Several new L1 blockchains - Aptos, Sui, and Linera - have been garnering some attention (or what’s left of it in a bear market), and they share several similarities. Interestingly, they all feature ex-Meta team members/founders who previously worked on developing Meta’s now-abandoned blockchain projects ventures, namely Libra/Diem and Calibra/Novi. All three projects are innovating on top of the initial Diem Core codebase, which is open source, as well as being built on top of Move, a new Rust-based programming language that had been developed for the Diem blockchain.
During the L1 craze of 2021, every new L1 boasted superior specs over the others. Are Aptos, Sui, and Linera any different? Let’s have a look at some of their key features.
From the Ashes of Diem Comes 3 More L1s
Aptos
Aptos debuted earlier this year as the safe, scalable, and upgradable L1. The Aptos team is 50+ members strong, and is led by former Diem developer Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, former tech lead for Diem. Aptos has been in public development since late February, but builds on 3+ years of research resulting from Diem’s development. In mid-March, they invited developers to hop aboard their developer testnet, at the same time announcing a $200M raise at a $2B valuation led by a16z. Aptos uses the AptosBFT consensus mechanism, which is based on the HotStuff consensus designed for Diem. Its execution layer utilizes the Move virtual machine (MoveVM), which was also originally created for Diem.
Move
One of the main focal points is its proprietary programming language, Move. Move was developed specifically for Diem, as it was intended to store billions of dollars in value, with a strong focus on safety to solve the particular vulnerabilities within Solidity, the leading smart contract programming language. Without getting too deep into the technicalities, Move has unique characteristics that make it much more difficult to write buggy code, and for smart contracts to behave unexpectedly. As an example, scarcity is an important property of digital assets on open blockchains (i.e. assets are non-duplicable, have a controlled supply, and creation of new assets should be privileged). The EVM bytecode however only provides strong, hardcoded scarcity protections to its native asset Ether, but not to custom assets such as ERC20s. Therefore, developers must reimplement these scarcity protections onto any custom asset, being careful not to introduce programming errors that would allow say, an asset to be duplicated at whim. In contrast, Move allows programmers to simply represent digital assets in a way that inherently makes them non-duplicable or implicitly discarded. Move was also developed along with a tool called the “Move Prover”, which allows developers to formally verify (i.e. to use mathematically rigorous methods of testing) that smart contracts perform as intended under all input scenarios, which allows for strong safety guarantees.
As for scalability, Aptos boasts a theoretical throughput of >100k TPS and sub-second finality using its Block-STM implementation. While some blockchains opt for sharding or roll-ups to scale, Aptos utilizes threads, which virtually divide a CPU into multiple cores to enable parallel processing. Do note that in their latest update on the matter, the current testnet throughput stands at >10k TPS, with more work being done on transaction batching, network compression, and more to achieve >100k TPS.
Among other interesting, technical features include account key rotation, i.e. the ability for any account or validator to rotate their private or consensus key, respectively.This allows for an added layer of operational security for keyholders, and the team is also working on novel techniques for private key recovery if a user loses their keys. Work is also currently being done to develop methods for account/key recovery to prevent billions of dollars of value lost to inaccessible accounts.
Aptos has set its sights on deploying its mainnet around the end of Q3 2022. With a focus on smooth, zero-downtime upgradability as well, the team also mentioned plans to release the next major iteration of its mainnet in Q4 2022//Q1 2023. According to the team, there are already over 100 projects spanning DeFi, NFTs/gaming and more currently building on Aptos. Additionally, they already have a grant program up and running, though there was no mention on the amount of funds allocated.
Sui by Mysten Labs
Similar to Aptos, Sui is also founded by ex-Meta employees who were on the now defunct Diem project. It is led by Evan Cheng (Director of R&D at Novi), Kostas Kryptos (Lead Cryptographer at Meta), and Sam Blackshear (Principal Engineer at Novi). The new blockchain is being developed by Mysten Labs, which raised $36 million in a Series A funding round led by a16z back in December. Series B funding is currently ongoing, with aims to raise at least $200 million at a $2 billion valuation.
Similar to Aptos, the Sui blockchain is built on Move, though the team has also made tweaks to suit their needs. For example, the original version of Move predates the popularity of NFTs, and certain aspects of it makes NFT-related use cases tricky to implement. This meant that mass asset creation wasn’t possible (or at least hard and tedious to do so) on Move, making it complicated to generate a collection of NFTs.
