Introducing Aptos: The Next-Generation Blockchain Empowering Mass Adoption in the Web3 Era

1. **Native Integration of Move Language**: Aptos natively integrates the Move language, providing fast and secure transaction execution. The Move prover, a formal verifier for smart contracts written in Move, enhances contract security and safeguards contract invariants and behavior.

2. **Flexible Key Management and Hybrid Custodial Options**: The Aptos data model supports flexible key management and hybrid custodial options, ensuring a safer and more trustworthy user experience. Transaction transparency prior to signing and practical light client protocols contribute to user safety.

3. **High Throughput and Low Latency**: Aptos achieves high throughput and low latency through a pipelined and modular approach to transaction processing. It leverages concurrent operation of transaction dissemination, block metadata ordering, parallel transaction execution, batch storage, and ledger certification. This maximizes resource utilization, improves hardware efficiency, and enables highly parallel execution.

4. **Support for Atomicity**: Unlike other parallel execution engines, Aptos does not impose limitations on developers regarding upfront knowledge of data to be read and written. It efficiently supports atomicity with complex transactions, enhancing throughput, reducing latency, and simplifying development.

5. **Modular Architecture and Upgradeability**: Aptos features a modular architecture that prioritizes client flexibility and enables frequent and instant upgrades. The blockchain also incorporates embedded on-chain change management protocols to facilitate the rapid deployment of new technology innovations and support new web3 use cases.

6. **Scalability Initiatives**: Aptos is experimenting with internal sharding of validators and homogeneous state sharding to scale beyond individual validator performance. This design supports horizontal throughput scalability without adding complexity for node operators.

Aptos combines elements of the former Diem blockchain and the Move programming language developed by Meta. The blockchain employs a parallel execution engine, known as Block-STM, capable of processing over 130k transactions per second. This high throughput, achieved through simultaneous transaction processing and validation, reduces transaction costs for users.

Unlike traditional blockchains that execute smart contracts sequentially or rely on massive parallel workloads, Aptos ensures that a single failed transaction does not hinder the entire chain. Failed transactions are aborted and re-executed using software transactional memory libraries to detect and manage conflicts. This streamlined approach significantly improves the network’s throughput capacity, making it more efficient than other layer-1 blockchains.

Aptos also provides a foundation for building decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. With over 30 DeFi projects already in the ecosystem, including decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, and liquid staking, Aptos supports a range of financial applications.

Aptos is co-founded by Mo Shaikh (CEO) and Avery Ching (CTO), former Meta employees with extensive experience as senior developers and engineers in the blockchain industry. The team comprises seasoned professionals, including PhDs, researchers, engineers, designers, and strategists. As the original creators and builders of Diem, the team brings a solid foundation and expertise to Aptos.

The Aptos Bridge, powered by LayerZero, enables users to transfer assets such as USDC, USDT, and ETH from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain into the Aptos ecosystem. Users can also withdraw funds from Aptos, although there is a 3-day transfer window to ensure network stability. The bridge has rate limits, with an initial outbound value cap of $1 million every 24 hours, which will increase as stability and production time progress. As an entirely new ecosystem, Aptos does not have native assets outside of its APT token. Therefore, assets from other chains must be wrapped to enter the Aptos ecosystem.

Aptos Labs has introduced Quorum Store, the first implementation of Narwhal, to enhance consensus throughput. Quorum Store eliminates the leader bottleneck by decoupling data dissemination from metadata ordering. This allows validators to disseminate data asynchronously in parallel, significantly improving consensus performance.

Aptos Labs has released the Aptos SDK, a set of gaming developer tools on Unity, the leading platform for real-time 2D and 3D content creation. The SDK promotes interoperability and transparency in gaming, enabling true and immutable ownership of in-game assets, portability of virtual goods, and seamless purchase, liquidation, and trading of game items. Aptos Labs joins other blockchain companies in the Unity Asset Store’s “Decentralization” section, providing Unity-verified resources.

Aptos blockchain aims to address the challenges of scalability, safety, reliability, and upgradeability in the Web3 era. It offers key features such as native integration of the Move language, flexible key management, high throughput, support for atomicity, and a modular architecture. By leveraging parallel execution and innovative consensus improvements like Quorum Stores, Aptos achieves scalability and efficiency. The team behind Aptos, including former Diem developers, brings significant expertise to the project. The Aptos Bridge ensures interoperability with other blockchains, and the Aptos SDK provides essential tools for gaming development. Aptos is poised to enable the mass adoption of blockchain technology, particularly in the realm of decentralized finance and gaming applications.