Entering the Aptos ecosystem just got easier with credit and mobile payments — directly in Petra wallet!<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*ZF4vTkYa70jVHlV97T0LyQ.png">Here’s why it matters:<ul><li>Now users can buy APT with major credit and debit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Web3 onboarding is easier than ever for transactions across the world.</li></ul>Aptos Labs and MoonPay deliver an easy blockchain onboarding to help bring billions of people into web3. That means you can now use Apple Pay to buy APT — no biggie!Petra, the wallet from Aptos Labs, now features an easy-to-use fiat on-ramp that makes exchanging value within the Aptos ecosystem super simple. The partnership kicked off earlier this month when APT became available on MoonPay.The MoonPay fiat on-ramp integration into Petra was the natural next step in efforts to level up the web3 user experience. The fiat on-ramp provides effortless onboarding into the Aptos network, for either those new to web3 or early adopters. Users can buy APT using any major payment method, including Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay.With hundreds of thousands of users across MoonPay and Petra, this is one of the largest network adoption initiatives we’ve collaborated on! We’re so excited to bring both Petra and MoonPay communities the best web3 onboarding experience on Aptos!“MoonPay’s mission is to onboard the world to web3. Part of how we look to encourage widespread adoption is by simplifying the user experience,” said Bree Blazak, Vice President, Global Sales at MoonPay. “Integrating with the growing Aptos ecosystem, first through the Petra wallet, is another step to deliver on our mission, especially as the blockchain expands and its usage grows.”“Using blockchain-based technology can be complex, frustrating and slow. Lack of usability is one of the biggest barriers of widestream adoption,” said Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs. “Through our integration with MoonPay, we are creating a seamless and enjoyable experience for Petra users as they navigate the Aptos blockchain.”For real-time updates on MoonPay’s integration with the Aptos ecosystem, follow along via Aptos’ social channels: <a href="https://twitter.com/AptosLabs">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://discord.com/invite/aptoslabs">Discord</a>, <a href="https://forum.aptoslabs.com/">Discussion Forum</a>.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=65ddbd1c390a" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Aptos Labs and MoonPay join forces for new Petra wallet fiat on-ramp

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/WGVDpzaBX1Y_J9aOkJK7COB8qUk=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/ESTD3FMYGNFKHMMXPGMVLF5IXM.jpg" alt="ESTD3FMYGNFKHMMXPGMVLF5IXM.jpg">The exchange also said prominent crypto companies including Aptos Labs and Jump Crypto joined its industry restructuring initiative.

Crypto Exchange Binance Allocates Another $1B for Its Customer Support Fund

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/GzHyLdg3YLE5TYjwViEsiyalERI=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/FU36HQ5QQZEI7FCZNR3SAX7NKI.jpg" alt="FU36HQ5QQZEI7FCZNR3SAX7NKI.jpg">Several prominent crypto companies including Aptos Labs and Jump Crypto will contribute $50 million to the planned $1 billion Industry Recovery Initiative (IRI).

Jump Crypto, Aptos Labs Commit to Binance-Led $1B Recovery Fund

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/7_lv0WgRJFhjUnlWbGK5JfsYhyk=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/KCUS3RQDPRFJ5AFEA62VATWLGM.jpg" alt="KCUS3RQDPRFJ5AFEA62VATWLGM.jpg">The competitor to the Aptos blockchain said that developers can continue to use its devnet.

Sui Network, a New Blockchain From Ex-Meta Employees, Launches Its Testnet

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*dMGtWf_eWR0Yed43X-14uQ.png">We’re celebrating exciting news fresh off the stage at Token 2049!ICYMI: Aptos Labs CEO Mo Shaikh and Google Cloud Web3 BD Lead Simon Baksys discussed “Why Web3 Infrastructure is Epic and Powerful”.Speaking of epic, they announced that Google Cloud and Aptos Labs are expanding their partnership again, revealing that Google Cloud is running a validator on Aptos.The partnership also consists of Aptos choosing Google Cloud as the infrastructure provider of choice for the Aptos ecosystem, an accelerator program with the Aptos Foundation focused on supporting Web3 startups and builders on Aptos, and a developer hackathon building on Aptos.Three weeks post Aptos’<a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/aptos-autumn-is-here-92a8d904eb49"> Mainnet launch</a>, a partnership with Google Cloud speaks volumes to what <a href="https://twitter.com/moshaikhs/status/1585795564490280960">the network and ecosystem have demonstrated</a> in such a short time.We believe that a simpler, more relevant, and overall better user experience is key to broad web3 adoption. This is why Aptos created a developer-first building experience for innovators to efficiently and enjoyably develop friendly, consumer-ready applications. We are excited to work with Google Cloud to help grow our community and bring our mission to life. And it’s just the beginning.“Google Cloud has been working with Aptos since its inception, and we continue to be impressed by their innovation, from developing mainnet so quickly to their laser-focus on improving user experience. We’re looking forward to continuing to help Aptos build out its vision and capabilities,” shared Richard Widmann, head of Strategy, Digital Assets, Google Cloud.Let’s break down the pieces of this exciting partnership announcement.<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*lxNyD9baq0yMiAcPIdmC-w.jpeg"><h3>Google Cloud is running a validator on Aptos</h3>As an Aptos mainnet launch partner, Google Cloud is validating and participating in the Aptos network with a block-producing node.<h3>Building on Google Cloud</h3>As part of the partnership, Aptos Labs will be using Google Cloud for its internal development operations, and collaborating with Google Cloud to help make Google Cloud the preferred place to run Aptos nodes and decentralized applications (dApps) for the developer community.<h3>The Aptos Foundation is launching an accelerator program to support Web3 entrepreneurs and builders.</h3>When it first launched, the <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/announcing-the-aptos-grant-program-7654b92e22a1">Aptos Foundation Grant Program</a> received an overwhelming amount of interest and we’ve witnessed an abundance of ingenuity from the Aptos community. To further support Web3 entrepreneurs and developers, Aptos Foundation and Google Cloud are launching an accelerator program with APT and Google Cloud credits.<h3>Aptos blockchain data will be indexed and available in BigQuery</h3>As part of the partnership, Google Cloud will index the Aptos chain and provide this data to developers via BigQuery. This can further foster builder-friendly development for the Aptos ecosystem projects on Google Cloud.<h3>Aptos and Google Cloud will co-host hackathon and other events globally</h3>This hackathon is aimed at helping decentralized developer communities come together to explore ideas, collaborate, and tackle shared challenges. We plan to invite the Google developer community and the broader Aptos community to hack on Aptos alongside Google and Aptos engineers and deploy projects aimed at scaling swiftly and globally. Like our co-hosted events at Bitcoin, Consensus, and Converge this year, we’ll continue to engage our joint communities at happy hours and panels in the future.You’ve made it to the end of this post, so we’ll say it again for good measure: we are thrilled about this partnership! To celebrate with us, watch the recording of the live announcement at Token 2049 <a href="https://youtu.be/pCRZs7gAnF8">here</a>. Follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/AptosLabs">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Aptos_Network">stay tuned</a> for the latest updates on the Google Cloud x Aptos partnership.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=a9c8ba51c500" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr><a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/aptos-and-google-cloud-partner-to-support-web3-builders-a9c8ba51c500">Aptos and Google Cloud partner to support Web3 builders</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs">Aptos</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Aptos and Google Cloud partner to support Web3 builders

Say hello to the next generation of games on Aptos!<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*nJOhXgupONs0yMOh">Aptos is excited to announce our partnership with <a href="https://www.npixel.co.kr/">NPIXEL</a>, a premier Korean Triple-A gaming studio. We are honored to be the new Web3 home for their METAPIXEL gaming universe!This marks Aptos’ next major step into gaming. Let’s dive into what inspired us to kick off this industry-leading journey with NPIXEL and how we are creating the best experience for gamers.Redefine Web3 Gamer ExperienceToday gamers and developers alike battle a multi-asset world where the gaming experience and token storage feel like miles away — and are bogged down by slow and often unsafe networks. It’s just not easy to build and play games.Here’s how Aptos closes that gap:<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*MZER7VdD3_pq0Sf58eDQHg.png">1. Lowest-latency production blockchain // Fast execution for a smooth gaming experience.On mainnet today, Aptos has the lowest-latency production blockchain, making Aptos one of the highest performing networks for gaming. This creates a quick and responsive in-game experience.2. Technical safeguards // Safer assets for gamers.Only Aptos has user-focused safeguards that are engineered to protect users at the blockchain layer, such as key rotation, account recovery, and transaction pre-execution. Aptos gaming assets are safe as a result.3. High fidelity // Seamless game developer experience.In-game assets can be represented entirely on the Aptos blockchain without the need for additional metadata stored off-chain. That means more time building games instead of managing assets across tech stacks.4. Asset Portability // Reuse and transfer assets between platforms and games.Acquired assets are easily represented within Aptos and allow gamers to gain access to the broader Aptos ecosystem for seamless interoperability across platforms.We’re kicking off this partnership with an Aptos x NPIXEL event alongside the GSTAR conference in Busan this week with Aptos Dev Hub Korea, a community-run organization focused on supporting Aptos game developers. NPIXEL and Aptos are bringing together the builders who will take Web3 gaming to the next level.Bringing Gaming to New HeightsNPIXEL is best known for its first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Gran Saga, which had quickly became one of the top performing game apps on the Apple App store in Korea (with the record of 4 million downloads since its first launch in Korea and Japan). Now that they’ve taken Korea by storm, NPIXEL aims to expand its user base across the Southeast with Gran Saga’s upcoming global release later this year.With millions of gamers in the NPIXEL community today, their entry into Web3 with Aptos has the potential to take the global Web3 movement to new heights.Together, we’ve got some exciting goals to make METAPIXEL the premier Web3 gaming-verse:<ul><li>Triple-A game IP (original IP)</li><li>True ownership of game assets</li><li>Free-to-own gaming model</li><li>GameFi to open up a new economy for gamers</li></ul>It’s going to be game on in the race to elevate Web3 gaming experiences worldwide, and Aptos and NPIXEL are here to lead the charge!<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=9c8e5d9a454a" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr><a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/web3-gaming-with-aptos-x-npixel-9c8e5d9a454a">Web3 Gaming with Aptos x NPIXEL</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs">Aptos</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Web3 Gaming with Aptos x NPIXEL

