Source: Bixin Ventures

On October 18, 2022, Aptos mainnet went live, marking the emergence of another important blockchain in Web3. Today, Aptos mainnet has been running for a year. Aptos is a constantly iterating and growing blockchain, with engineers continuously optimizing performance, reducing costs, and enhancing decentralization and security. Since Bixin Ventures invested in Aptos in 2022, the achievements it has made so far give us reason to believe that Aptos is one of the best choices for DeFi projects.

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Key Points.

1. DeFi demonstrates a more open and efficient model, which is the future of finance. DeFi challenges and replaces traditional finance by improving the efficiency of financial operations and democratizing assets, and there will be huge opportunities in its future development.

2. Aptos uses Move language and according to the roadmap, it will achieve 160,000 TPS and final blocks under 1 second, while being cost-effective and suitable for Defi deployment.

Using the developer-friendly Move language, innovative solutions such as parallel execution and Diem-BFT consensus will achieve 160,000 TPS and final blocks in less than 1 second, with fees lower than 0.01 cents per transaction. Aptos is currently the blockchain with the lowest latency and highest throughput in the market (according to Messari).

3. 85 million followers and over 200 projects developed on Aptos. With a robust and complete infrastructure, Aptos is driving the development of DeFi. The Aptos community has over 850,000 fans, and basic tools such as wallets, browsers, security audits, bridges, and domains make it easier for developers to develop and deploy DeFi applications. Check out all the basic tools available on Aptos.

4. Multiple high-value Grants programs to support DeFi and other types of projects.Foundation Grants Program has started along with the recently launched Registry Program, which provides many opportunities for developers on Aptos. Additionally, there are more DeFi reward programs, including the Accelerator Program initiated by Aptos and Google Cloud, as well as the DeFi incentive program Thala Foundry initiated by Aptos and Thala.

5. There are already a large number of well-known DeFi deployments. For users, there are currently a large number of DeFi projects deployed, such as Pancake, Thala, Amnis Finance, Merkle Trade, etc. Additionally, there are also projects like Sushi and Econia that will launch their mainnets in Q4.

Unlimited Potential of DeFi

We all know that Web3 will change the way the world uses the internet. But in this field, decentralized finance is particularly revolutionary, with the potential to overturn the opaque, centralized traditional financial system that has been established for decades.

Centralized Exchange Scandals Drive People Towards DeFi

On centralized exchanges, users need to entrust their funds to the platform, which means that the ownership of the assets is transferred to the platform. From a legal perspective, this is equivalent to lending the assets to the custodian platform, and the user becomes a creditor of the platform. Due to the centralized operation, people are also aware of the potential risks of centralized exchanges.

Why do users turn to DeFi? First of all, it is the security of assets. The emergence of DeFi allows users to control their assets by holding private keys, which means that no one can misappropriate their funds, and security has been greatly improved. Secondly, users can enjoy a certain degree of privacy because they do not need to provide personal information, and wallets are separated from their real identities. Thirdly, users can experience and use a variety of DeFi applications on the chain, such as DEX, stablecoins, Perp, Lending, on-chain payments, yield aggregators, Liquidity Staking, etc.

As of 2021, 23.8% of adults worldwide still do not have a bank account.

As of 2021, according to data from the World Bank, only 76.2% of the global population aged 15 and above have a bank account or mobile account, which means that 23.8% of the population (aged 15+) still cannot enjoy financial services. At the same time, the 2023 World Bank Annual Report points out that it is expected that by 2030, there will still be 574 million people in extreme poverty. Although there are many factors that contribute to poverty, the lack of financial services is one important reason.

2021 global bank account ownership rate source: World Bank Database

Based on the above reasons, we believe that the development of DeFi is not short-term, but a long-term trend of positive growth. In fact, as of October 24, 2023, the 24-hour trading volume of DEX was $5 billion, accounting for only 1.7% of the total trading volume, but it has grown by 42% compared to the daily average trading volume of $3.5 billion in 2022. At the same time, the monthly trading volume of DEX has also exceeded $10 billion.