It is claimed that Sui will be a high-performance blockchain, but can still run on an everyday device such as a MacBook. The team at Sui claim that they ran the network on a MacBook, and it was able to achieve an impressive 120k TPS. Such speed is achieved by using “transaction parallelization”, whereby transactions are processed in a parallel manner (transactions aren’t placed in a certain order). With that consensus is forgone for many transactions and latency is reduced in return. The downside of this is that users can only send one transaction at a time, which is why the network has to be fast in the first place.
How do certain transactions on Sui Bypass Consensus
According to Mysten Labs Co-Founder Kostas Kryptos, there are blockchain transactions which do not require ordering, e.g. transactions that are not as time sensitive, or transactions pertaining to objects which are owned by a single user, are most suited for bypassing consensus. An example put forward by Kostas is posting jobs on a job listing application. Full consensus is not needed here, as no one is bothered whether one job listing was posted before another. Eventually, all the jobs appear on the page (block) either way and in an ordered manner. However, at the beginning when undeniable proof is needed, the ordering of each post is not needed.
For such transactions to be accepted by the Sui network, it will need to collect a quorum of signatures from validators independently, which is 2f+1 in this case. The validators will also keep the version of the signed transaction, to have a record of what they have signed, and post the transaction to the chain eventually. However, the sender of the transaction can already show the 2f+1 signatures to the recipient to confirm that the transaction will be recorded. A specific protocol on Sui will be designed to facilitate this process of collecting signatures independently and showing it to recipients.
Sui will be launching their testnet in August, and incentives will be included for those who try it out. On top of that, it has already launched its own wallet which allows users to manage assets on the Sui network, and also interact with dApps on it.
Linera
Linera was founded by Mathieu Baudet, a former Research Engineer at Diem. Interestingly, the seed round was also led by a16z, raising $6 million. The fund has now invested in all three blockchain startups that rose from the ashes of Libra.
The main aim of Linera in the blockchain space is to bring web2 scalability to web3, with the usage of linear scaling. This is a concept borrowed from web2 startups, whereby additional processing units are added based on needs. For example, if a website faces a surge in visits, more bandwidth can simply be added.
Similarly, Linera handles a surge in activity on its network by sharding, where additional validators are added when needed. This will segment the network into smaller chains, which in turn will spread out the load, and increase network speeds. In theory it should make it more scalable.
The Linera network is set to be built on Move as well, though any sort of development is yet to be seen considering the project was conceptualized barely a month ago.However, it does draw some inspiration from Zef (a private payments network), and FastPay (a Byzantine fault tolerant settlement layer), which founder Mathieu Baudet also worked on in the past.
Some Thoughts
All three networks discussed above are rather similar in the sense that they were founded by ex-Meta employees, and use the Move programming language. Seeing that Move is similar to Rust, it is likely that the newcomers will be in contest for such devs from the likes of Solana, Cosmos, and Near.
It will be exciting to see how they fare down the road, and if they’ll attract the masses to crypto. The closure of the blockchain arm of Meta has brought an influx of bright minds to the broader blockchain industry. However, it is likely that many of these new startups will fail in the coming years, but the technology and innovation brought forward will benefit the entire ecosystem in the long run.
Crypto Smartphones
As the crypto winter settles in, many are searching for the next big narrative in the evolution of crypto. One such idea seems to be on crypto smartphones.
Why a Crypto Phone?
Crypto phones are an intuitive pursuit in a bid to drive mass adoption. Smartphones have been an integral part of our daily lives for the better of the last decade, and usage of financial services on mobile has been growing steadily due to convenience. Having tokens and NFTs easily accessible to you at all times could potentially give rise to new interesting use cases - for example, NFT entry passes for concerts or paying for parking with on-chain credit tokens. However, the current mobile experience of widely used dApps leaves much to be desired. There’s a lot of hopping between different apps or web browsers, and that’s if it even works as intended. Apps not being able to detect crypto wallets on mobile are a common occurrence.