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*dwGGBp4omoyFKd7ccI__sw.png"><a href="https://www.martianwallet.xyz/">martianwallet.xyz</a>This blog tries to explain how to mint NFTs on the Aptos devnet using Martian wallet. Aptos mainnet is coming soon!Martian is building various products for the Aptos ecosystem including Martian Wallet, which is available as a <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/martian-wallet/efbglgofoippbgcjepnhiblaibcnclgk">Google Chrome extension</a>.Check out our website for latest releases of the Martian Aptos Wallet : <a href="https://martianwallet.xyz/">https://martianwallet.xyz/</a>Please join our Discord here to stay updated: <a href="https://discord.gg/martian-wallet">https://discord.gg/martian-wallet</a><ol><li>Head to <a href="https://demo-nft.martianwallet.xyz/">https://demo-nft.martianwallet.xyz/</a></li><li>Connect your Martian wallet to the website by clicking on Connect Aptos Wallet.</li><li>Once you’re connected, you will see the “Simpler view”. This allows the user to quickly mint an NFT, without the need to create a collection before. You have an option to switch to “Advanced view” from a button in the top section. This gives more freedom to the user to create a collection and mint numerous NFTs to that collection.</li></ol><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Nr53OloTlY54enxHmIHm9A.png">Simpler view<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*y5jmQbw_WbwM7w3EqXpp2Q.png">Advanced view<h3>Simpler view</h3>Follow these steps in the Simpler view. You can switch between views using the button on the top right of the website.<h4>How to mint an NFT</h4><ol><li>To mint NFTs, Start by entering a Name of NFT. Be as creative as you can.</li><li>Enter the description for your NFT.</li><li>Provide the NFT image URL and check the preview. You can host your image anywhere on the internet and then enter the URL which points to the image file not any other website. You can check this by looking at the end of the URL, it should be .png or .jpg or .jpeg or .gif or .svg and other image file formats. If the preview shows your image, then you’re good.</li><li>Now click on “Create NFT”. (Make sure you have balance &gt;5000 test aptos coins in your wallet. You can Airdrop to add test coins to your wallet)</li><li>A new window pops up which will ask you to approve the transaction.</li><li>If the website displays “NFT Successfully created”, then you can check the minted NFT in your wallet’s NFT tab.</li><li>That’s it!</li></ol><h3>Advanced view</h3>Follow these steps in the Advanced view. You can switch between views using the button on the top right of the website.<h4>How to create NFT collections</h4><ol><li>First, Let’s create an NFT collection for your account. Start by entering a Name of your collection. Enter the name carefully as it is case sensitive.</li><li>Enter the description for your collection.</li><li>Provide the NFT collection URL which is the URL of your collection official website.</li><li>Click on “Create NFT Collection”. (Make sure you have balance &gt;3500 test aptos coins in your wallet. You can Airdrop to add test coins to your wallet)</li><li>A new window pops up which will ask you to approve the transaction.</li><li>If the website displays “Collection Successfully created”, then you can go ahead and mint NFTs into that collection.</li></ol><h4>How to mint an NFT in the collection</h4><ol><li>To mint NFTs, Start by entering a Name of NFT. Be as creative as you can.</li><li>Enter the description for your NFT.</li><li>Enter the NFT collection name in which you want to mint the NFT. Make sure you enter the correct and Exact collection name as it is case sensitive.</li><li>Provide the NFT image URL and check the preview. You can host your image anywhere on the internet and then enter the URL which points to the image file not any other website. You can check this by looking at the end of the URL, it should be .png or .jpg or .jpeg or .gif or .svg and other image file formats.</li><li>Now click on “Create NFT”. (Make sure you have balance &gt;3500 test aptos coins in your wallet. You can Airdrop to add test coins to your wallet)</li><li>A new window pops up which will ask you to approve the transaction.</li><li>If the website displays “NFT Successfully created”, then you can check the minted NFT in your wallet’s NFT tab.</li><li>That’s it!</li></ol><h3>FAQ</h3><h4>Where do I upload my image for the NFT?</h4>Uploading an image directly on-chain or to the Martian backend is not enabled. This will be available as soon as Aptos moves to Mainnet. For now, you can upload your image to any cloud of your choice and get a shareable image URL.<h4>After minting the NFT, the image on the wallet is broken</h4>This happens when an incorrect image URL is provided for the NFT URL field. Make sure that your URL contains .png or .jpg or .jpeg or .gif or .svg. You should verify that your image is displaying correctly in the image preview box.<h4>Is multi-language support available?</h4>Multiple languages are not supported right now. You will need to upload all the NFT details using an English keyboard. We are working on this and will announce the completion of this in Discord.<h4>Mint was successful but image is not showing on the wallet</h4>Please check your wallet address in the explorer (<a href="https://explorer.devnet.aptos.dev/account/0xc6cc9d263db96a44e88b0ee9655d07a1b16c316b76637ba86085355c17e30886">https://explorer.devnet.aptos.dev/account/</a>&lt;address&gt;) and/ or share it with us on our Discord. We’ll be happy to help you and clear any doubts. You can copy your address by clicking on the address displayed on the website.As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions or suggestions! We love hearing from our community!Liked the article? Send us some love by following us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/Martian_DAO_">here</a> and joining our Discord <a href="https://discord.gg/martian-wallet">here</a>.Stay tuned for more updates!Best,Martian team<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=a3cde39c0764" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Mint NFTs on Aptos using Martian wallet

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*fqTnv8UuU-U9easAiPgAGw.png">Curiosity by MartianIn this tutorial, we will walk you through building an NFT marketplace move module (a Move module is an equivalent of a smart contract, in the blockchain parlance). We will also use the newly launched aptos CLI for compiling and deploying the module on the Aptos Devnet.Martian is building various products for the Aptos ecosystem including Martian Wallet, which will be available as a Chrome extension within a week. We’re also building an NFT Marketplace called Curiosity which would use the Move module explained here and it would be fully compatible with our browser extension wallet. Please join our Discord here to stay updated: <a href="https://discord.gg/martian-wallet">https://discord.gg/martian-wallet</a>Check out our website for latest releases of the Martian Aptos Wallet : <a href="https://martianwallet.xyz/">https://martianwallet.xyz/</a>This NFT Marketplace Move module supports the following high-level features:<ol><li>It will enable a seller to list her NFT for sale at a fixed price (denominated in Aptos TestCoin).</li><li>A buyer can then send Aptos TestCoins worth the price of the NFT to the seller through the NFT Marketplace Move module functions and the seller’s NFT would be transferred to the buyer’s account.</li></ol>The code and starter pack is available on our github <a href="https://github.com/martian-dao/aptos-nft-marketplace">here</a>. However, please keep in mind that the Aptos core code changes every week and this code could become incompatible because of these changes. Informing us on our Discord <a href="https://discord.gg/GaB7BpgX7h">here</a> could be the best way to handle such issues.The rest of the article is organized in the following sections:<ol><li>Setting up Aptos core and creating a local build environment</li><li>Writing the NFT Marketplace Move module (crux of this article)</li><li>Testing the Move module</li><li>Using aptos CLI for compiling and deploying the move module on devnet</li></ol><h4>Setting up the local build environment</h4>Go to the directory of your choice and run the following:<pre>git clone <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core.git">https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core.git</a></pre>This clones the Aptos core repo locally in your system. It’s important to do so as many dependencies of Move modules like aptos-vm need to be installed locally (as of now).Next, clone the starter pack from our official Github.<pre>git clone <a href="https://github.com/martian-dao/aptos-nft-marketplace.git">https://github.com/martian-dao/aptos-nft-marketplace.git</a> cd aptos-nft-marketplace</pre>Now, you’ll need to make a few changes to the Cargo.toml and Move.toml files. Add the local path to aptos-vm and aptos-workspace-hack in Cargo.toml. Both these repos are inside the aptos-core directory that we cloned in the first step. Similarly, add the path to aptos-framework in Move.toml.<h4>Writing the move module</h4>The overall module code can be found <a href="https://github.com/martian-dao/aptos-nft-marketplace/blob/main/sources/NFTMarketplace.move">here</a>. We’ll explain parts of the code in the snippets below. Please refer to Magnum’s blog series <a href="https://magnum6.substack.com/">here</a> for a deeper understanding of Move.We have used Table, Token, and TestCoin from the AptosFramework for building our marketplace.<blockquote>Core idea of NFT sale: Token is withdrawn from a seller when she lists it on the marketplace. This withdrawn token is added to a table of all tokens on sale. After a buyer successfully pays the seller (price of the NFT) and the marketOwner (listing_fee), then the token is deposited in the buyer’s account closing the string of all transactions.</blockquote>Data Structures used in the Marketplace:<ul><li>MarketItem: Contains Seller address, NFT object for sale (Token), and Price set by the seller.</li></ul><pre>struct MarketItem has key, store { seller: address, token: Token, price: u64 }</pre><ul><li>Market: Contains a Table of all MarketItems on sale and the listing_fee charged by the market on every sale.</li></ul><pre>struct Market has key { market_items: Table&lt;ID, MarketItem&gt;, listing_fee: u64, }</pre>Supported functions:<ul><li>initMarket: initializes the NFT marketplace</li></ul><pre>public(script) fun init_market_script(market_owner: &amp;signer, listing_fee: u64) {</pre><pre>let market_items = Table::new&lt;ID, MarketItem&gt;();</pre><pre>move_to&lt;Market&gt;(market_owner, Market {market_items, listing_fee})</pre><pre>}</pre><ul><li>listTokenForSale: lists your NFT for sale</li></ul><pre>public(script) fun list_token_for_sale_script(</pre><pre>seller: &amp;signer,</pre><pre>creator: address,</pre><pre>token_creation_num: u64,</pre><pre>price: u64,</pre><pre>market_owner_addr: address,</pre><pre>) acquires Market {</pre><pre>let token_id = GUID::create_id(creator, token_creation_num);</pre><pre>list_token_for_sale(seller, &amp;token_id, price, market_owner_addr);</pre><pre>}</pre><pre>public(script) fun list_token_for_sale(</pre><pre>seller: &amp;signer,</pre><pre>token_id: &amp;ID,</pre><pre>price: u64,</pre><pre>market_owner_addr: address,</pre><pre>) acquires Market {</pre><pre>let seller_addr = Signer::address_of(seller);</pre><pre>let token = Token::withdraw_token(seller, token_id, 1);</pre><pre>let token_id = *Token::token_id(&amp;token);</pre><pre>let market_items = &amp;mut borrow_global_mut&lt;Market&gt;(market_owner_addr).market_items;</pre><pre>Table::add(market_items, &amp;token_id, MarketItem {seller: seller_addr, token: token, price: price})</pre><pre>}</pre><ul><li>buyToken: buys you the said NFT</li></ul><pre>public(script) fun buy_token_script(</pre><pre>buyer: &amp;signer,</pre><pre>seller: address,</pre><pre>creator: address,</pre><pre>token_creation_num: u64,</pre><pre>market_owner_addr: address,</pre><pre>) acquires Market {</pre><pre>let token_id = GUID::create_id(creator, token_creation_num);</pre><pre>buy_token(buyer, seller, &amp;token_id, market_owner_addr);</pre><pre>}</pre><pre>public(script) fun buy_token(</pre><pre>buyer: &amp;signer,</pre><pre>seller: address,</pre><pre>token_id: &amp;ID,</pre><pre>market_owner_addr: address,</pre><pre>) acquires Market {</pre><pre>let listing_fee = borrow_global&lt;Market&gt;(market_owner_addr).listing_fee;</pre><pre>let buyer_addr = Signer::address_of(buyer);</pre><pre>assert!(buyer_addr != seller, ERROR_INVALID_BUYER);</pre><pre>let market_items = &amp;mut borrow_global_mut&lt;Market&gt;(market_owner_addr).market_items;</pre><pre>let market_item = Table::borrow(market_items, token_id);</pre><pre>let price = market_item.price;</pre><pre>TestCoin::transfer(buyer, seller, price);</pre><pre>TestCoin::transfer(buyer, market_owner_addr, listing_fee);</pre><pre>let market_item = Table::remove(market_items, token_id);</pre><pre>let MarketItem{ seller: _, token: token, price: _,} = market_item;</pre><pre>Token::deposit_token(buyer, token)</pre><pre>}</pre>Accounts used:<ul><li>Seller: account that is trying to sell their NFT</li><li>Buyer: account that is trying to buy an NFT</li><li>MarketOwner: account which holds all the NFT marketplace related data and charges a listing fee on all NFTs that are sold.</li></ul><h4>Testing the move module</h4>We test our module for change in ownership of the Token after listing it and after the buyer pays the right amount of TestCoins. The test command for running the tests is mentioned in the next section.<pre>#[test(market_owner = @0x1, seller = @0x2, buyer = @CoreResources)]</pre><pre>public(script) fun list_buy_test(market_owner: signer, seller: signer, buyer: signer) acquires Market {</pre><pre>let market_owner_addr = Signer::address_of(&amp;market_owner);</pre><pre>let seller_addr = Signer::address_of(&amp;seller);</pre><pre>let buyer_addr = Signer::address_of(&amp;buyer);</pre><pre>init_market_script(&amp;market_owner, 1);</pre><pre>let token_id = create_token(&amp;seller, 1);</pre><pre>TestCoin::initialize(&amp;buyer, 1000000);</pre><pre>TestCoin::register(&amp;market_owner);</pre><pre>TestCoin::register(&amp;seller);</pre><pre>let amount = 1000;</pre><pre>TestCoin::mint_internal(&amp;buyer, buyer_addr, amount);</pre><pre>list_token_for_sale(&amp;seller, &amp;token_id, 10, market_owner_addr);</pre><pre>buy_token(&amp;buyer, seller_addr, &amp;token_id, market_owner_addr);</pre><pre>}</pre><h4>Compile and deploy the move module</h4>We will use the aptos CLI for this step. The Aptos CLI is a slick tool that resembles hardhat on ethereum but feels smoother to use!First, install aptos CLI.<pre>cargo install --git <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core.git">https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core.git</a> aptos</pre>Initialize an account for compiling and deployment.<pre>aptos init</pre>Compile:<pre>aptos move compile --package-dir aptos-nft-marketplace</pre>Test:<pre>aptos move test --package-dir aptos-nft-marketplace</pre>Deploy:<pre>aptos move publish --package-dir apos-nft-marketplace --named-addresses NFTMarketplace=default</pre>Open the Aptos Devnet explorer to verify if your move module has been published. It should look something like <a href="https://explorer.devnet.aptos.dev/account/5E062A84D1EDC303192FDE029B8E00BEB14F76553167173720CD4E85DFD645E7">this</a>.As next steps, we’re adding auction mechanisms for selling NFTs into this basic module. Keep a lookout for our wallet extension and Curiosity (NFT Marketplace) app to launch very soon in the next week.Liked the article? Send us some love by following us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/Martian_DAO_">here</a> and joining our Discord <a href="https://discord.gg/martian-wallet">here</a>.Best,Martian team<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=8354d192eec7" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Building an NFT Marketplace on Aptos