DEX monthly trading volume Source: Defillama & A16Z

As the fundamental trading currency of DeFi, stablecoins have also shown a trend of rapid growth, with a current issuance scale of over 120 billion US dollars. This also proves the need for a decentralized, value-stable US dollar asset.

The scale of on-chain stablecoin issuance Source: The Block, Coin Metrics, DeFillama

And the development of DeFi with such potential will inevitably require a secure, reliable, high-performance, and low-cost public chain, on which reliable and innovative DeFi applications will be nurtured. We believe that in the next wave of DeFi innovation, Aptos is the most promising public chain.

Aptos is ready for the next wave of DeFi growth, with upgradable features ensuring continuous iteration.

In the early stages, the Aptos technology stack was designed by the top 30 blockchain engineers in the Meta team. Over the next three years, a total of 292 developers and dozens of communities participated in the development and improvement proposals of the protocol. Compared to other blockchains, Aptos has more obvious advantages in security, scalability, cost, decentralization, and infrastructure, making it particularly suitable for DeFi applications with a large number of users and high value content.

It should be noted that since the launch of the mainnet, the Aptos team has been upgrading smart contracts every month, working with developers, listening to feedback, and proactively addressing these needs. Therefore, performance, fees, decentralization, and ecology will be a continuous process of improvement and iteration. It can be expected that in the coming months or years, Aptos will undergo significant changes. In the Aptos Improvement Proposals (AIP), you can see firsthand the many updates that have been made so far.

Move Language & Diem-BFT Consensus Can Ensure Sufficient Security for DeFi

Aptos is different from other blockchains in that it takes a different approach by using the Move language to ensure sufficient security. The Move language is a language designed specifically for digital assets, defining them through resources. It abstracts four properties of resources: copyability, indexability, discardability, and storability. Through different combinations of these properties, users can easily define any type of resource. In addition, the Move language also has verifiability, flexibility, and contract composability.

The security of the Move language is reflected in the fact that it provides a code verifier and VM-level protection to prevent modifications and attacks by other programmers. This is because no blockchain-specific content was added to the core language during design. In addition, Move Prover is used to prevent errors during the writing of smart contracts. In short, the Move language is designed specifically for smart contract development. It combines simplicity and security, changing the rules of Dapp construction.

Additionally, the team has also designed a high-performance, low-latency BFT engine, which has undergone four iterations so far. As long as the BFT validation nodes ensure honesty, the Aptos chain will not fork, even if the network is inaccessible or non-secure core components are somehow compromised. The security of the consensus protocol has also been audited and verified.

Aptos' mainnet has completed over 100 million blocks since its launch. In addition, in July of this year, the weekly user transaction volume on Aptos reached 4.9 million transactions and continues to rise.

Aptos mainnet has completed over 100 million blocks since its launch. Source: Aptos Explorer

We believe that DeFi, as the cornerstone of the Web3 world, must rely on a sufficiently secure underlying public chain, and Aptos is one of the most correct choices for DeFi development teams.

16 million TPS, final blocks in less than 1 second, transaction fees less than 0.01 cents per transaction, supporting a large number of DeFi users

Currently, the actual TPS of the vast majority of blockchain is as low as double digits. However, in order for DeFi applications to achieve the adoption of millions or tens of millions of users and daily transaction volumes of billions or tens of billions, the underlying public chain must have extremely high throughput and extremely low latency. If the throughput of the public chain itself is not enough, it will greatly limit the development of DeFi.

Aptos achieves high throughput of 160,000 TPS through decoupling consensus and execution, as well as innovative approaches such as parallel execution and Diem-BFT consensus. This performance ranks first among mainstream public chains and is significantly higher than Ethereum L2's performance. The 160,000 TPS also provides wider development space for DeFi applications.

