Author: Dime Tamara
On October 26th, 0x499 invited Cuffy (Head of Accounts of OtterSec), Raykun (Head of Partnership / Growth of Aries Market) and Jack Smith (Business Manager of Blue Move) to discuss — “What Will Happen to Aptos and Its DApp After The Main Network Launched?” The Event was hosted by 0X499 member and contributor — Elaine Liu
Ela: I would like to have us start with all the guests introducing themselves starting from the Business Manager of Blue Move.
Jack: Nice to meet you all. I am Jack Smith, the Business manager of Blue Move NFT and we are the Biggest NFT Marketplace in the Aptos ecosystem. This makes it a big pleasure to be here today to talk about our topic.
Cuffy: I am happy to be here with all of you. I am the Head of Accounts at OtterSec and we are partnered with Aries Markets, Blue Move and 0X499. It is great to be here to talk about security and Aptos labs who we are partnered with and coded some of their smart contracts and core codes. I will be happy to answer any questions you have whenever I can.
Raykun: I am Raykun and I am currently the head of partnerships and growth at Aries. For those who are not familiar with it, Aries Markets is a full sweep Decentralized Exchange that provides Lending and Borrowing, leveraged swapping and also leveraged trading. We are essentially an all-in-one Defi platform on Aptos.
Ela: Aptos is a layer one blockchain that uses the ‘Move’ programming language which increases Scalability, Reliability, security and usability features which have led to a lot of hype being generated about the Aptos Blockchain. Aptos chose to Launch its main network under the current market situation and this seems to not be a wise decision. Why do you think that the Aptos team made this decision?
Cuffy: In general, I think they have been working on the Move language and Move VM to create an inherently safe language for developers to use and to prevent rugs from DeFi protocols and NFT marketplaces. Ultimately, I think they were just eager to provide a more sound blockchain with some good code and place for developers to move over to and that is what they have done. While the current market is not the best, bear markets in general are just opportunity central for investors because you don’t want to buy things when they are up but when they are down. We really do not know when the market will turn around, yet this is not financial advice. For me, the language that Aptos is written in is attractive to developers and that is all I need to see value in the project.
Raykun: Just to add to what Cuffy has said I think that definitely the time is not the best but in terms of concentration of attention, there is a lot of concentration on Aptos currently. Also, the market cannot be timed accurately and so I would rather be focused on building and we do know that the Aptos team has been working very hard to improve the network and support the teams and so in terms of timing the market, I think launching at this time is not so sensitive. There is also the underlying sort of competition with Sui and so launching Aptos first kind of makes sense.
Jack: I think the Aptos mainnet release is a very special event and this is not only for projects developed on Aptos but for the entire Move ecosystem as well. Also the airdrop was really attractive and many people are psyched about Aptos. You can see on our first launch event, all the 8000 NFTs sold out within 30 seconds and that is unbelievable for us.
Ela: What do you think of the price of the public chain token that affects the market performance of its Dapps.
Cuffy: I guess a lot of it has to do with the money that they raised and the amount of people just building on the Aptos blockchain makes the token very valuable. You can kind of compare it with Solana that sold out with a lot of seed round and investing from VCs at a very low price. Here you are getting a valuation that is much more priced in so there are going to be a lot less people that can early adopt it so a lot of the token allocation is going towards the team and airdrops which is good for the community overall. A lot of the token is being allocated to other ecosystem tokens and NFTs like the Aptos monkey NFTs which minted today and is doing very well, minting for 7.7 Aptos and the floor price is currently around 60 Aptos. The liquidity is definitely there on this Blockchain and while it may be rotating from other blockchains, it is certainly on the Aptos blockchain currently. Developers are willing to build on the chain and so I am not sure where it will go but it seems like it is going well thus far.
Raykun: I think Most Dapps are beneficiaries of the underlying Blockchain structure and the main token like Aptos is a sort of gateway into the ecosystem. If it does not perform well, users will not be so inclined to participate as much. This is in the short term but in the long term, users will check if the product is good and efficient over the price of the token. But definitely on the short term, the price of the token has an effect on the Dapps.
Jack: When the token was released on the centralized exchanges like Binance, there was a lot of hype and the token price went really high with the initial price being about $100 but is now sitting around $8 — $10. So I think Aptos created a very trending blockchain and its NFT marketplace attracts a lot of users as well
Ela: The NFT marketplace and decentralized exchange are extremely competitive. So how can Aptos based late-comers stand out?