The idea of crypto phones is not novel and first emerged in 2018 with the likes of the HTC Exodus 1 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 KlaytnPhone, a partnership with Samsung and Kakao. Although previous iterations of crypto phones did not garner much traction, there seems to be a resurgence in companies looking to marry blockchain and smartphone technologies. Solana’s Saga smartphone and Polygon’s partnership with Nothing are the latest attempts for blockchain companies to push crypto adoption to the retail audience.
Solana Saga
Solana Mobile, a subsidiary of Solana Labs first introduced its Saga smartphone in June, during NFT NYC 2022. Saga claims to be a flagship Android smartphone that makes managing and transferring digital assets easy and secure by integrating it with the Solana blockchain. The phone will also feature Solana Mobile Stacks (SMS), a software development kit (SDK) for Solana-based web3 programs that are open source for other phone manufacturers to include and implement into their smartphones if they choose to. Furthermore, the Solana Saga also includes a Web3 dApp store, QR-code based on-chain payment transfers via Solana Pay and a “seed vault” that store private keys within the phone. Solana Labs is also eager to include other web3 companies including Magic Eden, Solana’s leading NFT marketplace, Phantom, Solana’s largest wallet provider and Orca, a prominent Solana DEX to build a cohesive ecosystem.
Aside from its blockchain and web3 features, the Saga rocks flagship specs such as 6.67" OLED display, 12 GB RAM, 512 GB storage alongside a flagship price of $1,000. Pre-orders for Saga are currently open with a $100 fully refundable deposit required. The Solana Saga is expected to be released in early 2023.
Polygon x Nothing Phone
On the other hand, Polygon is partnering with the London-based technology company Nothing to integrate Web3 technology into its first flagship, the Nothing Phone (1). The Nothing Phone (1) has garnered extensive media coverage due to its unique transparent design and marketing. The collaboration starts with a Black Dot NFT given to Nothing Phone pre-orders and is used to crowdfund the phone’s launch on July 12. The NFT gives holders early access to new products and entries to events amongst other benefits. Aside from the NFTs, Polygon’s Vice President of Growth, Arujun Kalsy also plans to provide users of the Nothing phone access to Polygon dApps and games.
Nothing phone users will also gain early access to Polygon ID, a user identity solution that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs for network payments. Kalsy explains Polygon ID as a decentralized Web3 solution to Google ID or Apple ID as Apple and Google essentially owns the user's data. As such, with a decentralized, self-custodied identification system such as Polygon ID, users will be able to secure their identity without having to entrust personal data to a third party.
Some Thoughts
While announcing and building a phone is one thing, it goes without saying that Polygon and Solana definitely have major hurdles to overcome. A smartphone is many things to many people, and as a flagship offering, it needs to at least perform well in terms of having a good ergonomic design, great screen, take pretty pictures and video, and good battery life. Both Solana and Polygon have at least taken good steps in this direction by working with smartphone manufacturers with some form of track record. However, in the uber-competitive smartphone market, you must also back the phone with significant marketing to drive sales. Social media campaigns, brand ambassadors, launch parties, large billboards etc have become the norm for the release of a flagship phone, and it’ll be hard for Solana and Polygon to get the word out to the masses if they don’t back their phones with marketing dollars. Mobile development frameworks also need to be maintained and updated frequently, and teams need to be on top of these changes and introduce new features to remain relevant. Finally, Android phones are a notoriously unprofitable business, and it’ll be interesting to see if these initial exploratory ventures can be sustained by both projects.
Thus far, pre-orders for Solana Saga have been stagnant and remain slightly below 3,000 which represents a mere 0.02% of monthly active Solana addresses in July. By contrast, the Nothing Phone (1) has had much more media exposure from tech enthusiasts and reviewers, but the Polygon collaboration is barely mentioned and is at best an afterthought for retail consumers. All in all, Solana and Polygon have much to prove before they can gain the retail adoption they seek and not suffer the same fate as their predecessors.
This article was written in collaboration with Wendy and Jun Sheng. You can follow them on Twitter at @alfalfawm and @jnshngl.
Shaun is a Research Analyst at CoinGecko, who has lived and breathed crypto since 2017. Previously a community manager for Synthetix and RedFOX, he dived down the crypto rabbit hole to grasp a better understanding of the industry. He now spends copious amounts of time on Crypto Twitter and Telegram, searching for the next idea for CoinGecko Research. Follow the author on Twitter @ShaunPaulLee
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