Comparing the technical differences between the Move language, Aptos, and other public blockchains may appear dull due to varying depths of observation. A superficial analysis is inevitably vague, while diving too deeply into the code might cause one to lose sight of the big picture. To quickly and accurately understand the differences between Aptos and other public blockchains, choosing an appropriate anchor point is essential.

The author believes the lifecycle of a transaction is the ideal entry point. By examining each step a transaction undergoes—from creation and initiation, through broadcasting, ordering, execution, and finally to state updating—one can clearly grasp the design philosophy and technical trade-offs of a blockchain. Using this perspective as a baseline, stepping back enables understanding of the core narratives behind different blockchains, while stepping forward allows exploration of how attractive market applications can be built on Aptos.

As illustrated below, blockchain transactions revolve around these five steps. This article will focus primarily on Aptos, dissecting its unique design, and contrasting it with key differences found in Ethereum and Solana.

Aptos: Optimistic Parallelism for High-Performance Blockchain

Aptos is a public blockchain emphasizing high performance. Its transaction lifecycle is similar to Ethereum’s, but it achieves substantial improvements through its unique optimistic parallel execution and mempool optimization. The key steps of the transaction lifecycle on Aptos are as follows:

Creation and Initiation

The Aptos network consists of lightweight nodes, full nodes, and validators. Users initiate transactions via lightweight nodes (such as wallets or applications). Lightweight nodes forward these transactions to nearby full nodes, which then synchronize them with validators.

Broadcasting

Aptos maintains a mempool, but after QuorumStore, mempools are no longer shared between nodes. Unlike Ethereum, Aptos’s mempool isn’t just a transaction buffer. After entering the mempool, transactions are pre-sorted according to rules (e.g., FIFO or Gas fees) to ensure conflict-free parallel execution later. This design avoids Solana’s high hardware requirements associated with declaring read-write sets in advance.

Ordering

Aptos adopts AptosBFT consensus. In principle, proposers cannot freely reorder transactions, although aip-68 gives proposers limited additional rights to include delayed transactions. Since conflict avoidance has already been handled by mempool pre-ordering, block creation relies more on validator collaboration rather than being proposer-driven.

Execution

Aptos leverages Block-STM technology to achieve optimistic parallel execution. Transactions are assumed conflict-free and processed concurrently. If conflicts arise after execution, affected transactions are re-executed. This approach significantly enhances performance by utilizing multi-core processors, reaching TPS as high as 160,000.

State Updates

Validators synchronize state updates, with finality achieved through checkpoints, similar to Ethereum’s Epoch mechanism but more efficient.

The core advantage of Aptos lies in combining optimistic parallel execution with mempool pre-ordering, reducing node hardware requirements while substantially boosting throughput. As illustrated below, Aptos’s network architecture clearly supports this design:

Source: Aptos Whitepaper

Ethereum: The Baseline for Serial Execution

As the pioneer of smart contracts, Ethereum is the origin of public blockchain technology. Its transaction lifecycle provides the foundational framework for understanding Aptos.

Ethereum Transaction Lifecycle

• Creation and Initiation: Users initiate transactions via wallets through relay gateways or RPC interfaces.

• Broadcasting: Transactions enter the public mempool and wait to be packaged.

• Ordering: After the upgrade to PoS, block builders package transactions based on profit maximization principles. After bidding through the relay layer, they submit the bundle to the proposer.

• Execution: The EVM processes transactions serially, updating the state in a single-threaded manner.

• State Update: Blocks require confirmation by two checkpoints to achieve finality.

Ethereum’s serial execution model and mempool design impose performance limitations, with a block time of 12 seconds per slot and relatively low TPS. In contrast, Aptos achieves a qualitative leap in performance through parallel execution and optimized mempool design.

Solana: Extreme Optimization Through Deterministic Parallelism

Solana is known for its high performance, and its transaction lifecycle differs significantly from Aptos, especially in terms of mempool and execution methods.

Solana Transaction Lifecycle

• Creation and Initiation: Users initiate transactions via wallets.

• Broadcasting: There is no public mempool; transactions are sent directly to the current and the next two proposers.

• Ordering: Proposers package blocks based on PoH (Proof of History), with a block time of just 400 milliseconds.

• Execution: The Sealevel virtual machine uses deterministic parallel execution, requiring prior declaration of read and write sets to avoid conflicts.

• State Update: BFT consensus confirms blocks quickly.

Solana avoids using a mempool because it can become a performance bottleneck. Without a mempool and leveraging its unique PoH consensus, nodes can quickly reach consensus on transaction order, eliminating the need for queuing in the mempool—transactions can be confirmed almost instantly. However, this also means that in times of network congestion, transactions might be dropped instead of queued, requiring users to resubmit them.

In contrast, Aptos’s optimistic parallelism does not require declaring read/write sets, making node participation easier while achieving even higher TPS.

Source: Shoal Research

Two Paths of Parallel Execution: Aptos vs. Solana

Transaction execution represents the update of blockchain state—it’s the process where a transaction’s instructions are transformed into a finalized state. How should this be understood? A node assumes the transaction will succeed and calculates its impact on the network state—this calculation process is what we call execution.

