Will Diem Team members’ anticipated project to launch Aptos be a success?

Former Meta’s crypto project Diem employees developed their own blockchain network

Meta, formerly Facebook, had highly anticipated cryptocurrency and blockchain projects to launch their stablecoin, Diem. The project got into bureaucratic and regulatory actions, and after a long struggle, it had to shut down. Former employees and important players of the sector who were behind the imperative project Diem decided to move forward and launch their blockchain now.

The team named the new project ‘Aptos’, which recently closed a funding round after raising $200 million. Aptos was founded by CEO Mo Shaikh and CTO Avery Ching; both are former employees of Meta’s crypto unit, Novi. At Novi, Mo led strategic partnerships, and Ching was tech lead.

When Diem was to shut down and sold to Silvergate Capital in February, both leads left the company before this in December 2021. The team regrouped and started building a decentralized L1 blockchain-based partly on the coding language Move, which was initially developed for Diem.

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Now the task for the team is to grow its developer ecosystem and to attract more and more projects to their blockchain. The team boasts their blockchain network to be cheap, scalable, and cheap, which are highly demanded features expected from a network.

An announcement made on 16th March by Aptos stated that it closed a $200 million strategic funding round. The funding round was led by giant venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, in which other famous and top firms like FTX Ventures, Paxos, Three Arrows Capital, and Coinbase Ventures participated.

Aptos stated that the funding would be allocated to hire new staff and support brands, builders, and companies looking to develop their projects in their blockchain network. During the announcement, it also teased several NFT, Web 3, DeFi, social media, and payments projects already in the working stage.

However, on asking about the total valuation, Aptos did not disclose it, but some analysis estimated the firm soon to enter the Unicorn category by crossing $1 billion valuations.

In a blogpost, the Aptos team quoted that since leaving Meta, they put their ideas in motion and built an entirely new network from scratch, ready to bring them to fruition. This whole thing has been done bypassing the bureaucratic and regulatory limitations.

Further Aptos team also said that for Q2, the network is all set to launch its testnet phase and invited various projects and developers, which will let the projects have their experience. For its mainnet launch, the team has announced it for Q3, giving project developers and creators roughly six months.

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing