized tools necessary for the adoption of the Aptos blockchain. Its wallet serves as the bridge to the Aptos ecosystem as it allows users to not only send and receive tokens, but also enables them to connect to decentralized applications, and explore the Aptos ecosystem.

ABOUT PONTEM

Pontem is a product development platform that enables global financial inclusion through blockchain technology.  Pontem is actively collaborating with Aptos Labs to build a product roadmap to facilitate mainstream adoption.

Source of information

https://pontem.network/blog

Web2 is dominated by centralized web service providers like AWS, Bing, Google, and social networks. But in Web 3.0, which uses the semantic web and P2P computing, web services will be decentralized.

What are web services?

Web services are software operations that occur between machine-to-machine or machine-to-client. It involves the use of standard messaging protocols from server web applications to clients who invoke the service. This allows information and data to be easily exchanged.

Amazon makes provision for web services through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) - a cloud computing system where businesses, government agencies, and startups can build their platforms from around the world. Also, Google offers cloud computing services on its server for developers and businesses to leverage its data analytics, infrastructure and machine learning facilities to build their software.

What is a decentralized web service

A decentralized web service refers to a peer-to-peer network where there is no central authority to authenticate services. Authentication is carried out through the aid of a distributed network of privately owned servers that are independent and interconnected combining to provide a unified secure and decentralized user experience.

There is no doubt that this setup beats traditional centralized systems. First, it makes the service more resilient to outages and failures. Once one server goes down, others cover up for its failings.

Another reason is it is a cost-effective and more efficient means of transmitting service. Intermediaries who act as middlemen are eliminated, thereby cutting off the need for expensive server farms and allows users to share services and resources freely.

What is Peer to Peer Computing?

Peer to peer computing means a decentralized system where there is equality amongst all participating servers or systems. This indicates that there is no central server or authority figure that everyone must go through in order to access the service provided for users.

Alternatively, all the processing is done by the individuals computing nodes. This can be done through a series of methods, ranging from using a distributed hash table to track data and resources or distributing several files across multiple machines. What this means is that the peer-to-peer computing service can continue to operate even if one or more of the nodes cease to function. Therefore, users also have a great control over their data and how it is used.

What is the semantic web?

The semantic web is a subclass of the decentralized web because it uses a given set of foundations as a way of representing knowledge of machines. This makes machine understanding and data sharing easier.

Put into perspective, the semantic web gives room for machines to read data more like humans. With this provision, the semantic web makes the possibility for machines to not only process and understand data, but also to make use of them in intelligent ways. This is especially useful for decentralized web service organizations, as it allows for machines to autonomously cooperate and collaborate in order to provide better services for users.

Image by ArtemisDiana via iStock

The role peer to peer computing and semantic web can play in a decentralized web service

There is a whole lot of potential that can be gotten from the combination of peer-to-peer computing and semantic web in the organization of a web service that is decentralized.

A database that is decentralized can be created using the semantic web technology model to store information of the services offered by independent data nodes. This creates an easy user experience, where users find services they need easily, as well as being able to advertise services they offer to other nodes.

On the other hand, peer to peer computing can be employed to manage the communication between different nodes, thereby allowing the sharing of processing power and storage.

Blockchain technology is not left out of the whole idea of a decentralized web service organization. In fact, the blockchain gave rise to the first known decentralized website in Bitcoin which was released in 2009. Other decentralized websites include Ethereum, Opensea, Brave, Axie, Metamask, Uniswap, amongst others. These range from blockchains to NFT marketplaces, wallets, gaming, browsers and exchanges.

The blockchain is a distributed ledger in which transactions are sequentially made secure and verifiable cryptographically. These transactions among nodes of software operate under a certain set of laws which are embedded and guided by cryptography. Records of transactions can be verified and owned by anyone from anywhere without any central control.

Using blockchain technology, a tamper-proof ledger can be made for web services which will secure the servers. This creation will help to keep all transactions and information accurate without any means of disrupting them on the system.

The combinations of peer-to-peer computing and semantic web which are very much a part of what has made blockchain technology successful will create a web service that is not only decentralized, but also easy, secure and efficient to use.

Benefits of a Decentralized Web Service

Leveraging web services like blockchain technology on a decentralized organization will bring several benefits and utilities for users.

For a start, information around the web will be much more secure and tamper-proof. Since there is no central authority that can censor or disrupt the system, information that is stored can be accessed easily and free from theft.

