Aptos, a new startup created by a group of Meta’s former employees, has raised $200 million to create a scalable blockchain system. This was Aptos’ first funding round which was led by venture capital firms with the likes of Tiger Global, Multicoin Capital, 3 Arrows Capital, and FTX Ventures among others.
Avery Ching, Aptos CTO, said the startup will use the funds to build a more scalable blockchain, which users and companies can rely upon without paying exorbitant fees. Ching highlighted that though companies claim to be doing this, there is room for improvement in this area. He said current blockchains are not as reliable as existing financial rails. There have been issues of downtime and outages that go on for hours.
Mo Shaik, Aptos CEO, said Web3 applications and financial ramps are the main focus for the design of the blockchain product. He shared that they want to work with some of the world’s largest brands and tech companies to build a Web3 ecosystem for the masses.
Scalability is one of the main problems that the current generation blockchains are trying to tackle to bring about mass adoption of the technology. Experts have shared Ethereum, the king of blockchain, as an example. The Ethereum blockchain has suffered from an exodus of users because of high fees. It has depended on Layer 2 (L2) layers to deal with excess traffic.
And then there is Solana and Avalanche, the new blockchains, that have come up with solutions for the problem. But then, they too have faced downtime in their services due to different issues.