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*-optjUXCUbwz64oD">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@3dparadise?utm_source=medium&amp;utm_medium=referral">Braňo</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&amp;utm_medium=referral">Unsplash</a>This blog tries to explain the concept of accounts in Aptos.Martian is building various products for the Aptos ecosystem including Martian Wallet, which will be available as a Chrome extension within a week. Please join our Discord here to stay updated: <a href="https://discord.gg/martian-wallet">https://discord.gg/martian-wallet</a>Check out our website for latest releases of the Martian Aptos Wallet : <a href="https://martianwallet.xyz/">https://martianwallet.xyz/</a><h3>What is an account?</h3>To quote the documentation:<blockquote>An account represents a resource on the Aptos Blockchain that can send transactions. Each account is identified by a particular 16-byte account address and is a container for Move modules and Move resources.</blockquote>This means that an account in the Aptos blockchain is a container for resources and has some functionalities which allow it to perform some actions on the blockchain like sending your resource to someone else. The account address represents an account much like your email address represents your email account and enables others to reach out to you at your address.<h4>What about public and private keys?</h4>Like any other blockchain, private keys are used to sign the transactions. Instead of the public key representing the account, we use addresses as described above. The reason for this will be apparent in the authentication key rotation section.<h4>What is an authentication (auth) key?</h4>Aptos blockchain supports both single-signer and multi-signer accounts. Multi-signer or multi-sig account, much like a joint account in banks, is a single account representing multiple parties. All the transactions which take place, need signatures from all the parties involved.How would you represent a multi-sig account? This type of account doesn’t use a single (private key, public key) keypair, like single-signer accounts but uses the keypairs of all the accounts that are part of the multi-sig. So, there is no single public key representing this account. We need a key that represents this account such that it encapsulates the public keys of all the users in the multi-sig account. Authentication keys are a way of representing all the users in the multi-sig account. In a nutshell, auth keys are created by hashing the concatenation of all the public keys of the users involved. For details, you can refer to the <a href="https://aptos.dev/basics/basics-accounts#multisigner-authentication">official documentation</a>.Authentication keys exist even for single-signer accounts. They are a little redundant because they are encapsulating only one public key to represent the account, a public key can do the same job. This is done to have consistency over all types of accounts. We can say that an auth key is a generalized public representation of a private key.<h4>Have you ever felt like your passwords were compromised?</h4>Passwords can be compromised for a variety of reasons. So can your private keys. For example, if you put your private key in third-party storage space and a hack occurs on the third party, chances are that your information (including your private key) was compromised.What will you do in such a situation? When dealing with usernames and passwords, we can change our passwords. Some people do it periodically (which is a good practice) to ensure the safety of all their accounts. In the case of blockchains, it is not so straightforward. You cannot just change your private key, without changing your public key. They come in a pair. You can create a new account with a fresh pair of public and private keys and transfer all your assets to this account. Along with all the hassle you go through in transferring your assets, others in the blockchain will now need to change your contact details with your new public key.Aptos supports key rotation, meaning that you can change your private and public keys but wouldn’t the problem of updating your contact information still persist? Account address comes to the rescue. Your address is not changed on the key rotation and will still be representing your account. Others can still use your address to send you assets. What about the authentication key, doesn’t it also represent your account? As we saw, auth keys are tied to the public keys, so they need to change when the public keys are changed. Whereas, addresses do not have this binding and are never changed, so they continue to represent your account.Note: By design, on construction address is kept to be the same as authentication (at the time of writing this blog). This doesn’t mean that there is a dependency between the two, it’s only the initialization.<h3>Authentication key rotation</h3>The key rotation in Aptos is called authentication key rotation. This is because the auth key is a public representation of your private-public key and so, the key rotation in Aptos is signified by authentication key rotation.<h4>A closer look</h4><a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core/blob/1ef2ee642e523f67238a10398bbff6c211ab33c2/aptos-move/framework/aptos-framework/sources/Account.move">Account.move</a> module contains all the functions related to an account in Aptos including rotate_authentication_keys(account, new_auth_keys). In a nutshell, this function updates the auth key of the account with the new auth key.<pre>account_resource.authentication_key = new_auth_key;</pre>We can write a simple function which calls this API using the Aptos’ Typescript SDK<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fcarbon.now.sh%2Fembed%3Fbg%3Drgba%2528255%252C255%252C255%252C1%2529%26t%3Done-light%26wt%3Dnone%26l%3Djavascript%26width%3D680%26ds%3Dtrue%26dsyoff%3D20px%26dsblur%3D68px%26wc%3Dtrue%26wa%3Dtrue%26pv%3D0px%26ph%3D0px%26ln%3Dfalse%26fl%3D1%26fm%3DHack%26fs%3D14px%26lh%3D133%2525%26si%3Dfalse%26es%3D2x%26wm%3Dfalse%26code%3Dasync%252520function%252520rotateAuthKey%2528originalAccount%25253A%252520Account%25252C%252520newAuthKey%25253A%252520string%2529%252520%25257B%25250A%252520%252520const%252520payload%25253A%252520%25257B%252520function%25253A%252520string%25253B%252520arguments%25253A%252520string%25255B%25255D%25253B%252520type%25253A%252520string%25253B%252520type_arguments%25253A%252520any%25255B%25255D%252520%25257D%252520%25253D%252520%25257B%25250A%252520%252520%252520%252520type%25253A%252520%252522script_function_payload%252522%25252C%25250A%252520%252520%252520%252520function%25253A%252520%2525220x1%25253A%25253AAccount%25253A%25253Arotate_authentication_key%252522%25252C%25250A%252520%252520%252520%252520type_arguments%25253A%252520%25255B%25255D%25252C%25250A%252520%252520%252520%252520arguments%25253A%252520%25255B%25250A%252520%252520%252520%252520%252520%252520newAuthKey%25252C%25250A%252520%252520%252520%252520%25255D%25250A%252520%252520%25257D%25250A%252520%252520const%252520txnRequest%252520%25253D%252520await%252520this.generateTransaction%2528originalAccount.address%2528%2529%25252C%252520payload%2529%25253B%25250A%252520%252520const%252520signedTxn%252520%25253D%252520await%252520this.signTransaction%2528originalAccount%25252C%252520txnRequest%2529%25253B%25250A%252520%252520const%252520res%252520%25253D%252520await%252520this.submitTransaction%2528originalAccount%25252C%252520signedTxn%2529%25253B%25250A%252520%252520return%252520res%25255B%252522hash%252522%25255D.toString%2528%2529%25253B%25250A%25257D&amp;display_name=Carbon&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fcarbon.now.sh%2F%3Fbg%3Drgba%252528255%25252C255%25252C255%25252C1%252529%26t%3Done-light%26wt%3Dnone%26l%3Djavascript%26width%3D680%26ds%3Dtrue%26dsyoff%3D20px%26dsblur%3D68px%26wc%3Dtrue%26wa%3Dtrue%26pv%3D0px%26ph%3D0px%26ln%3Dfalse%26fl%3D1%26fm%3DHack%26fs%3D14px%26lh%3D133%252525%26si%3Dfalse%26es%3D2x%26wm%3Dfalse%26code%3Dasync%25252520function%25252520rotateAuthKey%252528originalAccount%2525253A%25252520Account%2525252C%25252520newAuthKey%2525253A%25252520string%252529%25252520%2525257B%2525250A%25252520%25252520const%25252520payload%2525253A%25252520%2525257B%25252520function%2525253A%25252520string%2525253B%25252520arguments%2525253A%25252520string%2525255B%2525255D%2525253B%25252520type%2525253A%25252520string%2525253B%25252520type_arguments%2525253A%25252520any%2525255B%2525255D%25252520%2525257D%25252520%2525253D%25252520%2525257B%2525250A%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520type%2525253A%25252520%25252522script_function_payload%25252522%2525252C%2525250A%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520function%2525253A%25252520%252525220x1%2525253A%2525253AAccount%2525253A%2525253Arotate_authentication_key%25252522%2525252C%2525250A%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520type_arguments%2525253A%25252520%2525255B%2525255D%2525252C%2525250A%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520arguments%2525253A%25252520%2525255B%2525250A%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520newAuthKey%2525252C%2525250A%25252520%25252520%25252520%25252520%2525255D%2525250A%25252520%25252520%2525257D%2525250A%25252520%25252520const%25252520txnRequest%25252520%2525253D%25252520await%25252520this.generateTransaction%252528originalAccount.address%252528%252529%2525252C%25252520payload%252529%2525253B%2525250A%25252520%25252520const%25252520signedTxn%25252520%2525253D%25252520await%25252520this.signTransaction%252528originalAccount%2525252C%25252520txnRequest%252529%2525253B%2525250A%25252520%25252520const%25252520res%25252520%2525253D%25252520await%25252520this.submitTransaction%252528originalAccount%2525252C%25252520signedTxn%252529%2525253B%2525250A%25252520%25252520return%25252520res%2525255B%25252522hash%25252522%2525255D.toString%252528%252529%2525253B%2525250A%2525257D&image=https%3A%2F%2Fcarbon.now.sh%2Fstatic%2Fbrand%2Fbanner.png&amp;key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;scroll=auto&amp;schema=carbon" width="1024" height="480" frameborder="0"><a href="https://medium.com/media/fe0606ad3c625589df8b6b02290d5e8d/href">https://medium.com/media/fe0606ad3c625589df8b6b02290d5e8d/href</a></iframe>Steps to perform key rotation:<ol><li>Create a fresh account: A1</li><li>Airdrop some TestCoins (so that we can perform further transactions)</li><li>Create a fresh set of keys (private, public and auth keys): UA1 (Uninitialized account) — Store the keys locally</li><li>Rotate auth key of A1: auth key of UA1 will be the new auth key of A1</li><li>The account will be accessible using the new set of keys — the address will still be the same</li></ol>The expected behaviour is:<ol><li>Transfer coins to an account using the old private key of A1 to sign the transaction. This should fail.</li><li>Transfer coins to an account using the new private key of A1 to sign the transaction. This should succeed.</li><li>Transfer coins from an account to the address of A1. This should work.</li></ol><h3>Summary</h3>Let’s summarize. So we have four keys for each account.<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*XSPgcF0_jtzn8MPOLlSjkA.png"><ul><li>Key pair: Live as a pair and generated together. - Private key: used for signing the transaction. Needs to be hidden from everyone. - Public key: good for representing single-signer accounts, not-so-good for multi-sig accounts.</li><li>Authentication key: generalizes a way of representing both single-signer and multi-sig accounts. Cannot remain the same on key rotation because they are tied to the public keys.</li><li>Address: used to represent both single-signer and multi-sig accounts. Remain the same even after key rotation. Independent of all other keys.</li></ul>Disclaimer: The code or references may become outdated because the Aptos codebase is changing rapidly but the main takeaways are the core fundamentals on which Aptos’ accounts are built on<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=1ecc3f0b1213" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Accounts in Aptos

Assessing the interest of the Aptos community in having a wallet, our team has taken significant steps toward launching one of the first wallets for the Aptos blockchain. We have built our wallet using our version of the Aptos web3.js module which can be found <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@martiandao/aptos-web3.js">here</a>.Please join our Discord server here to stay updated on our progress: <a href="https://discord.gg/martian-wallet">https://discord.gg/martian-wallet</a>Check out our website for latest releases of the Martian Aptos Wallet : <a href="https://martianwallet.xyz/">https://martianwallet.xyz/</a><h3>Current Progress</h3>Watch a short NFT demo <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/a0103be3e6d1492dba36b3b1f87d9b2b">here</a>. Watch a short transaction demo <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/e19af2ceac164c108413c760ff0dd316%5C">here</a>.Here are some of the features that are up &amp; running:<ol><li>Create Wallet (creates a mnemonic secret recovery phrase using the BIP-39 protocol)</li><li>Import Wallet (imports wallet from secret recovery phrase)</li><li>Deposit (Airdrops Aptos Test Coins to wallet address)</li><li>Send (transfers specified amount to a specified receiver’s address)</li><li>Wallet history (all incoming/outgoing transactions to the wallet address)</li><li>NFT integration (displays NFTs in the wallet)</li></ol><h3>Roadmap &amp; Timeline</h3><ol><li>Chrome extension beta available on Chrome webstore: Apr 18, 2022</li><li>Developer Gitbook for integrating Martian Wallet in other Aptos dApps: Apr 18, 2022</li><li>Open source martian-wallet-adapter: Apr 18, 2022</li><li>Chrome extension with upgraded security features: Apr 25, 2022</li><li>iOS app beta: 1st week of May, 2022</li></ol><h3>How can you help?</h3><ol><li>Please join our Discord <a href="https://discord.gg/GaB7BpgX7h">here</a> and provide us feedback on the demo videos and beta version of the wallet when it’s launched.</li><li>Contribute to our open source npm module used for building the Martian Wallet.</li><li>Use our developer gitbook (due Apr 18, 2022) and start building more Aptos dApps using it. Raise issues on our Discord.</li></ol>Stay tuned for more updates!Best,Martian team<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=9699d666b26d" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Introducing Martian Wallet for Aptos