Also, a decentralized web service will allow for a democratic setting. Here, users will be able to participate in the governance of the network without any central authority dictating the rules. Everyone's voice is heard within this structure.

Finally, a decentralized system is not only efficient in its usage, but also scalable for users. Given that there is no central focus of the system, whenever there is any failure from any part of the network, others are not slowed down in their handling of user volume and traffic.

A great way to get started with a decentralized web service is to leverage some blockchain and network hosting platforms like BitShares, MaidSafe or Ethereum to create a decentralized application.

About Pontem

Pontem Network is a product studio building the first-ever suite of foundational dApps for Aptos. It includes Pontem Wallet, the first wallet for Aptos, which is now in its 1.6 version. Download it from the Chrome Web Store.

You can  use Pontem Wallet to store and send any tokens issued on the Aptos testnet. The wallet is integrated with Liquidswap, the first DEX (AMM) for Aptos, also developed by Pontem Network. The DEX features both regular uncorrelated pools and stable pools for correlated assets. It also has an integration with the Topaz and Souffl3 NFT marketplaces for Aptos.

Pontem’s other products include the browser code editor Move Playground,  the Move IntelliJ IDE plugin for developers and the Solidity to Move translator ByteBabel - the first implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine for Aptos.

Source of information

https://pontem.network/blog

Pontem is currently working in partnership with Aptos to build foundational dApps for their growing ecosystem. These products, such as our Pontem Wallet, Liquidswap Automated Market Maker (AMM), Move Code Playground, an EVM implementation, and more, will help fuel adoption of Aptos. But why are we laser-focused on Aptos?

In short, we believe Aptos is the best Layer 1 blockchain (meaning a standalone primary blockchain, such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, or Avalanche) in the crypto space today. Let’s dig deep into Aptos and see exactly why Pontem chose it as our partner.

History and Team

Aptos was founded by Mo Shaikh (CEO) and Avery Ching (CTO). The two first worked together at Meta (formerly Facebook), specifically on the Diem blockchain and Novi wallet projects. Shaikh led Strategic Partnerships at Novi, while Ching was a Principal Software Engineer on the crypto platform team at Novi.

Their focus was on creating a blockchain that advanced the “decentralization movement,” without sacrificing “​​reliability, safety and usability.” Shaikh and Ching felt these problems held back global blockchain adoption, “from the average individual to the largest enterprises in the world.” That’s why they re-assembled the original “creators, researchers, designers, and builders of Diem, the blockchain that was first built to serve this purpose.”

Aptos raised a staggering $450 million from the biggest players in crypto and Silicon Valley, including a16z Crypto, Multicoin Capital, ParaFi, Haun Ventures, PayPal Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and more. This amount puts their valuation in “unicorn” territory - that is, above $1 billion.

The Move Language

One of Aptos’s key technical innovations is the Move programming language.

The key to understanding Move’s advantages is its use of resources. Simply put, resources are a highly protected method of storing key information in a system. Resources have high status in the code architecture, ensuring they can not be copied or unintentionally deleted.

Move stores crucial information, such as tokens and smart contracts, as resources, giving the language considerably improved security over competing blockchain programming languages. Move is used to implement all of the key elements of Aptos, including accounts, transaction fees, a standard library, validator node management, and configuration.

Pontem Network developed a unique Solidity-to-Move bytecode transpiler called ByteBabel. This tool allows developers to translate dApp code written for Ethereum into Move. This way, you can easily migrate Ethereum dApps to Aptos, Sui, and other Move-based blockchains. This technology allows developers to test the EVM at Aptos speeds, bringing us closer to a cross-chain Move ecosystem.

Other Security Features

Aptos was built with security in mind, so it has numerous other features beyond those built directly into Move. The blockchain uses a powerful consensus mechanism known as AptosBFT.

The Aptos consensus protocol is deemed to be Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT), which refers to the Byzantine General Problem. Imagine a group of generals who must decide on battle plans together. They suspect someone in the group is a traitor and providing false information. Their ‘dilemma’ is how to make a plan given these circumstances. In decentralized blockchains, the Byzantine General Problem refers to participants, particularly validators, who must work to confirm or deny transactions correctly without being able to implicitly trust each other. This is a common source of potential blockchain exploits.