Cuffy: So I guess what I have seen so far from an investor’s point if we are talking about NFTs, Topaz had a launch today for the Aptos Monkeys whose supply was 7777 with 7200 being whitelisted and the floor price reached about 10x. From a competitors standpoint, I know Topaz has been building for months on Aptos now and we have been in collaboration with them to make sure their code is secure and they follow best security practices. For the late comers, I would not specifically call them late comers but a lot of the projects that have launched on Aptos now are not necessarily early comers but just hard workers because you have to put in the time to build something good. For the other projects that are still coming in to build on Aptos, it is not too late because they can still build projects that are useful to the community in the next couple of months. When there is a hard working team and some good developers, it is not too hard to put together a decent protocol that will attract users vastly.
Raykun: I think we have seen a lot of DEXs emerge on Aptos DeFi, especially Swaps. For some of these DEXs to stand out I think they need to narrow down their focus and sort of win in a certain aspect. So they can focus on certain pairs so that anyone who wants to trade that specific pair can go to that DEX. This is the same case for other aspects like user experience. So to stand out, the DEX needs to optimize its user experience and increase liquidity and compounding these can help it stand out in the Aptos ecosystem.
Jack: To talk about the NFT marketplace, you can see that there are about 3 or 4 biggest NFT marketplace on Aptos and we all received a lot of benefit from the launch of Aptos mainnet. All marketplaces are trying to pull a lot of NFT projects and the launchpads are also trying to pull in a lot of users. The community’s interest is massive.
Ela: Can Dapps on Aptos contribute to a new Bull Run narrative beyond replicating existing Dapps on other chains?
Raykun: I think from an investor’s standpoint, bull market narrative is usually fueled by incentives so if there are good incentives in the ecosystem or at least to support the ecosystem development, these can be a short term effect but we need these incentives to be sustainable to get a long term effect. If they are not sustainable we would see the jarring effects like what we see in Solana DeFi where we see that most of the DeFi tokens are bleeding out due to ecosystem overhang. So I think while we are focused on getting a narrative out for Aptos, most teams also need to sort of balance out these types of incentives and think more long term than short term bull market narrative. That is my take and I think definitely the Aptos team has been doing a lot of marketing and we can see a lot of attraction and hype and I will be keen to see how Aptos DApps matures and develops over time.
Cuffy: Sure, I think we are seeing a pretty decent rotation from other layer 1 with lower liquidity into chains with more proficient languages like move and that is really what it takes. You need people to get excited about new projects with new speed and technology and that is what we are seeing here with an entirely new language that is better and more efficient for builders and is generally just a better place for investors to trade and invest in. We are definitely seeing a rotation and whether it would last or not is beyond me but the technology seems to work and is not crashing. Aries market and Blue Move are doing well and I am curious to see how things develop over time. As long as people keep on building, it is going to be a great place to trade and interact with as a user.
Jack: Talking about the Bull market and launch of the Aptos mainnet, we attracted a lot of projects from solana. Actually, we gained a lot from the release of Aptos and we see a lot of NFT projects being attracted from solana and they want to launch on our NFT Marketplace and on Aptos Mainnet. So we have gained a lot of benefits.
Ela: Due to the technology and architectural differences, Aptos has already surpassed Ethereum in terms of speed. Is Ethereum’s well known security one of the reasons it has been able to attract High trading volume and Blue chip projects? What should Aptos learn from Ethereum? This question is directed to Ottersec.
Cuffy: So Ethereum has always had pretty good security and a lot of that had to do with their proof of work network initially and proof of stake only changes it up a little bit. Generally, I think the rotation of developers from Ethereum to Rust and then from Rust to Move has been from the security standpoint in which both of these languages are just easier to build with and have less liabilities on the blockchains for investor assets and i think that is the reason why a lot of developers have gravitated towards these blockchains to build in general.
Ela: Ethereum is really stable and its performance is really difficult to disrupt and some customers are willing to pay higher fees so ethereum may remain a popular option. Towards that, do you think more people will be attracted to Aptos because of the speed and cost?
Cuffy: Definitely! I think that is why we saw a lot of migration from Ethereum to Solana. When I started getting into NFTs, this made it a lot easier to onboard some of my friends into the space because it was easier and cheaper to put a thousand dollars into phantom wallet and use Solana to transact at fractions of a penny than doing that on Ethereum and having to pay up to $300 in some cases when it was a proof of work system. While Ethereum is still a great chain and has a lot of value, if we are talking about trading NFTs and high frequency trading which a lot of VCs are focused on, Ethereum is not the most cost efficient chain to use in my opinion. Like I said, the surge in pricing and gas to transact is way too high to onboard the average user and if we want to reach a global market and mass adopt users, then high fees is not going to be the way to do that as users will be better of using a bank which has lower fees and is centralized and has centralized entity protecting your assets as opposed to a DAO or relying on Vitalik Butterin to save your assets in the case of a hack.