<h3>Basic Aptos wallet using aptos-web3.js</h3>We give a tutorial below for creating an Aptos wallet using our npm module:<h3>Setup &amp; Installation</h3>Create a new directory and cd to it. Execute the following commands through the command line:<pre>npm init -y npm install --save @martiandao/aptos-web3.js</pre>This adds the aptos-web3.js library in your node modules directory.<h3>Add wallet.js code</h3>Create wallet.js file in the working directory and paste the following code in it. The comments on the code are self-explanatory.<pre>const aptosWeb3 = require('@martiandao/aptos-web3.js'); </pre><pre>async function main() {</pre><pre>// create a connection with Aptos RPC node</pre><pre>client = new aptosWeb3.RestClient(aptosWeb3.TESTNET_URL); </pre><pre>// create new wallet (10 test tokens airdropped by default)</pre><pre>console.log("\n=== Wallet Creation ===");</pre><pre>const wallet = await aptosWeb3.createWallet();</pre><pre>const address = wallet['address key'];</pre><pre>const signingKey = wallet['code'];</pre><pre>console.log('Address:', address);</pre><pre>console.log('Secret recovery phrase:', signingKey); </pre><pre>// airdrop test tokens</pre><pre>console.log("\n=== Airdrop ===");</pre><pre>await aptosWeb3.airdrop(wallet['code'],5000);</pre><pre>console.log('Balance:', await aptosWeb3.getBalance(address)); </pre><pre>// transfer tokens</pre><pre>console.log("\n=== Transfer ===");</pre><pre>const receiver_address = "d27307a2ccf76b4694c2b8f2ddf032fd487dbc82cb32e8b264026a9aee14df8d";</pre><pre>await aptosWeb3.transfer(signingKey, receiver_address, 420);</pre><pre>console.log('Balance:', await aptosWeb3.getBalance(address)); </pre><pre>// get wallet transaction history</pre><pre>console.log("\n=== Wallet history ===");</pre><pre>const received_history = await aptosWeb3.getReceivedEvents(address);</pre><pre>const sent_history = await aptosWeb3.getSentEvents(address);</pre><pre>console.log('Received History:', received_history);</pre><pre>console.log('Sent History:', sent_history);</pre><pre>}</pre><pre>main()</pre><h3>Run the code</h3><pre>node wallet.js</pre>Further blogs in this series would include a Token example and an NFT example. Stay tuned!<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=1c4029962aeb" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Basic Aptos Wallet using aptos-web3.js

Our team started working on the Aptos core code a few weeks back.We’re happy to introduce our version of a web3.js library for the Aptos blockchain. We want to stress that this is not an official Aptos web3.js library but our attempt to seed something for the Aptos community to help other newcomers in their development pursuit. Aptos also maintains a TS/JS SDK which can be found <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core/tree/main/ecosystem/typescript/sdk/">here</a>.The npm module can be found <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@martiandao/aptos-web3.js">here</a>. The github repo of the module can be found <a href="https://github.com/martian-dao/aptos-web3.js">here</a>. We look forward to any inputs and will try to address issues quickly.<h3>Supported functions</h3><ol><li>createWallet: create a new wallet</li><li>importWallet: import an existing wallet</li><li>airdrop: airdrop test coins into an account</li><li>getBalance: get the balance of an account</li><li>transfer: transfer coins from one account to another</li><li>getSentEvents: get Sent events of an account</li><li>getReceivedEvents: get Received events of an account</li><li>createNFTCollection: create an NFT collection</li><li>createNFT: create an NFT</li><li>offerNFT: offer an NFT to a receiver</li><li>claimNFT: claim an NFT offered by a sender</li><li>cancelNFTOffer: cancel an outgoing NFT offer</li></ol>We’re also launching a series of tutorials to show how our aptos-web3.js library can be used for setting up a basic wallet, transferring tokens, and minting NFTs. Stay tuned!Best,Martian DAO team<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=da665f48a686" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Introducing @martiandao/aptos-web3.js

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*aR8If9MygnEGhWHOGwqswA.png">The Aptos ecosystem is currently booming, new apps keep appearing in an unending stream, and there are numerous NFT projects by the day.However, NFT marketplaces are manually reviewing projects and manually deploying smart contracts.It’s very time-consuming and labor-consuming considering all the flux of NFTs projects rushing to build on Aptos right now and in the future.At present, the launchpad function of other exchanges is build in the way that the marketplace side helps the NFT project side deploy the contract, process the NFT assets, and then pass in hundreds or thousands of whitelists into the contract in accordance with the project side requirements, followed by manually setting different mint prices, and mint timeframe.The mint sequence number is not random which means it increases from 0 in sequence. This method does have vulnerabilities as the mint can easily be manipulated by insiders (the Team) in order to mint or reserve Rare NFTs.<h4>There are also various other problems:</h4><ol><li>A new contract needs to be deployed each time to meet the NFT project party criteria. Project parties have different ways of shaping their communities therefore the marketplace might need to modify the smart contract for each listing</li><li>Now let’s talk about the hundreds or thousands of whitelists passed into the smart contract. Although the Aptos gas cost is not very expensive, a few APTs are still required for thousands of Whitelists.</li><li>As of now there is just one whitelist in the whitelist approach. It does not allow self-configured multi-level pricing discount techniques like OG / WL1 / WL2 / WLn. Different mint values could also be established for each level, and each list could also restrict the total quantity allowed to be minted at once.</li><li>The NFT mint method adopts the method of incrementing the serial number from 0, which also might lead to some people with bad intentions exploiting or front running the mint to catch Rare NFTs</li></ol><h4>Solutions:</h4>To solve these problems, It’s Rare now provides a fully automated launchpad tool. NFT project parties can independently create customized Launchpad functions from Its Rare within a few clicks.According to this tutorial, no one needs help to operate on the launchpad.Below we will elaborates a few functions provided:<blockquote>1. Create launchpad directly from the webpage</blockquote><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*LkooOva1tTWVDMLV">New Launchpad interface<blockquote>2. NFT Collection CID Prefix Links</blockquote><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*6lDlPkXDSeUXEdUr">Upload collection images interfacesThe Upload phase is also very easy to set up. The only major requirement that NFT projects need to do is to have a proper design of their NFT collection, then upload and store the collection jpg or png files as well as the collection metadata (if the collection has it) in <a href="https://nft.storage">NFT.Storage</a> (free upload).Furthermore process with the upload and copy/paste the generated link in It’s Rare CID Prefix launchpad form field.<h4>There are many other tools on the internet for NFT collection images hosting (<a href="https://www.pinata.cloud">Pinata.cloud</a> , <a href="https://nft.storage">NFT.storage</a>) etc…</h4><blockquote>3. Supports customized multi-level discounts (Pricing/WL):</blockquote>Creating a set of customized whitelist has never been easy, just hit the “Add” button to create as many whitelist as you need for your NFT mint. there is also an option for editing whitelist names. As well as uploading the wallet addresses from an excel file. Below we’ll do a little breakdown.<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*rsj51QIMHvmyRqyY">Mint configuration (WL/Public sale/ Time/WL address upload)OG whitelists: Each whitelist can for example mint a maximum limit of 5 whitelists mint or 3 or simply with no limit. The maximum supply to be minted for the OG round can also be configured according to the creator’s liking for example it could be 1k, 2k etc. The start time is for example from 1 am to 3am.WL1: 1,000 whitelists. Each whitelist has a maximum of 2 WL1 mint. This round can have a maximum of 4000 mint. The start time is from 3am to 5am.WL2: 2000 whitelists. Each whitelist can have a maximum of mint1 whitelists. This round can have a maximum of 2000 whitelists. The start time is from 5am to 6am,WL3:…WL4:…Whitelist wallet addresses are uploaded on the web page, and the Merkle tree method is used to save users the gas cost of uploading the list directly to the contract.<blockquote>3. Randomized NFT mint</blockquote>The mechanism of mint is programmed to use a random mint instead of starting mint from 0.In this way, no one can predict the NFT serial number that is going to be minted, preventing one therefore to front run the mint in order to get the Rare NFTS…<blockquote>4- Finalizing the launchpad creation</blockquote><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*1DX0QeXufyGjBVkLh7glZw.png">this page is the confirmation that the launchpad has been successfully created. It will be automatically available at <a href="https://aptos.itsrare.app/#/">It’s Rare</a> Launchpad section as an Upcoming launch.We’ll release a series of tutorial videos as a guide on how to best use the launchpad. You can also reach out to us anytime on <a href="https://twitter.com/itsrareMarket">Twitter</a> for further questions.Disclaimer:It’s Rare automated launchpad tools is available to use by anyone willing to mint an NFT collection faster and efficiently. We do not endorse nor give any financial advice. Make sure to do your own research (DYOR) on the NFT Projects and the team behind before minting any NFT.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=dcc351db226e" width="1" height="1" alt="">

The first fully automated launchpad on Aptos

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Fe-WuwON3IVNPvkjHyip4A.png">Introducing Its Rare marketplaceMinting an NFT means converting digital data into crypto collections or digital assets recorded on the blockchain. The digital products or files will be stored in a distributed ledger or decentralized database and cannot be edited, modified, or deleted.With the recent boom of NFTs, a blockchain cannot be considered relevant or serious if it doesn’t onboard or supports NFT minting tools as well as dedicated trading places, mostly known as marketplaces, for users to buy and sell their precious collectibles.As a result, as web3 enthusiasts and builders, we must consider where we should build our marketplace.It took a few months of ongoing research trying to find the most secure, cheap, and scalable blockchain to call it home.There is no doubt about Ethereum and Opensea being the first ones in the space and therefore benefiting from the first mover advantage, but due to the nature of the minting fees, more and more people are opening their eyes and considering other alternatives that are cheaper while providing the same service or even better.After reading an article written by Mo Shaikh, CEO and co-founder of Aptos, one of the key aspects that caught our attention was him mentioning that “Aptos can issue a significant number of NFTs simultaneously, across multiple platforms.”For us, reading this was like a dream come true because it combines perfection, total decentralization, and the web3.We intend to build a decentralized marketplace in which anyone can create or mint an NFT and trade it alongside thousands of other users. Aptos is providing us with the ability to leverage the creative economy 3.0 through blockchain technology.<h3>Who are we?</h3>I am pleased to introduce ItsRare, a one-stop shop Marketplace built on the Aptos blockchain where you can create, snipe, or sell all top-tier NFT collections. We are a small team of experienced blockchain developers, front-and back-end developers, market analysts, product designers, and operations managers. I’d also like to point out that it’s not our first blockchain project, but discussing another project isn’t the point of today’s article. We are currently in the testnet phase and working tirelessly on useful features that will allow everyone to find their place at our table.A few features that have already been implemented are listed below.<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*VjIAbJ4WytIN63jExj5eyA.png">it’s Rare Testnet homepage<h4>Home page</h4>The home page of a marketplace is one of the most important due to the fact that it should be able to provide a general overview to a user. For this reason, its rare team spent a significant amount of time building a beautiful and smooth homepage in addition to displaying stats from notable collections.<h4>Create a Collection:</h4>The creation and listing of NFT projects will be done automatically, as we offer creators the freedom of uploading several types of formats (jpg, png, gif, mp4, mp3, etc.), uploading metadata, rarity files, etc.<h4>Create a single NFT:</h4>Individual creators can also upload and list their own works, which will be well referenced and accessible to everyone.<h4>NFT offer:</h4>It is impossible to discuss NFT trading without mentioning accepting and rejecting offers. It is an essential feature in any marketplace worthy of the name.<h4>NFT Auction:</h4>NFT auctions are also a way for creators to be able to sell their NFTs more easily, so it’s a priority for us.<h4>LaunchPad:</h4>The launchpad will house the majority of the NFTs that will be listed. It will not be limited to a single project, so you may see multiple projects lining up on the launchpad at times.<h4>Airdrop list/Whitelist upload:</h4>This functionality is also extremely crucial for new projects, so we made certain to code it ahead of time on the smart contract. All you need is a list of addresses, an excel spreadsheet, and a few clicks.<h4>Claim Airdrop:</h4>We have reimagined the way users can claim airdrops, allowing them to do so in a fun and interactive way never seen before.<h4>The Dashboard, or Personal Center</h4>The Dashboard is also essential because it offers our users the possibility of making an inventory and having a general overview of their trading activity on its rare. It displays tabs such as ( balance overview, transactions history, an overview of collected NFTs, claim perks, etc.)Alright, here’s a quick update on what we’re working on right now for you and the entire Aptos ecosystem. More and more new features will be added over time, and our community will be kept up to date as usual. So make sure to follow our socials to not miss out on anything.Our roadmap and incentivized beta version are on the way. Please stay tuned for more information.<blockquote>Bonus: We will be airdropping POAPS NFTs (Proof of Attendance Protocols) to users willing to test our beta.</blockquote>POAPS holders will later mint Its Rare native NFT for free.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=ae100a57526b" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Introducing ItsRare Marketplace on Aptos

We are thrilled to announce our partnership integration with PancakeSwap, a leading decentralized exchange (DEX) aiming to be a one-stop shop for all things DeFi.<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*tnTiDYLCmJN5C8cL.png">You know we hippos always love to find the cheapest trading routes on Aptos, and now we just have more options supported through PancakeSwap. Check it out for yourself!<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*gTdkoh1uGCvWCWZx.png">The integration with PancakeSwap will enable users to find the best price for trading pairs available on PancakeSwap Aptos through the Hippo platform.Since DeFi summer 2020, the PancakeSwap team has grown rapidly together with the BNB Chain ecosystem. Today PancakeSwap has accumulated more than millions of users and billions of liquidity. Recently, the PancakeSwap community has voted overwhelmingly for the protocol to deploy to Aptos blockchain.PancakeSwap will be deploying its CAKE token natively on Aptos along with its key products such as Swap, Farm, Pools and IFO, making the CAKE token truly multichain for the first time. Now hungry hippos can have delicious pancakes for meals!This integration is exciting for both the Hippo and PancakeSwap community. Both teams share the same value and mission of bringing blockchain technology to mass adoption by creating easy-to-use trading tools and enhancing maximizing liquidity.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=f7e94d58c059" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Announcing Hippo’s integration with PancakeSwap

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/sMbhr-77qW0iNg6jVCF2J3CYkck=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/4ILDCHJXYZHDDB3CIHPVNJM4II.jpg" alt="4ILDCHJXYZHDDB3CIHPVNJM4II.jpg">The CEO of Aptos, the newly launched layer 1 blockchain that went live last month, defended the token allocation following a wave of criticism from its community.

