Sui and Aptos: A dive into smart contracts fundamentals, ecosystems, and developer communities
What makes Move different?
Introduction
Blockchain technology has revolutionized various aspects of our lives, such as finance and supply chain management. A chain won’t run without the underlying programming language, each one with varying levels of functionality and security. Among the many languages, Move has gained popularity landing as 6th most popular language to develop smart contracts on.
This report offers an in-depth analysis of the Aptos and Sui blockchains, focusing on their technical features and developer activity. We will cover:
- Overview of the Move blockchain language
- Ecosystem: Comparisons of Aptos and Sui from history, architecture, and application
- Technicals: smart contract functionality, security features, transaction processing.
- Developers: Analyzing developer activity on Aptos and Sui
What is Move?
Move is a programming language, initially created as part of Facebook’s Libra project. It was designed to enable secure and efficient global financial transactions. As the project evolved, the focus shifted towards building a platform for writing secure smart contracts for a wide variety of applications beyond financial transactions. Similar to Solidity, Move is designed for programming smart contracts, addressing key challenges in blockchain technology such as interoperability, security, and user experience.
Move facilitates parallel execution and supports custom data types and procedures, ensuring that smart contracts are secure and adaptable for diverse use cases. We will dive deeper into what that means later.
A Modular Approach
Move’s approach to organizing code into scripts and modules enhances the modularity and security of smart contracts. Modularity refers to the flexibility of the code by having independent, interchangeable modules. Think of it like building blocks which can be put together in different ways to create something new.
By separating logic from data, developers can maintain code related to specific functionalities more efficiently, making testing and debugging easier compared to Solidity’s contract-based design. Move’s modular approach allows for better data abstraction, reducing bug risks and improving overall smart contract ecosystem security.
Security on Move — Move Virtual Machine and IR Compiler
Move incorporates design features and safeguards to enhance the security and reliability of networks built with it. Move uses an intermediate representation (IR) compiler for converting human-readable code to bytecode executed by the Move Virtual Machine.
Requiring all code to be compiled through a standardized IR compiler allows the Move language to interpret highly customizable smart contracts with well-defined semantics and error handling procedures. The Move bytecode verifier performs a static analysis of compiled bytecode, checking for potential errors, vulnerabilities, or other issues, providing a dual layer of protection at the compilation and bytecode verification stages.
See Certik’s audit of Aptos’ Move smart contract.
Move’s type system ensures the safety and security of smart contracts. Its strong typing system requires variables and functions to be declared with specific data types, ensuring data validity and reducing the likelihood of errors. Custom data types are also supported, enabling developers to create types specific to their use case, providing more programming flexibility and allowing for the creation of more secure contracts through data constraint enforcement.
Move Ecosystems: Aptos Labs and mainnet launch
Aptos was created by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, former Meta employees. After three years of research and development, the Aptos mainnet launched on October 17th, 2022. Featuring upgraded transaction processing and network governance, Aptos is rapidly gaining traction among developers and venture capitalists.
Aptos $350m raise and $APT Tokenomics
Aptos Labs, led by CEO Shaikh and CTO Ching, has secured over $350 million in fundraising from Web3-focused funds like Andreesen Horowitz. The company actively distributes capital as grants to different projects on the network. Although Aptos Labs has significant influence over the network, community members who stake APT govern changes to the blockchain parameters, functionality, framework modules, and core code. The geographic distribution of the Aptos community is also diverse, with 104 validators across 23 countries.
The Aptos Bridge went live on October 19th, 2022, enabling network participants to move USDC, ETH, and USDT onto Aptos from chains such as Ethereum, Polygon, and BNB Chain. Total value locked (TVL) peaked on January 30th, 2023, at $64 million. Currently, about two-thirds of TVL is held in PancakeSwap, while another 22% is in LiquidSwap.
Move Ecosystems: Sui Foundation and Mysten Labs
Sui, developed by Mysten Labs, is an innovative blockchain offering unparalleled scalability and reduced latency. Also created by former Meta employees who worked on the Libra project, Sui is built on the Move programming language with an entirely new foundation. The mainnet is set to launch in the second quarter of 2023.
Sui’s $300m raise and tokenomics
Mysten Labs, led by CEO Evan Cheng, raised $300 million in their most recent Series B funding round, with a company valuation of over $2 billion. Prominent venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, FTX Ventures, and Binance participated in this round. The funds will primarily be allocated to the development of applications on the Sui network.
Sui’s governance and protocol upgrades will be managed through on-chain governance using the SUI token, which will become available to the public around the mainnet launch. SUI owners can delegate their holdings to validators for staking yields.
Two successful Sui testnet waves have been completed. The first wave assessed the network’s functionality with independent validator software operation, while the second wave examined tokenomics and gas price variability. It is now running a permanent testnet that will continue running after mainnet launch.
Summary
Technical Comparison: Aptos vs Sui
Data Storage
Both Aptos and Sui are built using the Move language. However, while Aptos largely retained the original version of Move, the Sui team built their blockchain from scratch, incorporating several modifications to their implementation of Move. The primary distinction between Aptos and Sui Move lies in their data storage methods.
Aptos organizes data storage by addresses, representing ownership, with each piece of network data assigned to a specific address. When data is transferred, two ledger updates are necessary: one for the sender and one for the receiver. This method effectively supports token transfers, as each address is directly associated with a balance.
In contrast, Sui organizes data in the form of objects, with tokens, smart contracts, and other data represented as objects containing relevant information such as owner addresses and transfer permissions. When a transaction occurs, only a single update is required to modify the object’s data, as opposed to separate updates for sender and receiver ledgers. This approach increases system flexibility, making it better suited for managing NFTs and DeFi applications, which often demand more complex data structures and interactions.
