Aptos (APT-USD) is the most talked-about network in crypto this week. The project just had its initial launch — an event that has been hyped up for a while now. Yet, there have been several snags dragging Aptos sentiment down. Through all of this, developers assert that the project is still poised to lead the class of layer-1 networks. A coming non-fungible token (NFT) market should help it prove itself.
Leading up to Aptos’ launch earlier in the week, crypto investors were excited by the prospects touted by Aptos Labs. After all, the project’s origins can be traced all the way to Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), where co-founders Avery Ching and Mo Shaikh were working. The pair were leaders of the company’s Novi project. At the time, Meta was working diligently on a suite of crypto products. These include the Novi wallet and a stablecoin called Diem. Earlier this year, both of these projects folded, and their assets were sold off.
Ching and Shaikh, who worked extensively on the Diem blockchain, took it upon themselves to start Aptos Labs and continue the work done up to that point. Using the open-source Diem chain, the two lead a development team looking to make a highly scalable layer-1 network. Aptos even comes complete with its own programming language, called Move.
The Aptos network is the result of this long-standing effort by Meta to break into the crypto world, and Shaikh and Chings’ efforts afterward to keep the blockchain alive. Now, the developers promise a chain capable of processing over 130,000 transactions per second (TPS). In its first week, things aren’t going well. But, the company promises that things will turn out very soon.
Aptos NFT Market Seeks to Assuage APT Crypto Skeptics
When Aptos launched on Tuesday, it did so with plenty of drama to spare. The network is stirring up chatter for severely underperforming, and some controversy surrounding its airdrop of APT crypto. Shaikh is trying to quell some of this bad press by announcing a coming NFT marketplace.
NFTs are a hot item in crypto, and they have remained as such even during the market’s volatile state. Aptos developers betting on the success of its NFT marketplaces. They are also betting that such products will help silence doubters of Aptos’ scalability claims.
In the days since its rollout, Aptos is seeing only about four TPS, a mere fraction of a percent of the 130,000 TPS promised ahead of launch. This has spawned a lot of worry over whether the network can live up to its promises. To that end, Shaikh is defending the project, saying that the low TPS can be attributed to the lack of projects on the brand-new network. He says that with increasing uses, the network will be able to show its capabilities.
That test will come sooner rather than later, as NFT marketplaces begin cropping up on the nascent project. The Topaz marketplace, one of the first NFT platforms on Aptos, already has 3,700 NFTs ready to purchase. As users flock to these NFTs, we will be able to see if Aptos is really capable of handling as many transactions as a network like Solana (SOL-USD).
Until then, though, the network also has other press battles to fight. For example, Aptos Labs is facing significant controversy already as it airdropped nearly half of the total APT crypto supply to its own developers and early investors like FTX and Andreessen Horowitz.
On the date of publication, Brenden Rearick did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