Aptos CEO Defends 'Fair' Tokenomics That Prompted Community Backlash

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/sMbhr-77qW0iNg6jVCF2J3CYkck=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/4ILDCHJXYZHDDB3CIHPVNJM4II.jpg" alt="4ILDCHJXYZHDDB3CIHPVNJM4II.jpg">The layer 1 blockchain from ex-Meta employees made its mainnet debut last month with a limited ecosystem.

Crypto Wallet Blocto Launches $3M Fund for Aptos-Based Projects

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/qTnOKh9TLhHbuLXQaL4h6k_TgaQ=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/3D6VUFJ4FBCZXOGOV7NEDUUU4Y.jpg" alt="3D6VUFJ4FBCZXOGOV7NEDUUU4Y.jpg">Arco Protocol, A cross-chain DeFi lending &amp; staking platform on the newly-launched Aptos blockchain, has gone offline following a botched fundraise.

DeFi Lender Arco Protocol, Launched on Aptos Blockchain, Goes Dark After Botched Fundraise

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/QgYBSr4alQMgEaxCwIioUPB6qdc=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/VPZDW2K45FDENAFLML3MWORG6U.jpg" alt="VPZDW2K45FDENAFLML3MWORG6U.jpg">The price of the upstart blockchain's APT token has nearly rallied back to where it started trading – before a swift crash.

Aptos Token Rebounds After Upstart Blockchain's Dismal Debut

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/720/1*UygIera3at79_xfJ6UOaog.png">In Web3 development, developers often spend a lot of time writing code that connects frontends to on-chain data and contracts. For example:<ul><li>Writing transaction builders</li><li>Fetching and parsing on-chain data structures</li><li>Duplicating contract logic to frontends/bots</li></ul>Move-to-TS helps you automate all of the above, so that you can focus on what really matters: building correct on-chain logic and smooth frontends that deliver the best user experience.For the impatient, here’s how it looks like when you’re working with the SDK generated by Move-to-TS:<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/844/0*p5xVR_veR-f75k9a">In short, the transpiler can help you:<ul><li>Interact with your contract using auto-generated TypeScript SDK</li><li>Perform business logic computation written in Move directly in TypeScript</li><li>Interact with your contract using auto-generated CLI utility</li></ul>For a more comprehensive guide, please refer to this <a href="https://hippo-labs.gitbook.io/dev/move-to-ts/move-to-typescript-transpiler">link</a> and view the <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/aab04547854b4b3a87d240939dd00dba">video tutorial here</a>.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=4d3ccc97c31a" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Move-to-TS: A Dev Framework For Aptos

<h3>Introducing Hippo — The Aptos Aggregation Layer</h3><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Svv3i7FUVQH_xkX0urhUzg.png">Hippo Labs is building the ultimate aggregation layer for the Aptos ecosystem.We’re not just your run-of-the-mill aggregator though; the way we work is a bit different: Hippo provides developers with tools at the compiler, SDK, and framework-level to dramatically increase their productivity. Ultimately, we provide improved product discoverability, interoperability, in aggregate by default.Our infrastructure is better described as an aggregation mechanism — leveraging a friendly user-facing frontend which provides users direct access to the most optimal pricing and lending rates across multiple DEXs and money markets.In this post, we’re pleased to introduce ourselves, our product vision, and our open-source development efforts within the Aptos ecosystem.<h3>Who We Are</h3>We are builders, product designers, marketers, and we love the need to wear multiple hats. Our historical roots are spread across the spectrum of traditional finance, compilers, high frequency trading, and previous DeFi startups. We take pride in our ability to iterate quickly on new infrastructure to ship useful open source development tools and compossible DeFi infrastructure.<h3>What We’re Building</h3>Trade Aggregator: First and foremost, we are building a trade aggregator that enables users to find the best trading rates across multiple DEXs in the Aptos ecosystem.While Aptos is in its early days, we have already seen half a dozen emerging DEXs with their respective tech stack and product focus. We’ll do the footwork to interlink all DEXs so users always have access to the best trading rates within the Aptos ecosystem.Open-sourced Swap ImplementationsWe have already built, tested and deployed multiple swap implementations to devnet. Our current <a href="https://github.com/hippospace/hippo-swap">Github repo</a> includes the following:<ul><li>Constant-product swap</li><li>Stable-curve swap</li><li>Piecewise constant-product swap</li></ul>The last item in the list, Piecewise constant-product swap, or PSwap for short, is a gas-efficient optimization of the original Curve Finance swap. It can be extended to support non-pegged trading pairs. With the help of oracles, it can serve as the basis for automated concentrated liquidity similar to the product pioneered by <a href="https://lifinity.io/">Lifinity</a>. We will introduce a detailed breakdown of PSwap within a separate post.Move to Typescript TranspilerDown the road, it is likely there will be a significant amount of new DEXs and lending protocols launched within the ecosystem. It’s unlikely we will be able to manually integrate with each and every one of them.To remedy this issue, we are building a <a href="https://github.com/hippospace/move-to-ts">move-to-ts transpiler</a> that helps us to automate the hardest part of that work:<ol><li>Automatically fetch onchain data and use the transpiled TypeScript code to generate exact quotes for our users in the frontend</li><li>Automatically generate multi-hop trades that connect multiple DEXs in a single transaction</li></ol>The use case for this transpiler, however, goes far beyond trade aggregation.For example, lending protocols traditionally code their interest rate and borrow limit checking logic in their Move contract (the language that Aptos uses for smart contracts), and then re-implement that exact logic in TypeScript for their frontends to use. This kind of copy-paste-translate and boilerplate work slows down dev velocity and introduces additional sources of bugs.Using the move-to-ts transpiler, developers only need to write that logic once in their Move contract, and the transpiler automatically generates semantically identical TypeScript code to be used in their frontends.Similarly, developers for liquidation bots, arbitrage bots, DEXs, yield farming protocols, and other Aptos protocols in general can leverage move-to-ts to significantly reduce the amount of work they need to do managing multiple copies of the same business logic.Our current status for this transpiler is that it is effectively a TypeScript-based emulator of Move code, already capable of transpiling, executing and passing the majority of unit tests written in the Move language. These tests are aggregated across `AptosFramework`, the standard library `Std`, and our own hippo-swap package. We’ll continue to increase the number of unit tests by having it execute move contracts from open-sourced Move packages we find on Github and soon we will be able to bring it to a production-level quality.Transaction Simulation APITo continue our mission of serving developers and users in the Aptos ecosystem, we recently developed and merged the <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core/pull/1358">Transaction Simulation API</a> into the aptos-core repo. Wallet developers can make use of this API to provide users with the following benefits:<ul><li>Accurately provide transaction gas estimates — This means users will always have some certainty about their anticipated gas expenditures.</li><li>Preview wallet balance changes when asking for users to confirm a transaction — This means users will be far less likely to suffer from phishing/scam sites attempting drain their wallet’s assets (coins/NFTs).</li></ul>For a preview of what this transaction simulation feature looks like to users, we have attached this screenshot from our own wallet when it asks the user for confirmation:<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/344/0*bmneH5u8HM--WpCa">Developers looking for a reference implementation to obtain the gas estimate and wallet balance change can take a look at our open-sourced <a href="https://github.com/hippospace/hippo-wallet/blob/main/src/pages/PopupPage/components/ApproveSignatureForm.tsx#L82">wallet</a> here.Aptos-wallet-adapterOur <a href="https://github.com/hippospace/aptos-wallet-adapter">wallet adapter</a> supports most of the wallets in the Aptos ecosystem, including the Aptos official wallet, the Martian wallet, the Fewcha wallet, our own Hippo wallet, and will soon support Pontem and Nightly wallet as well.We intend to support all Aptos-compatible wallets as we become aware of them, so that frontend developers from other Aptos protocols can simply import this library and provide support for multiple wallets out of the box.<h3>Stay up to date</h3>This article provides a summary of some of the things we are working on. We have more surprises for you down the road. To keep up to date on our progress regarding development tools, integrations, and launch dates, follow us here on <a href="https://medium.com/@hippolabs">Medium</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hippolabs__">Twitter</a>, and join our <a href="https://discord.gg/fYBAR8dj">Discord</a> community.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=caefc1a7fc2d" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Introducing Hippo — The Aptos Aggregation Layer

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/FOPs_LiG2gy5lwARfzRxZRSFS0Y=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/X4GDZSRWFFHPHBGOP2ED3JDVFE.jpeg" alt="X4GDZSRWFFHPHBGOP2ED3JDVFE.jpeg">Bitcoin stayed unusually steady, with traditional markets in flux. The freshly launched Aptos token staged a minor recovery after its initial flop.

Bitcoin Completes Second Full Week Below $20K as Aptos Finds Market Bottom

In Defense of Aptos, Crypto's Punchline This Week

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*d6Eju1-gtSojqEbjzCccWg.png">We’re excited to officially introduce the Aptos Names Service (ANS). We’re paving the way by building a best-in-class blockchain experience with Aptos, which is why we’re launching with a name service on day 1.ANS allows all Aptos users now to use a human-readable .apt name for their Aptos wallet address instead of their public key.We see Aptos names as a critical step towards broad user adoption of the Aptos blockchain and to help ensure Aptos applications are friendlier and more accessible. ANS provides improved network tooling for all applications on Aptos’ blockchain and will offer numerous ecosystem integrations.Benefits and Features of ANSBetter user experience — ANS offers streamlined onboarding through human-readable .apt addresses. Better yet, Aptos names make sending and receiving funds significantly easier and less complicated, while also reducing the likelihood of fraud and human error.Unique web3 Identity — we see Aptos names as people’s identity in web3. When users interact with Aptos applications, we want to give them a way to represent themselves in a unique and recognizable way.Target addresses and subdomains — users can set target addresses for their Aptos names. Plus, anyone who owns an Aptos name can also add a subdomain.Using your name — your name can be used in Aptos wallets from day 1, to easily send and receive transactionsHow to Get your Aptos NameThe Aptos Labs team has been very mindful in how we launch ANS to ensure Aptos names end up in the hands of real users and projects that intend to use the names fairly and equitably.ANS supports names that are 3+ characters, and Latin characters, numbers and hyphens are supported. To start, ANS enables registering names for a 1 year rental period to ensure an equal opportunity for people to register for names and to encourage active use by owners. Over time, we will enable longer rental periods, and we will also enable users to renew their registration before the 1 year period ends.Take the following steps to get your Aptos name and set it up:<ol><li>Log into your Aptos wallet (<a href="http://bit.ly/3KhJes6">download an Aptos wallet here if you don’t have one</a>)</li><li>Search for an Aptos name</li><li>Click on “Register” to buy the name</li><li>Approve the transaction</li><li>Go to “My Domains”</li><li>Go to “Settings”</li><li>Update the New Target Address and click “Update”</li></ol>What’s NextNow that we have officially launched ANS, there is still so much to come! ANS is backed by the team at Aptos Labs, where our engineers, researchers, and designers are working to build ANS into the most robust and easy-to-use naming service.The funds from ANS will be used to grow the Aptos ecosystem through grants and other initiatives.Thank you for your continued support as we take critical steps toward achieving broad user adoption in a safe and scalable way.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=3f238271819d" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr><a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/the-launch-of-aptos-names-service-ans-on-mainnet-3f238271819d">The launch of Aptos Names Service (ANS) on Mainnet</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs">Aptos</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The launch of Aptos Names Service (ANS) on Mainnet

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/WViB0kaF5tqWc6dbl1Q6SBCkCms=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/OBCMPAVE2NE3DIOFGHSBSRHFQ4.jpg" alt="OBCMPAVE2NE3DIOFGHSBSRHFQ4.jpg">Aptos is launching at a time when the only concerns about the price of gas involve petroleum, not the virtual metaphor; bitcoin held comfortably above its recent $19,000 support.