Ela: What do you think of Uniswap’s dominance in the DEX and its continued business expansion
Raykun: I think Uniswap recently did a raise and I think they have definitely established themselves as an incumbent with their market share at 60% — 70%. They have established themselves as the go to DEX for most OG crypto DeFi and its very hard to take that away. I do think they will continue to thrive as a market leader and the Idol for DeFi Dexs. However definitely long term, smaller more nimble teams with better product design who are more focused with better incentive structure would take from their market share. But I think in a general sense, they will sort of stay as an incumbent and with the kind of backing they have, they can definitely do a lot of product innovation. Concerning Business expansion, I recall that they also acquired Genie and from an investors point of view, I think it makes sense for them to diversify their offerings beyond simply just being a DEX. So I think venturing into NFTs can give them a lot of trading and this could work with their acquisition of genie. That is just my take on their Business expansion point of view as I do not really have a strong take on how they can move forward with things but I just think they are definitely an incumbent and they are doing great.
Ela: What is the next step of Blue Move after becoming the biggest Aptos and Sui NFT marketplace and what do you think will be the advantage of Blue Move comparing other Aptos and Sui NFT marketplace in the future?
Jack: Your question is a really good one as the VCs and our community have asked the same question. Firstly, I want to talk about the business opportunity for Blue Move on Aptos mainnet. Right now, we gained over 250 thousand followers on twitter and discord and that was unbelievable evidence of the huge attraction to Aptos mainnet. We also push a target to make us different and unique from other NFT marketplace and that is why you see that we gained a lot in only two months especially in terms of community. Half a month ago, we released our mobile version which has gotten over 10,000 downloads with a 5 star rating. I think this is one of the biggest differences between us and our competitors. We are very ambitious to extend our communities. We want to leverage the community from Move ecosystem but also to other blockchains like Solana and Ethereum as well.
Ela: Will you continue to build your product on Aptos and Why?
Cuffy: We do not exactly build on Aptos but we work closely with the Aptos team and other project building on Aptos like Aries market. We take a collaborative approach towards working with them and making sure they are employing best security practices. Ultimately to me, it does not matter what chain you are building on but if you are building on new tech and you are able to find a way to rule an entirely new language that is inherently safer, we are happy to work with that. This is why it is a pleasure to work with Aries market and a lot of our other clients on the Move blockchain.
Raykun: I think a lot of what Cuffy mentioned as regards to how it is a great pleasure and experience building on Aptos is true. As for your question, I think it is a definite yes as Aptos labs has been doing a great job for security on the chain. So it is definitely a great pleasure to continue building on Aptos.
Jack: We have received a lot of support from the Aptos community and core team and this has been really helpful for us to improve our performance and with us selling our NFTs within a minute was evidence for the Aptos performance and the support from the Aptos community.
Ela: Is there anything you would like to share about your platform for the users that
Jack: Generally, Blue Move NFT marketplace plans to build an all-in-one platform to bring the best experience to our users. We allow users to carry out minting, buying and trading NFTs. We have released our Mobile version which makes using our NFT marketplace on Aptos very convenient.
Raykun: I just want to reiterate that Aries market is a decentralized exchange that provides lending and borrowing, leveraged swapping and leveraged borrowing. We also have a key focus on security and user experience. Ottersec helps with our security and we are focused on providing the best user experience on DeFi. We want to bring the experience that users currently have on centralized exchanges like Binance and FTX to DeFi through Aries markets. You can expect our mainnet launch this week and subsequently, we will be integrating all our products in and eventually we will also move to mobile.
Cuffy: Like I mentioned, we do not exactly build but mainly focus on securing other projects. It is a great pleasure to work with these Move projects and ensure they are secure as well as the Aptos network to make sure it is generally secure. We have worked with Aries, Topaz, Hippo Labs and various other Dexs which have great teams that are building great stuff. As long as we continue to see developers in the space who are willing to gravitate towards new languages and learn new things and create new products that are faster and more scalable for users, then you are in the right place. Like we mentioned, this is the reason why we have seen this migration from Ethereum to Aptos to build and onboard new users at a lower cost and at a greater rate.
The Valuable input of the Guests drew attention to the position of Aptos as a better alternative to Ethereum and Solana and this has been identified by developers and DeFi users who have flocked to build on Aptos and use Dapps built on the chain.
The Usefulness of Ethereum and Solana yet remains as only the resulting outcomes in the near future can determining which Blockchains will become mainstream and more widely adopted.
However, the current market situation hinders an immediate all out boom of the Aptos ecosystem and this leaves us with a lot of curiosity about the future of Aptos as a layer one blockchain and as a better alternative to ethereum and solana. Investors should definitely keep their eyes on Aptos while maintaining an objective and rational view on the entire Blockchain industry.