Introduction

Aptos is the newest layer-1 blockchain in the crypto space that promises to deliver an easy-to-use, scalable, and high-performance blockchain. Originally, developers from the Aptos Labs have been working on Diem Meta's blockchain. After the project was abandoned, programmers decided to create Aptos. The network is using Move (which was developed for Diem) Rust-like programming language, that enforces safety and reliability. By parallelizing transactions execution, Aptos strive to dominate the competition.

Vision

The plan is simple - build a reliable, safe, and highly throughput blockchain that will be seamlessly and frequently upgradable without any outages and user interruptions. Moreover, the network will be fully governed by the Aptos token holders. By now, the idea behind impeccable network upgrades seems to work. In early 2020 the Diem main-net was deployed to node operators. At this time, developers successfully changed the consensus protocol and the core network without any downtimes for users.

System Design

The heart of the Aptos consists of validators that receive transactions from users using a byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT, it is just a system that proceeds working even if some of its nodes fail or act dishonestly), proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Token holders are able to stake their tokens in the selected validator. The number of tokens that the validator locks up indicates the weight of its voting in the consensus. A few of the Aptos core principles:

• simple smart contracts auditability
• fast and secure programs execution
• high throughput and low latency (batched, pipelined, and parallelized transaction processing)
• stake-weight validators
• seamless network upgrades,
• sharding

Aptos uses the new safe and flexible smart contract programming language - Move. The Move ecosystem contains a compiler, a virtual machine, and many other developer tools. Moreover, Move includes a formal verifier, that helps write more trusted code.

Aptos provides a way to continuously upgrade the ecosystem without any user interruptions. Thus, token holders will vote on-chain about the network improvements, for instance transitioning to a new quantum-resistant signature scheme. Aptos supports shared accounts - used by DAOs, for example.

Programs Execution Safety

Aptos blockchain provides something called: transaction pre-execution. Before signing, the transaction will be pre-executed and the outcome will appear in human-readable form. It will prevent users from executing malicious programs, that would withdraw all users' money. Moreover, wallets are able to constrain transactions during execution. Violating constraints will result in transactions being rejected.

Transaction Execution

Transaction execution has been broken down into three separate and independent stages: pipelining, batching, and parallel transaction processing. Validators group transactions into batches during transaction dissemination and those batches are included in blocks. Transactions that do not interfere with each other can be executed in parallel. Even when transactions modify the same set of on-chain values, much of the transaction execution process can still be parallelized. The Aptos uses Block-STM parallel execution engine, which detects and manages overlapping transactions.

Conclusion

Aptos is definitely an ecosystem with huge potential. The team promises to deliver reliable, safe, and highly throughput blockchain, but we still have to wait for the results. If everything goes smoothly, it definitely will be one of the biggest players in the crypto space.

This was just a brief overview about the Aptos blockchain. Please feel free to check out the resources section in order to learn more.