Aptos’s BFT protocol keeps the network running smoothly, regardless of the actions of one validator, while also maintaining world-class speeds. Aptos uses a reputation system to update validator rotations and synchronizes voting using “pacemaker.” This system fully validates transactions in less than a second,a measurement typically called ‘time to finality. This is what makes it one of the fastest blockchains in production.

Aptos also has numerous features that protect end users from having their accounts exploited. Remember those famous stories of users who lost their crypto because they couldn’t remember their key? Aptos has built new, secure methods for key recovery, as well as key rotation systems that prevent fraud.

Speed and Scalability

Aptos is designed to be a future-proof blockchain, used around the world by both individuals and enterprises. But for that to happen, it needs to have world-class speed.

As we explained in a recent article, blockchain speeds can be measured in two ways: transactions per second (TPS) and time to finality (TTF). TPS refers to throughput, or how many transactions the network can commit per second. TTF refers to the amount of time between starting a transaction (e.g. sending crypto to a friend’s wallet) and that transaction taking effect (your friend having access to those tokens in their wallet).

Aptos is one of the fastest L1 chains in both senses, outperforming most competitors. Its TTF is less than one second, ranking it among ultra-fast chains like Avalanche and Fantom. Under perfect conditions, its TPS could reach an industry-leading 160,000.

So how does Aptos achieve these speeds? There are several key features that make it happen.

First, Aptos decoupled the consensus mechanism from the execution pipeline. This means that transactions can be organized almost like an assembly line, with consensus and execution occurring separately and optimized for simultaneous speed. Aptos also improved the HotStuff BFT engine to validate most transactions in just two network trips. This is far faster than the many rounds of voting other consensus mechanisms require to securely validate transactions. Finally, Aptos storage and data structures are optimized to improve speed and keep fees low.

At the same time, when framing blockchain capacity in TPS, it’s crucial to understand the difference between theoretical limits and practical usage. In order for Aptos to process 100,000 transactions per second, people need to actually make that many transactions, which would require hundreds of thousands of active users. The current load is far lower.

As of January 28, the Aptos mainnet has processed around 78 million transactions, which works out to about  7.15 transactions per second. This absolutely doesn’t mean that the network is slow; it’s just that only a tiny portion of Aptos’s potential is being used. In fact, 7.15 TPS is more than three times higher than speeds on  Avalanche (2.2 TPS) and more than double that of Fantom (3.3 TPS).

Scalability

Aptos bills itself as “the safest and most scalable Layer 1 blockchain.” “Safe” is easy to understand, but what does “scalable” mean? It refers to the ability of a system to “cope and perform well under an increased or expanding workload or scope.” As global adoption of blockchains accelerates, their performance requirements increase exponentially. NFTs are becoming even more popular as crypto and DeFi are used to replace fiat currencies, traditional payment systems, and institutional banking. And the stakes are only getting higher as DAOs are used to run more and larger organizations.

Aptos recognizes this need and has learned from other blockchains that no matter how performant a system is, it can only go so far without reliability (see Solana). In order to avoid hard forks or downtime, Aptos manages validators on-chain. This makes it simple to vote on and execute upgrades. Robust testing has allowed Aptos to enact several major upgrades without downtime and upgrade the network as needed.

Aptos’s use of state sync is one of its most fundamental future-proofing advances, which also greatly improves speed. On other blockchains, validators add new blocks to the chain by executing transactions, and other network users then replicate this data to use it. But Aptos, with its state sync protocol, allows non-validators to distribute this data to ensure everyone in the ecosystem is in sync. Furthermore, Aptos uses an accumulator to sync network nodes. Instead of downloading the entire transaction ledger, a node can use the accumulator to get the latest transaction.  

Aptos Incentivized Testnet and Mainnet Launch

In addition to Pontem, which is building foundational tools for the Move ecosystem, Aptos has partnered with other companies to accelerate their growth. One of the most intriguing is Google Cloud, whose technology allows Aptos nodes to be set up in less than 15 minutes.

The Aptos developer testnet was launched back in March 2022. It reached a peak of 18,000 full active nodes, making it the largest known proof-of-stake node community. The next stage was an incentivized testnet, which ran between May and September 2022, attracting 30,000+ applications to participate. The incentivized testnet was a success, helping to identify bugs and vulnerabilities, test the upgrade process, and strengthen the network.

Aptos mainnet genesis took place on October 12, 2022 with 102 validators, though it was announced only on October 18. As of January 28, AptoScan lists 103 validators and more than 3 million unique Aptos addresses.