First Mover Asia: All Eyes on Aptos; Cryptos Trade Down Even as Stocks Rise

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/QgYBSr4alQMgEaxCwIioUPB6qdc=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/VPZDW2K45FDENAFLML3MWORG6U.jpg" alt="VPZDW2K45FDENAFLML3MWORG6U.jpg">The native token of Aptos blockchain opened for trading late Tuesday.

Aptos Token Opens For Trading After Blockchain's Rocky Debut

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/XJj_tskLZx7eHFfxZWffCB542e8=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/XISAESVQTVEHTAFIOJ3Z3PYOKQ.jpg" alt="XISAESVQTVEHTAFIOJ3Z3PYOKQ.jpg">Trading volumes of the tokens jumped from under $70,000 on Monday to over $2.2 million.

What's in a Name? Apricot Finance's Token Surges on Similarity to Aptos Token's Ticker

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/dvsdhmK009rFDUYzl56Ic4SXnFQ=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg" alt="7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg">Tokens that private investors hold are subject to a 12-month lockup, while the entire circulating supply will be released in the next ten years.

New Blockchain Aptos Unveils Controversial Tokenomics, APT Incentive Plans

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/dvsdhmK009rFDUYzl56Ic4SXnFQ=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg" alt="7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg">Transaction speeds and tokenomics disappoint on the first day of transactions for the "Solana-killer" chain run by ex-Meta employees.

FTX, a16z-Backed Aptos Blockchain Off to a Rocky Start

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/dvsdhmK009rFDUYzl56Ic4SXnFQ=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg" alt="7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg">The venture capital darling went live on Maine Monday.

Aptos Blockchain Goes Live on Mainnet

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*D1ttAV90FpysOeZB4E4ppg.png">We welcome everyone to participate in this movement aimed to bring the masses to web3. After more than four years of hard work, hundreds of contributions from builders, and hundreds of diverse community projects across the globe, we have arrived at Aptos Mainnet. We are proud to arrive here together, for the people.This is step one in a long journey to create universal and fair access to decentralized applications for billions of people through a safe, scalable, and upgradable blockchain.We believe in the need for a rapidly innovating and adaptable blockchain that serves the needs of people today and our future generations. Upgradeability, Move, and a people-first user experience are some of the core principles and unique features of the Aptos blockchain that brought this amazing, vibrant ecosystem together to bring web3 to all.UpgradeabilityAptos supports rapid evolution of the blockchain to provide optimized user experiences for current and future use cases and allow for the integration of next-generation technological advancements. The user experience continuously improves and developers will be able to build without infrastructure constraints. We look to the vast community of users and builders to continue to evolve Aptos further into the future.Move on AptosThe Move language has been built, tested, and co-designed alongside the Aptos blockchain over four years. It is natively integrated for safe asset management as well as fast and secure transaction execution.Together, Move and Aptos create a unique and developer-friendly environment for seamless building and a home for innovators and creators. Move smart contracts are upgradable and support secure evolution for all Aptos applications.We are proud stewards of the Move language and are excited to further build higher levels of security to its development and tooling. Many of the original researchers and developers of Move are part of the Aptos team and are deeply passionate about continuing to enhance the language and expand the Move community.People-First User ExperienceOur core design principle is to focus on developer and user experience. Prioritizing a simple and relatable experience for all is the only way web3 can reach the billions of people that are online today.Our team has built world-class safe and scalable products and infrastructure used by billions of people with decades of experience operating millions of machines. We will continue to combine this knowledge with the ability to quickly integrate new innovations such as novel key recovery, scalable sharding solutions, and intuitive parallel programming models to scale the user experience to the billions of people that will use web3.Key Technical InnovationsThere are many technical innovations behind the Aptos blockchain. Here are some that developers love and are changing the game for web3:Pipelined and Modular Approach to Transaction ProcessingTo achieve high throughput, the Aptos blockchain leverages a pipelined and modular approach for the key stages of transaction processing. This fully leverages all available physical resources, improves hardware efficiency, and enables highly parallel execution.With this modular design, Aptos supports faster and safer release cycles, as changes can be targeted to individual modules. The modular design also provides a structured path to scaling validators beyond a single machine, providing access to additional computation, network, and storage resources. <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core/blob/main/developer-docs-site/static/papers/whitepaper.pdf">Learn more in the Aptos whitepaper</a>.Block-STMBlock-STM is a new parallel execution engine for smart contracts built around the principles of Software Transactional Memory and optimistic concurrency control — this means faster transaction processing due to a novel approach that is core to Aptos.Unlike existing parallel execution engines that break transaction atomicity by requiring upfront knowledge of the data to be read/written, Block-STM enables developers to code without limits, maintain composability, and achieve higher throughput and lower latency for real-world use cases. <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/block-stm-how-we-execute-over-160k-transactions-per-second-on-the-aptos-blockchain-3b003657e4ba">Learn more about Block-STM.</a>AptosBFT ConsensusToday, the Aptos blockchain leverages the latest iteration of AptosBFT (version 4), the first production optimistically responsive BFT consensus protocol. Consensus commonly requires only two network round trips (with round trip times typically less than 300 milliseconds worldwide) and dynamically adjusts to faulty validators through a leader reputation mechanism.This novel mechanism significantly improves performance in decentralized environments, correspondingly provides infrastructure for appropriate incentives and quickly minimizes the impact of failed validators on throughput and latency. Development of AptosBFT version 5 is already underway and will be released in a future upgrade.Decentralized Flexibility to State SynchronizationAptos aims to provide a high-throughput, low-latency network for the individual needs of all participants. Building a rich and diverse validator and full node community requires that state replication is flexible for different hardware environments. Aptos adapts to changing user requirements to offer new and more efficient sync strategies for inexpensive machines and higher levels of validation for those who can afford to. <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/the-evolution-of-state-sync-the-path-to-100k-transactions-per-second-with-sub-second-latency-at-52e25a2c6f10">Learn more about State Sync.</a>To learn more about all the Aptos technical innovations, take a look at our <a href="https://twitter.com/AptosLabs/status/1557786637483982848">Twitter Thread</a> breaking down the <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core/blob/main/developer-docs-site/static/papers/whitepaper.pdf">Aptos whitepaper</a>.Home for web3The unique combination of focusing on the user experience, upgradeability, and state-of-the-art technology make Aptos the home for developers to build applications for generations to come.There is already a robust ecosystem of hundreds of projects and hundreds of thousands of community members that have made Aptos their home.We are proudly supporting a wide variety of use cases across NFT, gaming, commerce, social networks, and media &amp; entertainment. We’re excited for the ecosystem to continue building creative and novel applications that will redefine industries and bring real value to users.Thank YouThank you to our community, ecosystem, and partners for creating the technical rails and cultural ethos where many developers already feel at home.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=92a8d904eb49" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr><a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/aptos-autumn-is-here-92a8d904eb49">Aptos Autumn is Here</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs">Aptos</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Aptos Autumn is Here

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*s8wUTvqj16moI4m397mNfg.png">You can’t drive a car without gas, and you won’t go far unless you know how much gas you need. Gas metering is a concept fundamental to the Aptos blockchain — it defines an abstract measurement of the amount of computational and storage resources required to execute and store a transaction. The gas schedule codifies costs across all operations on the network and calculates the amount of gas used to execute a transaction.To produce the first production-ready gas schedule in Move in Aptos, we<ul><li>Defined our principles,</li><li>Prepared an evaluation framework to determine prices per operation,</li><li>Built a gas metering system and a safe gas algebra for Move,</li><li>Imported the upstream gas framework into Aptos, and</li><li>Made the gas framework storage-aware</li></ul><h3>Principles</h3><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*xmvclRrQIc1gHVXH">There are five principles that drove our decision-making:<ol><li>Charge based upon actual cost: per operation cost directly relates to the resources on the network (e.g. CPU, memory, network, storage I/Os and space usage, etc.). This cost should reflect the evolution of resource cost changes over time due to new technology and process improvements.</li><li>Seamlessly configurable: leverage on-chain governance for gas schedule updates.</li><li>Enforce fair access: the network is a shared good, the policy should prevent denial of service attacks.</li><li>Support growth and accessibility: at a healthy steady-state, the Aptos Foundation prefers lower gas fees to ensure better accessibility and to foster growth of the ecosystem.</li><li>Prioritize good hygiene: charge a lower rate for operations that motivate safety, modularity, assertions, and event notifications.</li></ol><h3>Measuring gas</h3>When a user submits a transaction, they must also specify two quantities in the transaction:<ul><li>Max gas amount: Measured in gas units. This is the maximum number of gas units that the user (i.e., transaction sender) is willing to spend to execute the transaction.</li><li>Gas unit price: Measured in octa per gas unit, where 1 octa = 0.00000001 APT (=$10^{-8}$). This is the gas price the user is willing to pay.</li></ul><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*EfWkFU32n3iArVb0">The final transaction fee can be calculated by multiplying the total amount of gas consumed (measured in gas units) and the gas unit price.For example, if a transaction consumes 670 gas units and the gas unit price specified by the user in the transaction is 100 Octa per unit, then the final transaction fee would be 670 * 100 = 67000 Octa = 0.00067 APT.If a transaction runs out of gas during execution, the sender will be charged based on the max gas amount and all changes made by this transaction will be reverted.<h3>Building a gas schedule</h3><h3>Basic configuration</h3>There are several components of the gas schedule that do not relate to the specifics of an individual operation. These include transaction size and maximum gas units (different from the maximum gas amount that the user specifies in the transaction).Transaction sizeFor most transactions, the transaction size will likely be on the order of a kilobyte. However, Move module publishing can easily be several kilobytes and the Aptos Framework is on the order of 100KB. Also, most user modules tend to be between 4KB and 40KB. Initially, we set the value of the transaction size to 32KB but the community responded quickly and asked for more space to make application development easy, so it was adjusted to 64KB.Very large transactions induce bandwidth costs on the entire network and can have a negative impact on the performance. If abused, mempools are incentivized to ignore larger transactions, so our approach is to strike a balance between maximum transaction size and accessibility.Maximum gas unitsThe maximum gas units in the gas schedule defines how many operations a transaction can perform. Note that this is different from the maximum gas amount that the user specifies in the transaction.The gas schedule’s maximum gas units has direct implications on how long a transaction can execute. Setting it too high can result in transactions that can have negative performance implications on the blockchain. For example, a user may forget to increment the variable evaluated within a while loop resulting in an infinite loop, an unfortunately common bug. We found that even with our largest framework upgrade, we were still at less than 90% of gas schedule’s maximum gas units, which is set at 1,000,000.<h3>Execution</h3>In order to evaluate execution costs, we built a benchmark framework and used<a href="https://valgrind.org/"> Valgrind</a> to profile the Move VM while executing this framework. The output of this is a collection of annotated source code that tells us how many machine instructions each line of code has incurred.With the help of profiling like the above, we came up with a rough estimation of the relative costs for all the Move instructions and native functions.However, we noticed that this method had some problems with inline functions: They are not automatically included in the caller’s counts. We also saw that this only happened when we were profiling certain Move instructions, and we were able to work-around this by adding the numbers up.Subsequently, by considering coding paradigms that enhance the robustness and the security of the system, the team arrived at a final number of the machine instructions executed. This number in turn was weighed against storage and maximum gas units to determine their current values in the gas schedule.<h3>Storage</h3>Whenever a ledger state item or data stored in persistent storage is accessed, the Aptos node issues a read from, or write to, the storage device. The total number of data accesses per second depends on the storage device’s bandwidth and IOPS capacities. Similar to CPU cycles for the computation part of the gas schedule, the data accesses are transient scarcities that the blockchain users compete for via a fee market while the system is under load. Furthermore, the occupied disk cost of data written is permanent on the chain. The Aptos team designed the storage gas schedule by factoring these costs.Accessing and storing any state item imposes a cost associated with the data structure (the<a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core/blob/main/developer-docs-site/static/papers/jellyfish-merkle-tree/2021-01-14.pdf"> Jellyfish Merkle Tree</a>) authenticating the entire blockchain state. This cost is related to the cardinality of distinct state items (out of $2^{256}$). There is also a cost proportional to the size of each item. To operate on one state item, the charge is (with exceptions described in the next section):storage gas fee = item_fee + (byte_fee * bytes)Read, create, and writeAny access to a state item falls into one of these three categories: read, create or write. Access is charged by the item fee and the byte fee, as shown in the above equation.<ul><li>A read is the most common operation and is limited only by the transient resource scarcity. Hence the read fees are calibrated against the disk IOPS (item fee) and bandwidth capacities of the<a href="https://aptos.dev/nodes/validator-node/operator/node-requirements"> reference hardware specification</a>.</li><li>A create adds a new item in the state storage. As a result, create grows the authentication data structure and makes everything more expensive, and costs the most as a result. The create fees are calibrated against the reference disk space the network has. As a consequence, it would take a non-trivial amount of gas to fill the disk with items (item_fee) and bytes (byte_fee).</li><li>A write updates an existing item in the state storage. Hence a write does not create additional overhead in the authentication data structure. However, by modifying the existing items to larger byte sizes one can still blow the disk. Hence, we charge the bytes in the updated item the same as the bytes when created.</li></ul>It should be noted that the storage related costs are assessed on a per-transaction basis: you only get charged once even if you read/write the same resource multiple times.With the above considerations, we defined six storage gas parameters that form the building blocks of the total storage gas fee. See the below:<ul><li>per_item_read: Calibrated by IOPs</li><li>per_byte_read: Calibrated by real bandwidth</li><li>per_item_create: Calibrated by target total items</li><li>per_byte_create: Calibrated by target total size — first 1KB included in per item</li><li>per_item_write: Same with per_item_read</li><li>per_byte_write: Same with per_byte_create</li></ul>For more details, refer to<a href="https://aptos.dev/concepts/base-gas/#storage-gas"> https://aptos.dev/concepts/base-gas/#storage-gas</a>.<h3>Stable gas unit cost</h3>Irrespective of the cost of executing an operation in market-value terms of APT or fiat currency, each operation, and the transaction itself, needs a fixed unit cost relative to the storage and execution costs. A fixed gas unit cost helps keep the gas schedule static and be decoupled from the free-market value of APT. Moreover, a proper choice of the number of precision digits for the gas unit can help keep the gas schedule static. With this in mind, the team has landed on roughly 3-digit precision to express the gas units. Hence, the cost of a transfer transaction is roughly 700 gas units.<h3>How to adjust the gas costs</h3>The gas schedule is stored as an on-chain configuration. Through Aptos governance proposals, the gas fees can be changed and new instructions or native functions can be seamlessly added.The on-chain gas schedule is designed to be extensible, allowing it to be upgraded via governance proposals. As Aptos and the Aptos community continue to improve the Move VM and incorporate user feedback, the gas parameters can be adjusted over time.Sometimes the gas formulas may require complex changes that go beyond the on-chain configuration. These gas formulas are typically coded in Rust and are distinguished by the on-chain gas feature flags. To upgrade these formulas the node software must be updated with the new formula, distinguished by a distinct gas feature flag. The node software must then be published and be substantially adopted for the node operators. Finally, a governance proposal must be published and approved to use the new gas version.<h3>Future work</h3>This is the first viable gas framework for Move. It required substantial modifications to both the Move VM and the Aptos-Core. We are hopeful that this work paves the way for the following future work:<ul><li>Reduce execution costs. A realistic gas model indicates where the compiler and VM have efficiencies. The team can improve much of this to drive down the execution costs. For example, function calls show an opportunity for improvement.</li><li>Multi-dimensional gas metering. This will allow users to specify separate budgets for execution and storage. Users would not have to pay exorbitant gas prices for poorly programmed applications that execute for too long. It would also allow for a finer grained definition of maximum gas price for a transaction on the blockchain side.</li><li>Bloated state mitigation. There is currently no easy way to shrink the state set except for the contracts (or users) to explicitly delete things. Paying the users to delete the data can result in arbitrage opportunities where users create storage when it is cheap and delete it when it is expensive. Aptos has delayed resolving this challenge, which can demotivate developers to delete on-chain data. The team is exploring the concept of a per item TTL that would remove unaccessed state items upon TTL expiry.</li></ul><h3>Acknowledgements</h3>Special thanks to Alnoki from <a href="https://www.econialabs.com/">Econia Labs</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/notdeghost">Robert Chen</a> from <a href="https://osec.io/">OtterSec</a> for their reviews and feedback.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=508d5686a350" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr><a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/the-making-of-the-aptos-gas-schedule-508d5686a350">The Making of the Aptos Gas Schedule</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs">Aptos</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Making of the Aptos Gas Schedule

