The new Blockchain, Aptos

With a theoretical throughput of over 100,000 transactions per second, Aptos is a Proof-of-Stake-based Layer 1 blockchain that combines parallel transaction processing with a novel smart contract language called Move. Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, two former Meta engineers, are the minds behind the project, which is seen as the technological offspring of Meta's shelved blockchain project Diem.

The announcement that Aptos had received $200 million in a seed round led by renowned venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz caused a stir in the cryptocurrency sector in March of this year. The startup raised an additional $150 million at a pre-money valuation of $1.9 billion in July as part of a Series A funding round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto. Two months later, in a venture raise led by Binance Labs, its valuation reached $4 billion.

It is important to note that Aptos completed all of this before to releasing their blockchain, which did not start operating until October 17. Aptos airdropped 150 APT tokens to 110,235 qualified addresses in order to thank the testnet's early adopters and evenly distribute the initial token allocation. Each APT token was worth about $1,237 at launch. Despite only having been launched a few days ago and having little activity on the network, according to statistics from CoinGecko, Aptos currently has a fully diluted market valuation of over $9.2 billion. Beyond its history and connections to Meta, there have been concerns about the project's worth.