Therefore, parallel execution in blockchains refers to using multi-core processors to simultaneously compute updates to the network state. In the current market, there are two types of parallel execution: deterministic parallel execution and optimistic parallel execution. The root difference between these two approaches lies in how they ensure that parallel transactions don’t conflict—in other words, whether there are dependencies between transactions.

From this, we can see that the timing of when a blockchain determines transaction dependency conflicts during the lifecycle is what splits deterministic and optimistic parallel execution into two separate development paths. Aptos and Solana have each chosen a different path:

• Deterministic Parallel Execution (Solana): Transactions must declare their read/write sets before being broadcast. The Sealevel engine uses this declaration to process non-conflicting transactions in parallel, while conflicting ones are executed serially.

Advantage: High efficiency.

Disadvantage: High hardware requirements.

• Optimistic Parallel Execution (Aptos): Assumes transactions are non-conflicting and executes them in parallel using Block-STM. After execution, conflicts are checked—if any are found, the conflicting transactions are re-executed. Pre-sorting in the mempool helps reduce the risk of conflict, lowering the burden on nodes.

Advantage: Lighter node requirements and flexible scalability.

Disadvantage: Re-execution overhead in the case of conflicts.

Example: Account A has a balance of 100. Transaction 1 transfers 70 to B, and Transaction 2 transfers 50 to C. Solana would pre-declare the read/write sets and detect the conflict beforehand, then handle them sequentially. Aptos would execute both in parallel, and if it finds the balance insufficient afterward, it will adjust and re-execute as needed. This flexibility gives Aptos greater scalability.

Optimistic Parallelism Confirms Conflicts in Advance Through the Mempool

The core idea of optimistic parallelism is to assume that concurrently processed transactions will not conflict. Therefore, before transaction execution, applications do not need to submit transaction declarations. If a conflict is detected during post-execution validation, Block-STM will re-execute the affected transactions to ensure consistency.

However, in practice, if transaction dependencies are not checked in advance, a large number of execution errors may occur, causing the public blockchain to become sluggish. Thus, optimistic parallelism does not simply assume transactions won’t conflict—it mitigates risk at an earlier stage, specifically during the transaction broadcasting phase.

On Aptos, once a transaction enters the public mempool, it is pre-sorted according to certain rules (such as FIFO and gas fees) to ensure that transactions within a block won’t conflict when executed in parallel. This shows that Aptos’s proposers do not have the ability to reorder transactions, nor does the network have dedicated block builders. This pre-sorting mechanism in the mempool is the key to Aptos’s implementation of optimistic parallelism. Unlike Solana, which requires explicit transaction declarations, Aptos does not rely on such a mechanism, greatly reducing the performance demands on network nodes. When it comes to network overhead for ensuring non-conflicting transactions, Aptos’s mempool-based approach has a much smaller impact on TPS than Solana’s declaration-based approach. As a result, Aptos can reach TPS levels of up to 160,000, more than double that of Solana. A side effect of pre-sorting is that capturing MEV (Miner Extractable Value) on Aptos becomes more difficult. While this has both advantages and disadvantages for users, further discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

Security-Centered Narrative Is the Direction of Aptos’s Development

• RWA: Aptos is actively advancing real-world asset tokenization and institutional finance solutions. Compared to Ethereum, Aptos’s Block-STM can process multiple asset transfer transactions in parallel, avoiding confirmation delays caused by network congestion. Although Solana and Sui offer fast transaction speeds, their lack of mempool design may result in dropped transactions during network overload, affecting the stability of RWA confirmations. Aptos’s mempool pre-sorting ensures that transactions enter execution in order, maintaining the reliability of asset records even during peak periods. RWA applications require complex smart contract support, such as asset fractionalization, yield distribution, and compliance checks. The modular and secure design of the Move language allows developers to more easily build reliable RWA applications. In contrast, Ethereum’s Solidity introduces higher development costs due to its complexity and vulnerability risks, while Solana’s Rust programming—though efficient—has a steeper learning curve for developers.Aptos’s developer-friendly ecosystem is likely to attract more RWA projects, forming a positive growth cycle. Aptos’s strength in the RWA field lies in its combination of security and performance. In the future, it can focus on collaborating with traditional financial institutions to bring high-value assets like bonds and stocks on-chain, using Move to create highly compliant tokenization standards. This “security + efficiency” narrative can help Aptos stand out in the RWA market.

  • In July 2024, Aptos officially announced the integration of Ondo Finance’s USDY into its ecosystem, including support from major DEXs and lending protocols. As of March 10, the market cap of USDY on Aptos reached approximately $15 million, accounting for about 2.5% of USDY’s total value. In October 2024, Aptos revealed that Franklin Templeton had launched its on-chain U.S. government money fund (FOBXX) on the Aptos Network, represented by the BENJI token. Additionally, Aptos is working with Libre to promote security tokenization, bringing investment funds from Brevan Howard, BlackRock, and Hamilton Lane on-chain to enhance institutional investor access.