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/-UgCmfif_3WxyqpBHDaoylGhoNY=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/KDSHB6YNA5GOXGRLOHEDNDUVDE.jpg" alt="KDSHB6YNA5GOXGRLOHEDNDUVDE.jpg">The partnership signals the growing institutional adoption of crypto.

Crypto Custody Firm Anchorage Digital to Be Preferred Custodian for Layer 1 Blockchain Aptos Labs

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/dvsdhmK009rFDUYzl56Ic4SXnFQ=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg" alt="7LMXCGHAABF6TAVXHU7HUHHNL4.jpg">Aptos co-founder Mo Shaikh says Jump Crypto has been “spending a lot of time” in the Aptos ecosystem.

Jump-Backed Wormhole, Pyth Launch on Aptos Blockchain

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*KcNrQStN_upEKYuIzh-kLA.png">We made it! We finally made it. The Aptos community traveled through three incentivized testnets, thousands of commits, and millions and millions of transactions to finally make it to our longevity testnet — a stable foundation for ecosystem builders. As many of you know, Aptos shared <a href="https://aptoslabs.com/nft_offers/aptos-zero">APTOS : ZERO</a>, a commemorative NFT that symbolizes the launch of our longevity testnet! With that in mind, we’d like to share an overview of AIT3, a deep dive into our longevity testnet, and our path to mainnet.<h3>AIT3 Highlights and Rewards</h3>As during AIT2, AIT3 began with a small set of entities as participants joined the network through airdrops. We were moved by the hard work and dedication of so many during this testnet that the team poured over data to provide rewards that recognize this effort. Specifically, as announced on discord, we have increased all rewards by 50%! The <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/welcome-to-aptos-incentivized-testnet-3-9d7ce888205c">requirements</a> for rewards were:<ul><li>Perform all the required objectives on time including joining the validator set within 24 hours.</li><li>Meet node liveness as defined by metrics push data ≥ 95%. An overwhelming majority of participants met this goal!</li><li>Participation in all 3 Aptos-created governance operations</li><li>On-chain rewards earn ≥ 80%, which is correlated to successful proposal rate.</li><li>At least 6 binary upgrades of the total 8</li><li>50% bonus to those that embraced the extension of AIT3 to help obtain extra signal</li></ul>The rewards were as follows:<ul><li>Full reward: 1200 Tokens!</li><li>Those meeting ≥ 50% staking rewards will get 800 tokens!</li><li>Those meeting ≥ 9% staking rewards or had zero governance votes will get 500 tokens!</li></ul>There are two categories of bonus rewards:<ul><li>An extra 200 token reward for operators that ran a validator fullnode while maintaining a health score ≥ 50% for the duration of the testnet</li><li>An extra 400 token reward for nodes running in remote regions (geographically distant from North America, and Europe) for the duration of the testnet</li></ul>There are two categories for deductions<ul><li>100 tokens per missed vote for a governance proposal.</li><li>Those that initially registered in rare regions but moved locations forfeit any bonuses or extra rewards. In the future, we will consider banning participants from future incentivized testnets.</li><li>Less than 3 upgrades — people who upgrade early help up uncover issues or validate fixes, which is the whole purpose of the testnet.</li></ul>Thank you so much for all your hard work and for contributing to the success of Aptos! A number of you will be or already have been selected to help launch the mainnet. There have been so many great contributors, unfortunately, more than there are slots for operating on mainnet. We will select as many as possible and plan to rotate in more over time. In making the initial choices, we considered many factors: performance metrics, location, contribution to helping other operators, and those that provide help in debugging issues. Our initial communications have been sent out!Note: Aptos tokens can only be given to non-US participants, due to regulatory considerations. Any rewards in connection with the incentivized testnet will be provided only following a successful mainnet launch and any tokens provided will be subject to a minimum one-year lockup period. More details are provided in our <a href="https://www.aptoslabs.com/terms-testnet/">terms and conditions</a>.<h3>Our Lessons</h3><ol><li>Push the network hard: historically in testnets, our evaluations have been purely on helping the community and operators build a decentralized system and ensure that common operations succeed. AIT3 was the first time we pushed the limits on the Aptos blockchain software in a way that we have been unable to emulate in internal test environments. The results were amazing! We discovered that our asynchronous runtime, a third-party dependency, had a condition where if a task queue was filled quickly certain tasks would never execute. The issue was with an optimization in the task scheduler that assumed last in, first out, which resulted in something akin to a livelock. We changed the default configuration for the asynchronous runtime to be first-in, first-out, which resolved the issue. Our team leverages the most popular asynchronous runtime in the Rust community and it took a lot of time for us to accept that it wasn’t a bug in our code and instead a configuration consideration within a dependency.</li><li>Be careful how hard you push the network: The network’s success depends on the shoulders of many amazing contributors. There were undoubtedly going to be lessons learned as we stressed the network to its limits. To many, the software is a black box. These stress tests have helped us better understand this and we are now in a much better position to more effectively communicate about potential risks of maximum load and understand the impact on operators. The most important aspect was just how moving it was to see how deeply committed operators are to the success of Aptos and helping us create the most reliable and scalable network!</li></ol><h3>Successes</h3><ol><li>Scale and distribution: We did it. We brought back the core of AIT2: numbers and the geographical distribution. Along with that we introduced amazing amounts of stress testing that resulted in over 800M transactions in less than 2 weeks. That’s over an average of 700 TPS and along the way the team was able to consistently achieve a TPS of over 4000. Moving into mainnet, this means really great things because we’ll have a chance to work effectively with operators to construct an even more efficient network with even better scale and lower latency.</li><li>Decentralized Governance: Aptos embraces decentralized governance. Aptos is almost entirely configurable via an on-chain framework for making changes to network. We also support core Move library upgrades through this method as well. In AIT3, the community came together to pass three different resolutions that helped facilitate our ability to improve network stability. This demonstrates the amazing zero-downtime upgradeability that Aptos provides. Once sufficient entities had voted on a proposal, the proposal can be executed by any entity and the network atomically upgrades software or configuration. This lockstep process cleanly and seamlessly transitions the entire blockchain from one state to another.</li><li>Understanding Roles: Prior to AIT3, the only identity anyone had experienced was an omnibus identity consisting of those staker and node operator. In AIT3, we wanted to help operators understand their role as well as that of those that they support, the owners or stakers as well as the entity that votes on governance proposals. Along the way, you helped validated <a href="https://petra.app/">Petra</a>. Hopefully you <a href="https://aptoslabs.com/nft_offers/aptos-zero">obtained an NFT</a>. Most important through this process is that the operator has a vital role in monitoring their node, follow along with community guidance on upgrades and hot fixes, and to support each other. Along the way, it is very important that those that are entrusted to vote on changes or upgrades to the system are able to act quickly and have efficient interfaces to do so. The overall experience and feedback and been phenomenal.</li></ol><h3>Quotes from our Operators</h3><ul><li>In no other tesnet where I’ve participated have my nodes been put under stress like this in all areas (cpu, mem, storage) I’ve been involved with blockchain for a while .. I have the feeling for the first time that “aptos” when it comes to the performance and future of blockchains, it will “really” surpass everything what we had up until then. it’s really “different”.</li><li>The AIT3 testnet was very interesting to take control of the commands, what are the different keys used for, the errors not to be reproduced in mainnet etc. Thanks for the opportunity to learn more.</li><li>Well done to all node operators, the AIT3 was a tremendous opportunity to work all together and learn more about the network to get ready for mainnet. Thanks to the Aptos team that was always very helpful, the communication was very easy, it’s a pleasure to work in these conditions. No doubt that Aptos will be a great success with such a team.</li></ul><h3>Introducing Longevity Testnet</h3>Can you believe that just over 6 months ago Aptos burst on the scenes with a DevNet? The team and the ecosystem have been working tirelessly together to build something special. Aptos has been largely code-frozen since the end of August. As of the middle of September, we’re ready to broadly announce our <a href="https://aptos.dev/guides/getting-started#aptos-testnet">longevity testnet</a>!As many of you read between the lines, the real initial launch coincided with the release of <a href="https://aptoslabs.com/nft_offers/aptos-zero">APTOS : ZERO</a>! This saw several wallets integrate directly with the Aptos community site to provide the first community experience on the network!The birth of a longevity testnet is a truly beautiful moment for a blockchain network. It signifies confidence in the state of the software and deployment architecture. We are now ready for prime time ecosystem coordination and collaboration.For those that have had to endure losing your devnet NFTs week after week, be prepared, longevity testnet NFTs are intended to remain for a very, very long time! We plan no more breaking changes in Move, transactions, and APIs! There will be no more data wipes, so partnerships can be effectively made between dApps and other entities.We will continue to rollout changes weekly to devnet and will continue to wipe it weekly. On a regular cadence, we will upgrade testnet with successful devnet runs. Eventually after enough time soaking in testnet, we will have established that the software is ready for mainnet and then 🎆!<h3>Stay Tuned</h3>There will be a lot of exciting updates in the coming weeks! Thank you for your continued support as we move towards mainnet and for the success and learnings that came from AIT3. Follow along here on <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/">Medium</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AptosLabs">Twitter</a> and star us on <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core">GitHub</a>!<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=6d888885a7d0" width="1" height="1" alt="">

The Journey from AIT3 to Longevity Testnet

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/mlsiITy3ZS_PvecSOEH0WMdrnTI=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/K22NOTQCZFEVFEKRUJGPRENNSU.jpg" alt="K22NOTQCZFEVFEKRUJGPRENNSU.jpg">The venture wing of Binance is increasing its investment in Aptos.