Consensus
Aptos and Sui exhibit notable technical differences in their architecture and consensus designs. Sui’s object-centric data storage system organizes data as a directed acyclic graph (DAG), a structure composed of interconnected nodes with directed edges representing information flow. Sui employs the Narwhal and Tusk consensus protocol, offering robust resistance to denial of service (DoS) attacks due to its asynchronous nature. Narwhal handles data accessibility, while Tusk manages individual transaction ordering within more complex, larger transactions. For transactions involving exclusively owned objects, such as token transfers, consensus is unnecessary. Validators utilize Byzantine Consistent Broadcast to execute transactions in parallel, facilitated by the explicit encoding of dependencies in the objects. Sui’s architecture also supports horizontal scaling, where network capacity growth is directly correlated with the increase in processing power of validators or the number of computers they have working for the network.
On the other hand, Aptos has developed a system called Block-STM, which has a theoretical processing capacity of 160,000 transactions per second. This system requires nodes to execute transactions in parallel before validation. If a validation issue arises, the transaction will be re-executed or aborted. Additionally, Block-STM can identify transactional dependencies, re-executing dependent transactions if an operation fails validation. Aptos employs a consensus protocol known as BFT, derived from HotStuff, the original consensus protocol used in Diem. The latest implementation, AptosBFT, enhances validator leader rotations to account for inactive validators, consistently achieving sub-second finality.
Tokenomics
Both Aptos and Sui will use a native token to facilitate network behaviors such as proof-of-stake validation, payment of gas fees, on-chain governance, and more. The Aptos token (APT) was released following the mainnet launch with an initial total supply of 1 billion. Over 20 million APT was airdropped to 110,235 Aptos participants, with no indication of a second airdrop. The SUI token has not yet been launched, but the tokenomics whitepaper has been released. Unlike Aptos, Sui has stated there will be no airdrop of their token.
Token Distribution and supply
The token distribution of APT and SUI is fairly similar. Both will supply roughly 50% of tokens to the community to support network growth. Early contributors to the projects will receive about 20% of tokens, and investors will get 14%. The main difference arises in the supply controlled by the foundations. Sui’s specific allocation to the access program and app testers results in Mysten Labs receiving 7% less token share than Aptos Labs.
Developer Activity Comparison
With the Aptos mainnet live and Sui having had multiple successful testnets, the networks are starting to attract significant development. To measure and compare Aptos and Sui, Electric Capital’s Crypto Ecosystems taxonomy was used to source Github repositories of open-source projects on the blockchains.
The data in this analysis refers to GitHub events posted from March 23 to March 30, 2023.
Total Events
GitHub events, triggered whenever a developer interacts with a repository, provide valuable insights into network engagement. During the week analyzed, Aptos recorded 919 events, while Sui registered 820 events.
On Aptos, the most active network was Pyth Network, an oracle enabling developers to access real-time financial data. The core Aptos repository followed closely in activity levels. Together, these two accounted for 65% of all Aptos GitHub events. For Sui, the Mysten Labs’ Sui repository took the lead in activity, reflecting the platform’s anticipation of its mainnet release. Origin Byte, an NFT protocol built on Sui, claimed the second-highest event count.
Note: There is generally more activity on Testnet compared to Mainnet, as that is where the testing happens (naturally). The data shared helps give some color as to overall general activity on both chains.
Unique Developers
During the analysis period, Aptos and Sui attracted 86 and 98 unique developers, respectively, who contributed to the protocols on their networks. This is an interesting observation, given that Sui’s main network has not yet been launched, whereas Aptos’ mainnet is already live. The data suggests that there is a growing interest in the Sui ecosystem, which could potentially translate to increased developer activity once the mainnet is live.
Diving deeper into the repositories, Aptos’ main Github repository saw participation from 31 developers, while the Pyth Network repository had the second-highest engagement with 14 contributors. This highlights the areas of interest within the Aptos ecosystem and indicates that developers are actively exploring use cases for the platform, such as decentralized finance.
In contrast, Sui’s core repository had a significantly higher number of active individuals, with 58 developers contributing to the project. This demonstrates a strong interest in Sui’s core technology and its potential applications. The high level of developer engagement within the core repository suggests that developers are eager to contribute to the foundation of the Sui ecosystem, which could result in a robust and innovative platform upon mainnet launch.
It is essential to keep in mind that developer activity can fluctuate over time and may not always provide a complete picture of the overall health of an ecosystem. However, the current data indicates that both Aptos and Sui have vibrant developer communities, with Sui displaying notable interest despite its mainnet not yet being live. As these ecosystems continue to mature and expand, it will be crucial to monitor how developer activity evolves and shapes the future of Move-based blockchain platforms.
What’s next for the Move language?
In conclusion, the Move blockchain language has paved the way for the development of innovative and secure ecosystems, with Aptos and Sui emerging as leading platforms utilizing this technology. Both networks showcase unique technical features, offering distinct strengths and capabilities to developers, investors, and users. Aptos has already demonstrated success with its mainnet launch and robust developer activity, while Sui’s upcoming mainnet launch and growing interest from the developer community highlight its potential for future growth and innovation.
While the comparison of technical features and developer activity provides valuable insights, it is crucial to recognize that the long-term success of both ecosystems will depend on the continuous engagement and contributions of their respective communities. As the blockchain industry continues to evolve, Aptos and Sui are well-positioned to shape the future of blockchain technology and decentralized applications, further solidifying the significance of the Move language in the development of secure and scalable platforms.
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