Parallel Paths to Blockchain Efficiency: Aptos and Sui Protocols

After Diem, a cryptocurrency project from Meta failed to meet regulatory compliance and was forced to close in January 2020, all of its assets were sold off- including its blockchain network.

This left many talented individuals jobless, resulting in Aptos and Sui’s development.
Because of this obvious talent loss, there are now some points of comparison between the Facebook blockchain legacies.

The Aptos and Sui protocols are the blockchain industry’s latest response to the trilemma.

To improve transaction speed and reduce latency, these new schemes use parallel execution methods.
What sets them apart is that they’re being built with Move, a programming language based on Rust.
This contributes to improved safety and security in blockchain technology as a whole.

An Overview of Aptos and Sui 🧐

While experienced teams with expertise back both protocols, they tackle the layer problems differently.

What is APTOS? 👨‍💼💼

Shaikh and Ching, former team leads, and Meta employees are Aptos’s founders. They are among the top talented senior blockchain developers and engineers. After working on Diem for three years, their attachment and passion for innovation propelled them to continue as CEO and CTO in the Aptos Labs team.

Having acquired experience from the Diem codebase, Aptos sought to build a multi-purpose blockchain network solving the following queries:

A revival of Diem’s technology – utilizing the Move programming language to create a secure, scalable, and flexible infrastructure to out-compete existing blockchain technologies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum.
Actualizing high throughput, minimal latency, and verifiable state synchronization in decentralized networks – leveraging Diem’s architecture while ensuring a wide variety of technology.

What is SUI? 🕵️‍♂️💡

The team at Novi dove deeply into the intricate blockchain network layers, challenging the network’s performance and efficiency.

Sui’s foundation is based on the argument that existing blockchain networks need to be more efficient in order to scale and be widely adopted.

It is crucial to note that Sui was not derived from Diem but was created from scratch with scalability in mind. The protocol aims to ensure high throughput, less latency, and minimize costs of powering dApps that have the potential to support billions of users.

Key Differences between APTOS and SUI

The Move Programming Language 🧰

Move was used for the development of both protocols.

However, Sui’s version has modifications that relate closely to Rust.

The two versions are distinguished by Sui’s use of object-centric models instead of address-centric models.
With this approach, products such as NFTs, smart contracts, and tokens can be presented as objects with a list of attributes.
These would include information on the owner’s address, read/write permissions, and transferability settings, amongst other functional features.

Aptos falls into the same category as Diem in terms of functionality.

Blockchain activity modifies data that is associated with addresses.
The downside to this structure is that every time there’s a transfer, two ledger updates are required – one for the sender and another for the recipient.

Sui takes a different approach where on-chain activity adjusts data that is linked to each object. For example, if you’re transferring something between two users, you would simply change that particular object’s “owner” parameter.

Consensus 👥

The two blockchain models, Aptos and Sui, are dissimilar from an architect’s perspective. How each chain uses its distributed ledger energy is its primary technical difference.

Aptos functions as a ledger blockchain, while Sui works as an “object store” that records data in DAG form.
Since it doesn’t rely on a consensus protocol, Sui only runs consensus when necessary–like when checkpointing its state or ordering transactions.
By parallelizing the execution of various transactions, this architecture enhances performance overall.
Aptos uses the fourth generation of its consensus protocol – APTOS BFT.
This structure, with recent modifications, accounts for unresponsive validators without human intervention.

As a result, Aptos can validate transactions in under one second.

Developer Experience 👩‍💻

The developer experience on Sui is more optimized than on Aptos. Sui does this by providing the means to optimize the developer building experience through open-source, versatile, user-friendly dev tools and libraries with its Developer Kit (SDK).

In other words, if you have experience with low-level programming, learning Move won’t be as difficult. However, because of its specificity, those from a background in languages like Solidity will find the learning curve much steeper.

Tokenomics 💰

Aptos

In addition to using the token for PoS participation, it can also be used in governance and other aspects of the blockchain, as confirmed by Aptos Labs. They have reported that 82% of the initial supply is currently being staked amongst different categories.

Sui

The SUI token can also be used for participation in PoS and for governance. Out of a total of 10 billion tokens, a portion will be liquid at the mainnet launch. The rest of the tokens will be released gradually over time as Vestings Award Subsidies (VAS).

Putting it All Together 🔍

Aptos and Sui offer a more efficient solution to the problem of existing blockchain protocols by providing faster and more secure networks.

They operate using different models; while Aptos employs the latest version of Move, Sui has modified it to suit their specific needs.
In terms of consensus protocol operations, Aptos calls upon consensus in all transactions, while Sui only uses it when necessary.
Also, whereas Aptos displays how they have allocated percentages, Sui will release this information in the coming days.