• Stablecoin Payment: Stablecoin payments require assurance of transaction finality and asset security. Aptos’s Move language uses a resource model to prevent double-spending and ensure the accuracy of every stablecoin transfer. For example, when users pay with USDC on Aptos, the transaction state updates are strictly protected, preventing fund loss caused by contract vulnerabilities. Additionally, Aptos’s low gas fees (thanks to its high TPS distributing costs) make it highly competitive for small-value payment scenarios. Ethereum’s high gas fees limit its usability in payments, while Solana, though low-cost, may drop transactions during network congestion, affecting user experience. Aptos’s mempool pre-sorting and Block-STM execution ensure payment transaction stability and low latency.

  • PayFi and stablecoin payments must balance decentralization and regulatory compliance: AptosBFT’s decentralized consensus reduces centralization risks, while its modular architecture allows developers to embed KYC/AML checks. For example, a stablecoin issuer can deploy compliant smart contracts on Aptos to ensure transactions meet local regulations without compromising network efficiency. This is superior to Ethereum’s centralized relay model and compensates for Solana’s proposer-led structure, which poses potential compliance risks. Aptos’s balanced design makes it better suited for institutional adoption.

  • Aptos’s potential in PayFi and stablecoin payments lies in its “secure, efficient, and compliant” triad. In the future, it aims to drive large-scale adoption of stablecoins, build cross-border payment networks, or collaborate with payment giants to develop on-chain settlement systems. High TPS and low fees also support micro-payment scenarios, such as real-time tipping for content creators. Aptos’s narrative can focus on being the “next-generation payment infrastructure,” attracting both enterprise and user interest.

• Aptos’s advantages in security—mempool pre-sorting, Block-STM, AptosBFT, and the Move language—not only enhance its resistance to attacks but also lay a solid foundation for the RWA and PayFi narratives. In the RWA domain, its high security and throughput support asset tokenization and large-scale transactions; In PayFi and stablecoin payments, low cost and high efficiency drive real-world application adoption. Compared to Ethereum’s robustness but low efficiency, and Solana’s high speed but high entry barrier, Aptos opens up a new path through balance. In the future, Aptos can leverage these advantages to shape a narrative of a “security-driven value network”, becoming a bridge between the traditional economy and the blockchain world.

Summary: Aptos’s Technical Differences and Future Narrative

By examining the transaction lifecycle, we can clearly compare the technical design differences between Aptos, Ethereum, Solana, and Sui, and uncover their respective core narratives. The following table summarizes the similarities and differences among the four in the broadcasting, ordering, and execution stages, highlighting Aptos’s unique advantages:

Aptos’s design achieves a delicate balance between performance and security. Its mempool pre-sorting, combined with Block-STM’s optimistic parallelism, reduces node requirements while delivering 160,000 TPS, surpassing Solana’s deterministic parallelism and Sui’s object-level parallelism. Compared to Ethereum’s serial execution, Aptos’s parallel capability represents a qualitative leap. Unlike the radical optimization of Solana and Sui, which removed the mempool, Aptos retains a pre-sorting mechanism, ensuring network stability under heavy load. This “stability-first speed” approach, combined with the resource model of the Move language, gives Aptos stronger security—whether resisting DDoS attacks or preventing contract vulnerabilities—surpassing Ethereum’s traditional architecture and Solana’s high hardware reliance. When compared to Sui, which is also built on the Move language, the divergence between Aptos and Sui is especially insightful. Sui is object-centric, using DAG-based ordering and object-level parallelism to pursue extreme performance, making it well-suited for highly concurrent asset management scenarios. Aptos is account-centric, leveraging mempool and optimistic parallelism to balance general-purpose use and ecosystem compatibility. This difference not only reflects technical design choices but also hints at divergent application directions: Sui may excel in complex asset operations, while Aptos holds an edge in security-driven use cases. It is precisely this blend of security and performance that gives Aptos great potential in the RWA and PayFi narratives. In RWA, Aptos’s high throughput supports large-scale asset tokenization. Recent collaborations with Ondo Finance (USDY market cap ~$15 million), Franklin Templeton, and Libre are already yielding results. In PayFi and stablecoin payments, Aptos’s low cost, high efficiency, and compliance capabilities support micropayments and cross-border settlement, making it a strong candidate for the next-generation payment infrastructure.

In summary, Aptos integrates considerations of security and efficiency into every stage of the transaction lifecycle, setting itself apart from Ethereum’s robustness but low efficiency, Solana’s high performance but high entry barrier, and Sui’s object-driven extreme optimization. Looking ahead, Aptos can leverage the narrative of a “security-driven value network” to connect traditional finance with the blockchain ecosystem, continuing to deepen its efforts in the RWA and PayFi sectors, and building a new public chain paradigm that combines both trust and scalability.

About Movemaker: Movemaker is the first official community organization authorized by the Aptos Foundation and jointly initiated by Ankaa and BlockBooster. It focuses on promoting the development and growth of the Aptos ecosystem in the Chinese-speaking community.

As the official representative of Aptos in the Chinese-speaking region, Movemaker is committed to building a diverse, open, and prosperous Aptos ecosystem by connecting developers, users, capital, and numerous ecosystem partners.

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