Binance Labs Doubles Down on Aptos Bet Ahead of Blockchain Launch

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*ymwwqVCRO0fZxlHrzXBUZA.png">The Aptos team is excited by the success of <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/aptos-incentivized-testnet-2-highlights-and-updates-ee478eace33c">AIT-2</a>, and has so much in store for the upcoming AIT-3! The team has been hard at work preparing substantial updates. Here are some registration details and expectations for AIT-3.This incentivized testnet brings forward the last major deliverable for mainnet: on-chain governance and upgrades! To reflect a realistic environment for the mainnet launch, the number of AIT-3 participants will be nearly the same as AIT-2, so roughly 225 participants. Our goal is to ensure that Aptos can safely and securely launch the mainnet. Sometime in the upcoming winter, we will bring AIT-4 with an emphasis on scaling decentralization and further performance optimizations. We look forward to inviting more participants then!Complete these 6 steps to register for AIT-3:<ol><li>Confirm you have a <a href="https://discord.com/">Discord</a> account and have joined the <a href="https://discord.gg/aptoslabs">Aptos server</a>. IMPORTANT: You will be asked to connect a Discord account for AIT-3.</li><li>Create an account (or log into your existing one) on the <a href="https://aptoslabs.com/incentivized-testnet">community site</a>.</li><li>When prompted, provide your email address and username, and make sure to confirm your email.</li><li>Follow the steps on this <a href="https://aptos.dev/nodes/ait/ait-3">AIT-3 page</a> to install and start up a validator node, set the node up in test mode, and provide the validator details to the Aptos community.</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/petra-aptos-wallet/ejjladinnckdgjemekebdpeokbikhfci">Download</a> and install the Petra wallet and register your wallet address on the community site. (Remove previous versions of the wallet)</li><li>Pass an identity verification and sanctions screening process. If you have concerns about eligibility, please review our <a href="https://www.aptoslabs.com/terms-testnet/">terms and conditions</a>.</li></ol>REMINDER: Individuals should only register once. We reserve the right to exclude those that abuse this policy from AIT, and they will not be eligible for any rewards.Important Dates:<ul><li>Registration begins on August 19</li><li>Registration ends on August 25</li><li>Notifications will be sent out on August 29</li><li>The testnet becomes live on August 30</li><li>The testnet concludes on September 09</li></ul>ALERT: All accepted participants are expected to <a href="https://aptos.dev/nodes/ait/connect-to-testnet/">join the testnet</a> within 24 hours of notification.<h3>Key Objectives</h3>In AIT-2, the Aptos community came together to demonstrate that Aptos can run as a decentralized proof-of-stake blockchain! Along the way, many of you continued to demonstrate the attributes expected of successful Aptos node operators. As a community, we were able to experiment with adding load to the system, working across a global distribution of participants, and even ran through a few upgrade drills.A key new experience in AIT-3 is the various roles within the Aptos governance structure. Each node is backed by stake in an owner account; however, the node itself can be managed by an authorized operator account that is independent of the owner account. This means that, unlike AIT-2, the node operator and token owner can now be separate entities. Similarly, in governance, the owner can be different from the voter. This means that owners can delegate their voting rights to a separate voter account. In AIT-3, the operator account will be managed via the CLI, whereas both the owner and voter accounts will be managed via the Petra wallet. The explorer has also expanded its functionality to support a <a href="https://explorer.devnet.aptos.dev/proposals">governance platform</a> for both owner and voter operations.To stress-test the blockchain, AIT-3 will have 3 distinct types of governance proposals: (1) trivial configuration change, (2) a Move framework upgrade, and (3) a breaking change that will require both a Move framework upgrade and an updated binary. Accomplishing all of these goals will be a strong indicator that both the Aptos software and community are ready to launch this blockchain!All selected participants are expected to:<ul><li>Access the Aptos governance platform to register, stake, and designate their operator (the account associated with the validator)</li><li>Register their validator node’s configuration on-chain</li><li>Join the validator set</li><li>Vote in the 3 distinct governance proposals</li><li>Leave the validator set at the end of AIT-3</li></ul>DOCUMENTATION: Documentation on these topics is posted on this <a href="https://aptos.dev/nodes/ait/ait-3">AIT-3 page</a>.<h3>Success Criteria and Rewards</h3><ul><li>Perform all the required objectives on time</li><li>Meet node liveness as defined by metrics push data ≥ 95%</li><li>On-chain reward earned ≥ 80% of maximum</li><li>Successful participation in all Aptos-created governance operations</li></ul>Everyone meeting these criteria will receive 800 Aptos tokens. In addition, the team will offer two opportunities to gain an extra 200 Aptos tokens:<ul><li>Run a validator fullnode with an open REST API for load testing</li><li>Successfully participate in all operations</li></ul>NOTE: Any Aptos tokens can only be given to non-US participants, due to regulatory considerations. Any rewards in connection with the incentivized testnet will be provided only following a successful mainnet launch and any tokens provided will be subject to a minimum one-year lockup period. More details are provided in our <a href="https://www.aptoslabs.com/terms-testnet/">terms and conditions</a>.<h3>Next Steps</h3>After you’ve successfully registered, look for an email from Aptos Labs on August 27. In the meantime, “star” us on <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core">GitHub</a>, follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/aptoslabs">Twitter</a> and bring any questions on AIT-3 registration to next week’s Move Monday.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=9d7ce888205c" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr><a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/welcome-to-aptos-incentivized-testnet-3-9d7ce888205c">Welcome to Aptos Incentivized Testnet 3</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs">Aptoslabs</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome to Aptos Incentivized Testnet 3

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/vP2s7C0-MpwCbL-0tRH2wn23Ey0=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/XSJFNETPH5HTJEP5OVQMD234OI.jpg" alt="XSJFNETPH5HTJEP5OVQMD234OI.jpg">The Macalinao brothers used a web of bogus identities to create the illusion of a dev community, juicing value on the Saber protocol and Solana blockchain. Now they're moving to Aptos.

Master of Anons: How a Crypto Developer Faked a DeFi Ecosystem

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*SFTVgOz6ffQPZHuY">We recently concluded a very successful AIT2 that brought the Aptos community closer together. Thank you for participating and making AIT2 even more successful than AIT1! We have taken the time since the conclusion of AIT2 to evaluate the outcomes and would like to share updates around the details of our incentivized testnet and our Mainnet launch this autumn.Here are a few key updates, before diving into the AIT2 retrospective:<ul><li>Aptos Labs remains focused on launching the Aptos Mainnet to bring the community the safest, fastest and most reliable foundation for building within Web3.</li><li>Previous AITs taught us that incentivized testnets require time from preparation and registration, to execution, and then finally analysis. To continue to facilitate a healthy path to launch and maintain our expectations for AITs, AIT3 will be our last incentivized testnet before Mainnet launch.</li><li>AIT4 and additional AITs will happen after Mainnet. Specifically, we will continue to host incentivized testnets for each major upgrade of the software.</li><li>Our roadmaps are driven by community feedback and experience. As a result, some features from AIT3 and AIT4 have been deferred for post Mainnet.</li><li>Our selection pool size for AIT3 will be similar to that of AIT2 as we focus on improving the network leading up to Mainnet launch.</li><li>The team is planning a code freeze for Mainnet in the coming month, and shortly thereafter, we will publish a long lived Testnet for better community collaboration and preparation for Mainnet.</li></ul>Key dates:<ul><li>AIT3 registration — August 19</li><li>Code freeze — August 25</li><li>AIT3 launch — August 30</li><li>AIT3 concludes — September 9</li><li>Mainnet Launch — Autumn</li><li>AIT4 — Winter</li></ul><h3>AIT2 Highlights and Rewards</h3>AIT2 has been another successful test driven by the enthusiasm and dedication of the community. There were over 225 community nodes, 26 of which were run by Aptos and Aptos partners. The nodes were spread across 44 countries and 110 cities around the world.<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*IuiC6pFmKZyKuacK">First the rewards! The team recognized the efforts made by so many and modified the rewards ranges to be more inclusive.The <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/welcome-to-aptos-incentivized-testnet-2-af26e2fd69a7">requirements</a> were:<ul><li>Perform all the required objectives on time including joining the validator set within 24 hours and exiting the validator set upon the conclusion of the network.</li><li>Meet node liveness as defined by metrics push data ≥ 95%. An overwhelming majority of participants met this goal!</li><li>Participation as defined by one consensus proposal per hour ≥ 95%. Though given that we put increased load and data refresh lag, we reduced this to 90%.</li><li>Vote in at least 25% of consensus rounds.</li></ul>The rewards were as follows:<ul><li>Full reward: 500 Aptos tokens, for those that were able meet all the criteria above</li><li>Partial reward: 300 Aptos tokens, for those that were able to achieve at least 50% on both liveness and participation along with the other criteria</li><li>Bonus: 200 Aptos tokens for each of the following criteria: – Top 10% and upgraded at least once. – Operators that kept their nodes in remote regions, while sustaining all the requirements above. As they helped us better understand the nuances of how decentralized node distribution affects performance. – Operators who went above and beyond in helping us identify critical issues and significant contributions.</li></ul>Note: Aptos tokens can only be given to non-US participants, due to regulatory considerations. Any rewards in connection with the incentivized testnet will be provided only following successful mainnet launch and any tokens provided will be subject to a minimum one-year lockup period. More details are provided in our <a href="https://www.aptoslabs.com/terms-testnet/">terms and conditions</a>.<h3>Our Successes</h3><ol><li>The community was heard! The heroes within the community were recognized and helped us improve our process and guide other operators through this process. The collaborative nature of the community truly reflects the Aptos ethos.</li><li>Incentivized testnets remain a great way to validate software stacks. The team along with operators were able to identify glitches and as well as opportunities for performance wins. The Aptos Labs team and the operators coordinated successfully across four software upgrades with zero downtime on the network.The most notable of these was an upgrade that reduced bandwidth consumption by over 50%.</li><li>Operators are attentive and help us better understand the nuances of deploying complex, decentralized software. In this phase, we explored a voting-based rewards algorithm. Some participants migrated to regions that ensured they were more likely to have their vote included. Those that didn’t still helped us validate that being placed in remote regions can be challenging and require better understanding of latency and bandwidth limitations.</li></ol><h3>Our Lessons</h3><ol><li>Rewards based upon voting disincentivized geographical distribution. In our consensus protocol, proposers only wait for the first ⅔ of stake-weighted votes, limiting the opportunity for geographically remote nodes from effectively participating. This leads to a bias towards clustering of nodes within a region as operators try to maximize their voting performance. The team is actively working on a better rewards design aiming to reduce this bias. The diverse ways in which the community set-up their nodes helped us understand how different configurations impacted the protocol.</li><li>This experience allowed us to identify opportunities to improve the operator experience across tooling and deployment considerations to significantly reduce cost and operations. Some operators were impacted by network changes and we had yet to add network address updating to our toolset. Similarly operators helped us notice high usage of bandwidth that resulted in us offering software upgrades to reduce the overhead and invest more time into this space in the time leading up to Mainnet.</li></ol><h3>Coming Up Next</h3>Thank you for your continued support as we move towards Mainnet and for the success and learnings that came from AIT2. In the coming weeks, we’ll share a more in-depth update about AIT3. We also welcome questions and comments on our newly launched <a href="https://forum.aptoslabs.com/">forum</a>. Until then, continue to follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/AptosLabs">Twitter</a> and star us on <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs/aptos-core">GitHub</a>.<h3>Follow along for updates:</h3><a href="https://aptoslabs.com/">Website</a> | <a href="https://aptos.dev/">Developer Documentation</a> | <a href="https://discord.gg/aptoslabs">Discord</a> | <a href="https://github.com/aptos-labs">GitHub</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/aptoslabs">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://boards.greenhouse.io/aptoslabs/">Careers</a><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=ee478eace33c" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr><a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs/aptos-incentivized-testnet-2-highlights-and-updates-ee478eace33c">Aptos Incentivized Testnet 2 | Highlights and Updates</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/aptoslabs">Aptoslabs</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Aptos Incentivized Testnet 2 | Highlights and Updates

<img src="https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/OyjcjLRa9N8juuUmbdiknSJrGTE=/1200x628/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/AXR2HPSGAZCZLBVPTT2YGI5URE.jpg" alt="AXR2HPSGAZCZLBVPTT2YGI5URE.jpg">Layer 1 blockchain Aptos Labs has raised $150 million in a Series A funding round led by FTX ventures, taking the total raised this year to $350 million.