APT: Aptos Crypto Token

APT is the native cryptocurrency of Aptos. It is used to pay gas fees and  secure the network through staking.

Since Aptos is not an EVM chain, you can’t add it to MetaMask. You will need an Aptos wallet to store APT. Among the most popular Aptos wallets are Pontem Wallet, Petra, Martian, and Fewcha. Of these, Pontem is the only Aptos wallet integrated with Ledger and available for iOS.

You can buy APT on Binance, KuCoin, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Kraken, and other large exchanges, as well as on Aptos DEXs like Liquidswap or PancakeSwap.

The total supply of APT is 1 billion. According to Mo Shaikh, Aptos tokenomics were designed to “fairly represent the community.” The share of the tokens that went to investors is just 13.48% with rather long lockup periods:

At the end of January 2023, APT ranked in the top 30 largest cryptocurrencies with a market cap of almost $3 billion and a token price of around $18. This is astonishing growth for a coin that was launched only 3.5 months ago.

Why did Aptos APT grow 400% in 2023?

In January 2023, APT dramatically outperformed the market, growing 440% (from $3.5 to $19) in just 3 weeks. In the same period, ETH rose just 36%. Aptos TVL is also growing fast.

What were the possible reasons behind Aptos’s explosive growth?

1. Launch timing: Aptos is the most advanced L1 blockchain to launch during the current bear market. It generated enormous interest, which created significant pent-up demand. As a result, APT was well-positioned when market sentiment turned more bullish at the start of 2023.

2. DeFi ecosystem news: Aptos attracted even more attention after PancakeSwap deployed on it. In November, PancakeSwap launched the first Aptos yield farming program known as Syrup Pools. In January, the CAKE community voted to continue the deployment. PancakeSwap eventually came to represent the majority of TVL on Aptos – and since PancakeSwap is one of the best-known projects in the DeFi space, a lot more people became interested in APT.

3. Short liquidations: Once the Aptos rally started, some traders tried to short APT, expecting the price to go down. Instead, it kept going up, forcing those traders to close their shorts or face liquidations, furthering the rally. This often happens when a very strong coin is trending.

We provide a much more detailed analysis of why APT is growing in 2023 in this article.

Aptos Ecosystem Today

The Aptos ecosystem already hosts more than 200 projects, with dozens of dApps live on the mainnet, and many more on the testnet. Here are some of the most popular:

• Aptos wallets: Pontem Wallet, Petra, Martian, Fewcha, Rise, Blocto

• Aptos DEX: Liquidswap, PancakeSwap, AUX, AnimeSwap, Obric, HoustonSwap, Aptoswap

• DEX aggregators: Hippo, Kana Labs (+ Aptos staking)

• Liquid staking: Ditto Finance, Tortuga Finance

• Lend & borrow on Aptos: Argo (deposit collateral and mint USDA stablecoins), Aries Markets (with added margin trading and leveraged swaps), Aptin Finance, Abel Finance.

• Aptos stablecoins: Argo (USDA)

• Yield farming: Liquidswap (Hydroponic Farms), PancakeSwap (Syrup Pools), Mole Finance (leveraged farming)

• NFT marketplaces: Topaz, Souffl3, BlueMove

• Launchpads: AptosLaunch, AptosLauncher

You can  find detailed info on these dApps and more in our Aptos DeFi guide.

Aptos is also compatible with Ledger, using our Pontem Wallet. Simply download the Aptos app and connect Ledger to Pontem Wallet, to use your Ledger wallet with Liquidswap and any other Aptos dApp. Learn more from our detailed guide.

About Pontem

Pontem Network is a product studio building the first-ever suite of foundational dApps for Aptos. Pontem Wallet, the first wallet for Aptos, is available for Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and iOS (and an Android app is coming soon!)

Use Pontem Wallet to store and send any tokens on Aptos. The wallet is integrated with our Liquidswap DEX, the first DEX and AMM for Aptos, Topaz and Souffl3 NFT marketplaces, Ditto and Tortuga liquid staking platforms, Argo and Aries lending protocols, and all other major Aptos dApps.

Our other products include the browser code editor Move Playground,  the Move IntelliJ IDE plugin for developers, and the Solidity-to-Move code translator ByteBabel – the first ever implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine for Aptos.

Source of information

https://pontem.network/blog