Aptos blockchain raises $150 million from FTX and Jump Crypto

Aptos closes $150 million funding round

Former Meta employees have raised $150 million in hopes of realizing Diem’s original goals. Aptos Labs announced Monday that it has raised $150 million in a Series A round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, bringing the total raised in 2022 to $350 million. Several leading venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Multicoin Capital and Circle Ventures, also participated in this latest round.

According to a blog post in February, Aptos aims to be the “most secure and scalable layer 1 blockchain” in the world. It is being developed and led by former Meta members who worked on Diem (formerly known as Libra), the stablecoin payment system based on Meta’s discontinued blockchain. Aptos hopes to build and improve on Diem’s work with the same group of leading scientists and researchers.

“Aptos was designed with an emphasis on absolute security, scalability and credible neutrality – values we know firsthand and understand viscerally“, the February post reads. the article offers little information about how the project will achieve decentralization or tackle the so-called “blockchain trilemma“. Commenting on the raise in a press release, Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs, said Aptos optimizes scalability, security and ease of use. “We’ve known for some time that, due to issues such as outages and downtime, current blockchains are not suitable for mass adoption of Web3” he said.

The cryptographic community reacts

Several similar Layer 1 blockchains are touting high transaction rates, including Solana, Celo and Polygon suffered major network failures over the past year, requiring the coordination of validators to reboot and bring the networks back online. Aptos now claims that it is building a “Next-generation Layer 1” which should get around these problems, but the cryptographic community is not convinced.

what does aptos do that solana doesn’t?https://t.co/KAXcSTLzEp

– Vance Spencer (@pythianism) July 25, 2022

For example, Framework Ventures co-founder Vance Spencer asked his Twitter followers what Aptos can do that Solana can’t. Ethereum analyst Anthony Sassano responded attacking the venture capital firm Multicoin Capital, which was involved in the Solana case. “gives Multicoin another chance to dump on individuals“. Some prominent crypto personalities also expressed concern about the amount of money the project had raised. Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of crypto-currency market-making company Wintermute, asked. how many millions it takes to launch a blockchain shortly after the announcement, to which the recognized crypto trader and UpOnly Cobie, co-host of the podcast, quips replied “as much as you can get.“

as much as you can get

– Cobie (@cobie) July 25, 2022

According to Bloombergthe latest $150 million raise probably doubled Aptos Labs’ March valuation of more than $1 billion. In comparison, the leading smart contract blockchain, Ethereum, raised closer to $18.4 million in 2014.

According to the press release, Aptos will use the fresh capital to support the development of the project and build a blockchain that would embed “the next billion users.“