Aptos has extremely high throughput compared to other L1/L2 sources: official website or Explorer

The block time is also one of the main factors that DeFi developers consider when choosing which public chain to deploy on. Aptos currently achieves a block time of less than 1 second and continues to improve, as stated in their continuous improvement. According to Messari, Aptos is the blockchain with the lowest latency and highest throughput in the current market.

Aptos actual block time is less than 1 second. Source: Aptos Explorer

Mainstream L1/L2 final block time Source: Explorer of each public chain

Compared to centralized finance, expensive transaction fees often hinder the adoption of DeFi users. Through the continuous efforts of the Aptos team, such as separating execution fees and storage fees and supporting storage fee refunds, as well as lowering gas fees on Aptos by 10x with community-driven feedback, transaction fees for DeFi users have now been reduced to less than 0.01 cents per transaction.

Transaction fees lower than 0.01 cents per transaction. Source: Aptos Explorer

113 validators in 50 cities across 25 countries around the world, enabling sufficient decentralization for DeFi

Sushi

Econia

Econia has implemented an atomic matching engine that utilizes Aptos' sub-second finality to settle trades at the moment they enter the market. From spot trading to leveraged perpetual futures, Econia aggregates liquidity to achieve maximum capital efficiency. Econia is secure, decentralized, permissionless, fully on-chain, and always open source. It is the foundational layer of the next generation of DeFi and the ideal settlement engine for any digital asset.

Aptos Labs participated in the seed round ($6.5 million) of Econia as a supporter to promote the development of Defi projects. Econia will launch in November with four different front-ends (Kana, Pontem, Aries, SwapGPT).

Merkle Trade

Merkle Trade is a decentralized trading platform for encrypted assets, foreign exchange, and commodities that adopts a fund pool model. With leverage of up to 1000 times, its goal is to become the largest decentralized leveraged trading platform and provide a pleasant trading experience for every user.

Compared to other AMMs, the first feature of Merkle Trade is to provide a gamified experience, where users can accumulate experience points and improve their ranking on the leaderboard, while unlocking rewards. Another feature is to provide forex and commodity trading pairs, with low fees as low as 0.0075% for forex trading pairs, allowing users to trade three types of assets on one platform.

Currently, the mainnet of Merkle Trade has been launched. Welcome everyone to experience it, and there are more rewards waiting for everyone here.

Merkle Trade's trading interface Source: Merkle Trade Official Website

Thala

Thala is a native DeFi protocol on Aptos, which has already launched on the mainnet. Thala has two products: a stablecoin called Move Dollar and an AMM called Thala Swap. Move Dollar (MOD) is generated by over-collateralizing a basket of on-chain assets, including LSD derivatives, LP Tokens, Deposit Receipt Tokens, and RWAs.

Thala Swap is an AMM that allows for dynamic LP adjustments and supports Weighted Pools, stablecoin pools, and LP incentive pools. Thala Swap can expand the use cases for MOD stablecoins. Additionally, the LaunchPad built on top of Thala Swap can provide a way for individual users to participate in projects early on.

Last October, Thala announced the completion of a $6 million financing round, as reported by The Block. This September, Thala and Aptos jointly launched a $1 million DeFi incubation program, and DeFi teams are also welcome to apply.

Amnis Finance

Amnis Finance is a Liquid Staking project similar to FRAX, offering up to 7% staking rewards. The model of Amnis Finance is similar to Pendle, which packages the yield assets (stAPT) into SY (Standardized Yield tokens), and then splits the SY tokens into principal tokens (PT) and yield tokens (YT), respectively. During this process, the yield is tokenized into a separate token.

Amnis Finance's mainnet is now live.

Amnis Finance Pledge Page Source: Amnis Finance Official Website

Join the Aptos ecosystem to develop great Web3 applications! Please follow Aptos' Twitter and Medium, and pay attention to the positions in the recruitment information. Bixin Ventures will also continue to support Aptos' expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.

This article is from a submission and does not represent the views of Blockbeats.

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