Aptos Labs
Layer 1 Blockchain Infrastructure. Minting NFT at scale
Executive summary
New investment opportunity - Aptos - round A - $2bn+ Valuation
- Homepage: https://aptoslabs.com/, Vision, Whitepaper
- Explorer: https://explorer.devnet.aptos.dev/
- Product: Layer 1 Blockchain Infrastructure. Minting NFT at scale
- Language: Move is Rust-inspired and designed for smart contract development.
- Protocol Consensus: DAG BFT (DiemBFT v4)
- Funding Round & Valuation:
- Investors: FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, with additional participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Apollo, Franklin Templeton and Circle Ventures.
- Competitors: SUI
- Roadmap: 2022 Q3 — Mainnet launch 2022 Q4–2023 Q1 — Deploy the next major release to Aptos mainnet with the next set of significant features
- Pros:
- Good testnet stats (100k wallets, 200+ validators)
- Superstar Team (ex. FB etc)
- Highly anticipated brand with proprietary language
- Cons:
- No Clear Roadmap, Only info on TestNet
- High Distribution for insiders (Highly VC backed) Could be similar to Solana
Product
Ecosystem Overview:
Whitepaper
Transaction processing cycle
- Block-STM
A new parallel execution engine for smart contracts built around the principles of Software Transactional Memory and optimistic concurrency control.
Scalability
Consensus:
- DiemBFT v4 - Diem consensus state machine replication
T&C - Test net
- Rewards/Incentives
As part of your participation in Testnet, the Company may choose, in its sole discretion, to provide certain incentives or rewards to eligible participants for completing certain activities, including running a validator node and meeting certain performance criteria or other requirements set by the Company. Further details are set out in the Incentivized Testnet Program website. Other contributions to Testnet may further be rewarded by the Company in its discretion. Such rewards may include Aptos mainnet tokens; provided, that, (x) any such Aptos mainnet tokens will be provided only following successful mainnet launch and any tokens provided will be subject to a one-year lockup period
Aptos Incentivized Testnet Roadmap
- IT1 Decentralized Startup (May)
- IT2: Staking
- IT3: Governance and upgrades - OnGoing
- Registration begins on August 19
- Registration ends on August 25
- Notifications will be sent out on August 29
- The testnet becomes live on August 30
- The testnet concludes on September 09
- IT4: Dynamic validator topology
Tokenomics
Initial Supply
Mainnet was launched on October 12, 2022. The initial total supply of Aptos tokens (APT) at mainnet was 1 billion tokens. APT will have 8 digits of precision as part of the fraction where the minimal unit is called an Octa.
Distribution Schedule for the Community and the Aptos Foundation
This pool of tokens is designated for ecosystem-related items, such as grants, incentives, and other community growth initiatives. Some of these tokens have already been allocated to projects building on the Aptos protocol and will be granted upon the completion of certain milestones. A majority of these tokens (410,217,359.767) are held by the Aptos Foundation, and a smaller portion (100,000,000) are held by Aptos Labs. These tokens are anticipated to be distributed over a ten-year period:
- 125,000,000 APT available initially to support ecosystem projects, grants, and other community growth initiatives now and in the future for the Community category
- 5,000,000 APT available initially to support the Aptos Foundation initiatives for the Foundation category
- 1/120 of the remaining tokens for the community and the Foundation are anticipated to unlock each month for the next 10 years
Distribution Schedule for Core Contributors and Investors
All investors and current core contributors are subject to a four-year lock-up schedule, excluding staking rewards if applicable, from mainnet launch that unlocks according to the following schedule:
- No APT available for the first twelve months
- 3/48ths of such tokens unlock on the 13th month after mainnet launch and each month thereafter up to and including the 18th month
- 1/48th of the tokens unlock each month thereafter beginning on the 19th month after mainnet launch so that all such tokens are unlocked on the four-year anniversary of mainnet launch
Estimated Token Supply Schedule
Today, more than 82% of the tokens on the network are staked across all categories, and a majority of these are currently locked in accordance with the distribution schedule above and not available for release.
Note: Both unlocked (i.e. tokens that are available for distribution) and locked (i.e. not available for distribution) tokens can be staked
Deal Structure
Team
CORE TEAM
Aptos consists of the leaders, engineers and strategic talent behind years of developments at Diem and Novi, and the researchers behind cutting-edge innovations such as DiemBFTv4, Narwhal & Tusk, BullShark, and Block-STM. Many of the creators, maintainers, and brilliant minds behind the Move language and Move Prover are part of our team
Sources:
- Block-STM: How We Execute Over 160k Transactions Per Second on the Aptos Blockchain
- DiemBFT v4 - Diem consensus state machine replication
- Block STM - Scaling Blockchain Execution by Turning Ordering Curse to a Performance Blessing
Analysis by Mark Mercatali. Disclaimer: This analysis is based on personal opinion only. This is not intended as investment advice. Do your own research. All company data is owned by the respective owners.
