Aptos is a promising layer 1 blockchain, but its reputation was ruined by its association with FTX and Sam Bankman Fried. Can Aptos recover?… and does it have what it takes to be a competitive layer 1? Today I’m getting to the bottom of Aptos, and making a case for its potential to move in the next bull run. Let’s get it.

What happened with the Aptos launch and what did it have to do with FTX? In July, back when Sam Bankman Fried still had the wool pulled over everyone’s eyes, Aptos received a $150 million series A funding round from Sam and FTX. The launch had a rocky start to say the least. The token price plummed almost immediately, and the promised “lightning fast speeds” were moving at a glacial pace. And even though Aptos only released its tokenomics one day before its tokens hit exchanges, FTX along with Binance offered perpetual futures contracts for Aptos right out the gate. Some even speculated that FTX shorted Aptos like it’s been known to do with other projects launched on the FTX platform…Since we covered this part already, click the Link in the description for more on that. Long story short, despite the promising tech and speed of Aptos, like ICP, it was taken advantage of and used as a VC pump and dump. Big surprise.

It’s no secret Aptos tanked because of its association with SBF. Aptos released a statement on November 9th that helped the price recover since they clarified that no Aptos treasury was being held by FTX. That doesn’t mean FTX wasn’t one of Aptos’ biggest investors. They also had funding from 3 Arrows Capital before it went bankrupt, Coinbase Ventures, Paxos and others. All told, it raised almost $200 million from hedge funds and VCs. This isn’t counting the undoubtedly limitless funds devs had to work with while they were creating the code at Facebook. Suffice to say, even though they had some bad pics like FTX and 3AC, this is a blockchain that has seen some cashflow.

Yes thanks to the Block- STM parallel execution engine, Aptos can theoretically process up to 160 thousand transactions per second…but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that could hold it back either. Actually, has a project with a laundry list of pros and cons.

Let’s go with the Cons first.

First is the APTOS token. The Transactions per second were not even close to what it could be when it first launched, where it was only at 4 TPS. It did speed back up once the eco system grew, but to say that AND get wrecked by FTX was a BAD start for the coin. It has an inflationary supply meaning that as it stands right now, more and tokens can and will be created, which could affect its long term value. The initial distribution was spread among the community, core contributors, foundation and investors. 6 months after the listing, more tokens will be released and although a lot of these tokens are locked, it’s still possible to stake them. This means locked token can still receive rewards, which can be sold and cause downward pressure on the price.

Some investors are concerned that the valuation is no longer 4 billion dollars after everything that’s happened with Aptos post-launch, including the value of the token taking a nosedive and FTX and 3AC going belly up. Others question whether the Aptos team benefitted somehow from the chaotic launch, and whether it’s doomed to suffer the same regulatory overreach as LIBRA and DIEM, although in my opinion this is comparing apples with oranges because outside of Facebook this is more like another blockchain project where before when LIBRA was being developed under Facebook things were just more complicated.

Now, the good news. The biggest selling feature of the Aptos blockchain and its token APT is the project’s code. It uses its own virtual machine, which is a rare find. First, Aptos separates itself from the field by using parallel execution. This is where its speed comes from. This is when the transactions are preformed simultaneously, and they are validated later down the line. More like a shoot first ask later type of a blockchain compared to sequential blockchains. It’s flexible, meaning that platforms can choose to manage concurrency or not to manage it..and concurrency just means whether different parts of a program or algorithm can be executed out of order without affecting the final result. You might have heard of SUI,(pronounced swee) the blockchain currently in development that also uses MOVE. The difference between Aptos and SUI is that with Aptos you don’t manage concurrency and SUI developers have to manage concurrency themselves. This means that APTOS is faster, and SUI is more flexible. Aptos uses a classic blockchain approach where validators order and batch transactions, and SUI uses directed acyclic graph. That’s a little technical but now you’re ready to bring out the big guns when someone asks what you think of SUI vs. APTOS. Aptos is undeniably cutting-edge research and development, and like I said earlier, Solana devs can easily move to MOVE without issue.

Despite its rocky start thanks to Sam and the gang, I feel that Aptos can come out of this on time. Don’t forget, this coin is pegged as a SOLANA killer. Sure, they are both VC projects, but Aptos can process 95 thousand more transactions per second than Solana, AND it hasn’t had to deal with the outages like Solana either. No matter how you look at it, APTOS is on the cutting edge of blockchain technology and one that has the potential to MOVE in the next bull run. It’s one I’ll be watching for sure.

That’s all I got! Be Blessed, Bitboy out.