Aptos Fumbles and Why a Killer App Wins Versus L1 HackerNoon Crypto - Cryptocurrency HEAD TOPICS

Aptos Fumbles and Why a Killer App Wins Versus L1 HackerNoon

10/21/2022 3:50:00 PM

A coverage on Aptos mainnet launch and an argument on why building a new layer 1 is difficult

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A coverage on Aptos mainnet launch and an argument on why building a new layer 1 is difficult - by ManoppoMarco crypto cryptocurrency A coverage on Aptos mainnet launch and an argument on why building a new layer 1 is difficult What a messy week it has been for crypto. If last week’s theme was exploits, this week’s seems to be regulatory scrutiny. Reuters published an investigative piece on Binance, Visa & Mastercard drew government scrutiny over crypto-linked debit cards, and Sam Bankman-Fried is being investigated by the Texas securities regulator. I always tell people that when every piece of news sounds bad, it’s a sign that we’re nearing the bottom. Aptos is a new L1 blockchain withIn crypto, it’s almost always easier to fix the tech than to fix the community. Aptos needs to double down hard on its community management, communication, and transparency after the level of incompetency that it shows during the first week. Read more:
HackerNoon Learn Any Technology » Aptos airdrops 20 million tokens to early testnet users Aptos (APT) Price Analysis for October 19 Aptos Foundation airdrops 20M tokens to its early testnet users What Is Aptos? The Ultimate Guide to the Aptos Ecosystem CoinMarketCap

