What is Aptos blockchain about?

Aptos is a public blockchain created in 2022 to facilitate an easier development process of decentralized apps, as well as grant its users a much higher throughput. It’s basically a much faster way to create crypto products based on smart contracts. APT is this network’s governance token.

The primary point of interest within this blockchain is its coding language, Move. It’s an incredibly easy-to-learn, developer-friendly language that enables people to write smart contracts much faster and with much less effort. In addition, the network is highly scalable, which decreases the costs of production even further.

So, what is this network?

Aptos

Aptos was released in late 2022 by a group of former Facebook employees. The blockchain is oriented towards web3. Its main aim is to provide larger masses of people with networking and development tools. With them, an individual can do anything from creating a simple smart contract for personal use to digitizing their business.

As a result, many recent applications were created using the Move language. There isn’t much sense in using Aptos as a regular user, though. It’s very heavily focused on the development of decentralized solutions, even if there are minor additional features released by the Aptos Foundation.

Move language

The Move language actually predates Aptos by several years. It was already used by older Facebook-aligned projects to create smart contracts. Aptos simply refined it and put it into a scalable environment, making it pretty attractive for an average developer and especially aspiring individuals.

There are many special features this language is known for, but there are several benefits that make it stand out in particular:

• Security and safety. Move is much more capable of catching small errors and vulnerabilities than other smart contract languages.
• Ease of use. Various factors, including the deterministic execution, make this coding language predictable and easier to use.
• Simple resource monitoring. Both resources and costs of execution are calculated precisely, which makes it easier for Move users to optimize their work.

At the end of the day, it means that it’s much easier for beginner and aspiring coders to use Move. The big problem is that it’s not documented nearly as well as established languages, but it’s compensated by the sheer simplicity of the Move development process and how much it helps you catch errors.

Aptos consensus mechanism

Being a fully-fledged independent blockchain, Aptos also has a governance model. Unlike many other post-Ethereum blockchains, Aptos didn’t really create anything unique for its consensus mechanism. It uses a plain proof-of-stake scheme, which determines block creation by the size of one’s stake.

Basically, the mechanism determines, which participant gets to add a new block (and receive rewards for it) by the amount of APT they’ve staked. The rewards are distributed proportionally, making it much fairer compared to the preceding consensus protocol, which is proof-of-work.

Aptos also uses the Byzantine Fault Tolerance model, which is an additional layer of algorithm that ensures the security and integrity of the consensus procedure. It’s exclusive for proof-of-stake, and it’s fairly popular with PoS networks. This model basically allows the process to go on even in the presence of malicious and flawed nodes, making the procedure less susceptible to manipulation and sabotage.

APT token

An APT token is the utility and governance token used within the Aptos network. It serves the same role ETH serves for the Ethereum blockchain, which includes several key functions:

• Payment of transaction fees. A small amount of APT (called ‘gas’) is necessary to run smart contracts. Considering that everything on Aptos runs on smart contracts, you’ll need these tokens fairly often. Fortunately, it’s a highly scalable environment, so you won’t have to pay too much.
• Governance. Governance is a way of taking part in the decision-making on the blockchain, including the addition of new blocks and all manner of voting. To take part, you’ll need to stake some of your APT. In turn, stakers receive rewards for their hard work.
• Utility. Native tokens can often be found in many different applications built on these blockchains. They are commonly among the supported currencies.

APT, in particular, is also listed on several major crypto exchanges, which means it can be bought freely. It’s currently in the bearish mood, although the token has seen a massive rise in January 2023. Unfortunately, it’s been in a decline ever since, although it’s not really telling of the platform’s own success.

Aptos scalability

One of the other key traits of Aptos is its scalability potential.

Scalability is a parameter that tells you exactly how quickly and efficiently you can expand your operations. In practical terms, it often tells you how costly your transactions would be. The cheaper they are, the more of them you can execute at a time. It’s also limited by the throughput, which should ideally be pretty high.

The high throughput on Aptos is achieved through two main factors:

• The modular structure. Some of the more recent blockchain projects prefer the modular structure over monolithic architecture. It basically means that various key functions on the blockchains (execution, data availability, consensus, etc.) are divided between several dedicated, specialized nodes/networks.
• Parallel execution. The transactions on Aptos are processed not one-by-one, but in bulk and parallel. It means that a larger number of them can be processed at the same time, and there is more redundancy in the process. It means that, if the volume of transactions suddenly rises, there is room to maneuver.

What you get in the end is a much higher throughput for transactions on Aptos. More of them can be processed at the same time, and they are all processed by a specialized module. The costs are already lower because you don’t need to wait so much for your transaction to be processed. It’s also cheaper because a dedicated node is working on them, allowing it to focus and carry out its tasks much faster.