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Into America is a show about being Black in America. These stories explore what it means to hold truth to power and this country to its promises. Told by people who have the most at stake. Read more >> Aptos airdrops 20 million tokens to early testnet users +11 Aptos airdrops 20 million tokens to early testnet users $APT aptos blockchain cryptocurrency 💥 Aptos (APT) Price Analysis for October 19Can Aptos (APT) continue growth after being hyped so much? Aptos Foundation airdrops 20M tokens to its early testnet usersAptos Foundation to airdrop to early testnet users. 20 million APT tokens to about 110,235 eligible participants with an estimated value of $200–$260 million USD. Then bullish sell 😉 I'm waiting for APTOS on Bitfinex. quite enough to dump hardly 🙂 What Is Aptos? The Ultimate Guide to the Aptos Ecosystem CoinMarketCap.AptosFoundation is a novel layer-1 chain that aims to provide the benefits of decentralization and bring about the adoption of Web3 to the masses. 🚀 Let's dive into its team, roadmap and its series of NFTs, wallets, Dapps & DEXes 🔥 AptosFoundation Why dont theey want us to know this AptosFoundation Crazy returns in airdrop now 🎁 AptosFoundation Crazy returns in airdrop now 🎁 Cardano DEX & 'Solana Killer' Aptos Announce Major Collaboration: DetailsCardano DEX AdaSwapApp announces mainnet release and cross-chain integration with Aptos cryptocurrency adaswap cardanoada cardanocommunity aptoslabs aptosmovement apt $ada $apt $asw This Is What Caused Aptos (APT) Massive Plunge on MarketSingle person was able to ruin $APT start on the crypto market due to poor Sybil attack protection Are we really surprised Into business, crypto, and strategy..Jobs Disclaimer: Any financial and market information given on U.announced on Oct 18 that it had rewarded its early network participants with free APT tokens. Without the cringe or libertarianism. Credibility Hi folks 🙋🏻‍, What a messy week it has been for crypto. If last week’s theme was exploits, this week’s seems to be regulatory scrutiny. U. Reuters published an investigative piece on Binance, Visa & Mastercard drew government scrutiny over crypto-linked debit cards, and Sam Bankman-Fried is being investigated by the Texas securities regulator. I always tell people that when every piece of news sounds bad, it’s a sign that we’re nearing the bottom. The airdropped tokens had an estimated value of about $200–$260 million USD based on the token's market price at the time the drop took place. Today we’re covering Aptos, the new L1 blockchain darling of Silicon Valley and VC firms.C Level 41, Emirates Tower, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai, UAE Protected by copyright laws of the international treaties. Aptos launched its mainnet and it has been a clown show thus far. Let’s get straight into it. Building a Layer 1 Is Hard Aptos is a new L1 blockchain with $350M+ in total funding.C © 2017-2022 Golden Axis Advertising L. It was created by former Meta employees, Mohammad Shaikh and Avery Ching, who previously worked on Meta’s failed stablecoin project. Aptos Foundation’s first airdrop to its community members comes at a time when the project has been under much scrutiny by members of the crypto community on Twitter. Aptos is valued at $4 billion pre-launch, even in the current macroeconomic environment. Honestly, props to them. All rights reserved. Three months after its Series A, Aptos launched its mainnet, which went live on October 17, 2022. Thus far, it hasn’t been a good day on Crypto Twitter for the Aptos team. In crypto, it’s almost always easier to fix the tech than to fix the community.dev (@PaulFidika). Aptos needs to double down hard on its community management, communication, and transparency after the level of incompetency that it shows during the first week. So what’s going on with Aptos and why is building a new Layer 1 blockchain network extremely difficult? In this piece, we break down everything that has been happening with Aptos in the past 48 hours and explain why crypto development often has the wrong focus. Here are the quick takeaways: Ultimate transparency is the bedrock of crypto because of its community-first component — Aptos didn’t do a good job. Replicating the grassroots organic growth and network effect of Ethereum (and other successful L1) is difficult. Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of successful L1s when we consider the amount of time, effort, and capital associated with the protocols. Founders might have a better chance of finding product-market fit building application layer projects. Top protocols with PMF are considering transitioning into their own appchains. Outright Recklessness In the past 48 hours alone, there have been multiple unprofessional practices from the Aptos team. I think the last sentence is pretty charitable given Aptos’ caliber of a project. Here are some highlights and top tweets. Unclear Tokenomics. The very basic thing that any crypto project with a token needs to get right is being 100% transparent about its token. This includes token supply distribution, use cases, mechanisms, and much more. Aptos launched without official tokenomics documentation, although they eventually it after much criticism from Crypto Twitter, and after a leak from Upbit. Unclear Communication. Aptos did not make it clear that the Genesis of its chain occurred on October 12, five days before the “official” mainnet launch. This was eventually clarified by its CEO but required many deliberations from the Crypto Twitter community to figure out prior to the official announcements. Large entities are already staking beforehand. Aptos enables vested tokens to be staked and for the subsequent staking token rewards to be liquid. With more than 80% of the current supply staked at a 7% yield, there are approximately 56 million APT tokens (80% * 1 billion total supply) released annually into the market — or roughly equivalent to $350M+ of annual sell pressure at $7 per APT. Confusing Terminologies. Aptos stated that 51% of its tokens are for the “community”. However, the word community here means a split between the Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs, indicating that the only way coins will ever get into the hands of the “community” is if the Aptos Foundation or Labs allow it to happen. Airdrop Issues. Aptos conducted an airdrop without proper mechanics, enabling the opportunistic actor to launch a Sybil attack. Aptos also mandated some form of web 2.0 log-in or identification (Google, Discord, or GitHub) in order to be eligible for the airdrop. Postponing Perpetuals. When a project has to ask a major centralized exchange not to list the perpetual contract of its token, it’s an indirect admission of an imbalance token supply design. Aptos knows that market participants will take advantage of the unclear tokenomics (at least it was unclear at the beginning), and the fact that staking rewards are liquid. Solana Is an Anomaly A lot of people seem to forget that betting on the new L1 has always been the biggest game in town. There are ludicrous financial incentives for founders and investors to fund L1 because of its TAM and the amount of capital they can rack up without ever needing to achieve success in any sort of meaningful and sustainable way. You can have years of runways, practically wait out the Fed interest rate cycle, and raise more capital as needed. However, there have not been many successful L1s. Solana’s success was unique and an anomaly. Many VCs unsurprisingly want to replicate Multicoin’s and SBF’s 10,000% return with Solana, but history has shown that investing in L1 is hard. Multicoin had its losses with EOS, and there were multiple other L1 projects of the 2017-2018 era that never really made a return (NEO, ICX, and ZIL; to name a few). Even if you have a massive war chest, there are external components that can make or break an L1. Oftentimes, the amount of work and impact that the team behind L1 can put into these external factors are limited. Nurturing an organic community, a cult-like following, and a niche sector within the space is not just about spending capital. EOS raised billions but failed to produce the same level of outcomes as Solana. Other well-capitalized L1s in the past few years are making strides, but have not achieved any traditional form of success in any meaningful way when you consider the amount of capital raised. L1 also needs to ride a wave or at least put a strong focus on and dominate one aspect of the crypto space. Solana rode the NFT wave. What wave is there right now? Additionally, unless you’re exceptionally well connected and have the appropriate background to launch a new L1, founders are better off finding product-market fit with application layer projects. Successful protocols with PMF, such as Axie and dYdX are considering transitioning into their own appchain to have improved performance and greater customizability. It seems like we’re moving more and more into a world where a successful dApp can just pivot to another L1 or become its own appchain, whereas a successful L1 needs to ensure the successful dApps stay on their chain — anyway, that’s for another post. The Wrong Focus Developing a new L1 from scratch is extremely difficult. You’re not only building a product, but also an ecosystem and a community in a decentralized open-source world without any Intellectual Property defensibility. Any work that you put out there can be replicated and duplicated by other entities. All of this while you need to focus on garnering developers’ interest, creating a thriving community, and attracting end-users to your ecosystem. Compare this to a dApp or an appchain, where the customer acquisition focus is much simpler: focus on the end-users. Although we will most definitely see a multi-chain future. The majority of crypto users have shown that they don’t care about idealistic differentiators. They simply want to use the best product or the one that can make them the most money. The rise of new L1s has shown that we’re missing the point on what actually matters. We need a much stronger focus on building tangible, usable apps for everyday crypto users — instead of competing for the same existing market over and over again. Atoms and Bits In crypto, we often focus on bits but forget about atoms. The markets love bits-based companies when the macro environment is risk-on, and vice-versa when it’s risk-off. Despite the growth of blockchain technology in the past few years, the significant majority of crypto is still only focusing on bits. Sure there are projects such as Helium that have physical devices in their business model, but there aren’t many. I believe for crypto to reach $5 trillion in market cap during the next cycle, we need more focus on building atoms-based crypto businesses, ranging from a crypto-native point of sales system to mobile phones, and many more. The strongest tech company in the world is Apple. It’s both atoms and bits. With a flip of a switch, Apple decimated billions of dollars in value from Google and Meta advertising business. For crypto to truly thrive, the industry needs more companies that deal with atoms. Until next time, Marco M. If you enjoy this piece, please consider subscribing below to get it in your inbox early! Disclaimer, NFA, all that legal stuff: All the information presented on this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice. Also Published .