化腐朽为神奇，两位Meta旧人携Diem技术“王者归来”
Anne Sraders
2022-08-21
Aptos联合创始人埃弗里·程（左）和莫·谢赫。图片来源：KATIE THOMPSON FOR FORTUNE
坏消息是Diem已经行将就木，好消息是莫·谢赫和埃弗里·程或将给该项目带来新生。
2021年感恩节前一周，在一场会议散会后，二人走出Meta Platforms（原Facebook）位于美国加州门洛帕克的办公室。此时，他们意识到，经过近三年的痛苦和挣扎之后，他们一手塑造、此时深陷困境的加密货币支付网络——Diem（原名Libra）或许能够在Meta之外获得新生。
埃弗里·程，现年42岁，是Diem区块链和Meta加密货币钱包项目的软件工程师，谢赫现年36岁，是Novi的战略合作伙伴项目负责人。此前，二人已经在讨论，一旦监管机构封杀Diem的举动趋于明朗，就将Diem的开源代码库带出Meta并在外部继续开发。而在这场会议之后，谢赫回忆道：“程和我相互看着对方，跟彼此说：‘嘿，我想我们可以开始干了。’”
凯尔·萨马尼是加密货币投资公司Multicoin Capital的联合创始人及执行合伙人。萨马尼称，去年12月初，自己公司的峰会刚刚结束，因为忘了自己跟谢赫二人还约了电话探讨潜在的投资事宜，对方来电时他正在迈阿密的一处游泳池边休息，于是就在那里接起了电话。
谢赫和程向萨玛尼推介了自己正在蓬勃发展的区块链初创公司。萨玛尼回忆道“打完电话，我走到图沙尔（图沙尔·贾殷，Multicoin的联合创始人及执行合伙人）面前，他就坐在6米外”。我向图沙尔介绍了刚刚与这个初创团队（即后来的Aptos Labs）通话的内容进，“听完介绍，他说：‘没问题，这个项目我们投了。’可以说没有丝毫犹豫。”萨马尼回忆道。Multicoin以代币权证（token warrants）形式投入了大量资金。在此类交易中，这种做法颇为常见。Multicoin还投资了Aptos的竞争对手——Solana。
萨马尼回忆道，谢赫和程的推介主要围绕“高效利用Diem代码库并以之为基础开展运营工作”展开，即构建、推出一条“第一层区块链（L1区块链）”。萨马尼认为，Aptos的一大竞争优势在于，其使用的是Meta设计的Move编程语言，在他看来，这种语言“在设计上自成一派，因而也更不容易出现漏洞。”萨马尼说，在Meta为实现该技术付出的努力以失败告终之后，“我很高兴看到他们说：‘去他的，不管Facebook或官方怎么说，我们就是要做成这件事情。’”
作为Aptos的联合创始人，谢赫和程于去年12月正式从Meta离职，目前在这家位于帕洛阿尔托的初创企业分别担任首席执行官和首席技术官的职位，他们雄心勃勃，想要“打造下一个拥有十亿级用户的L1区块链”，不过目前还在努力解决基础问题。虽然现在有许多L1区块链都在致力于降低区块链应用的开发和使用门槛、减少其使用成本，但大多仍然饱受宕机、高昂使用费用和安全漏洞等问题的困扰。Aptos区块链目前处于测试阶段（公开、正式版本预计将于2022年晚些时候推出），其目标是成为一个去中心化的通用区块链（general purpose blockchain）——为非同质化代币（NFT）项目、社交媒体、DeFi（去中心化金融）等领域的开发者提供一种更安全且更具扩展性的基础设施。
拥有科技巨头背景的创始团队，未来可期的顶尖技术，加上刚刚帮助其于今年3月完成新一轮2亿美元融资的加密货币领域顶级风投机构——除Multicoin外，Aptos还吸引到了安德森·霍洛维茨基金（Andreessen Horowitz，又称a16z）、凯蒂·豪恩、老虎环球基金（Tiger Global）、FTX Ventures的投资，Aptos Labs似乎已经具备了许多在区块链领域取得成功所需的要素。据报道，这家初创公司的估值在10亿美元到20亿美元之间，目前约有60名员工（该公司拒绝对其估值予以置评）。
但除了最近几周加密货币市场骤然出现的灾难性下跌外，这家初创企业还面临着另一个更为直接的问题：今年3月初，该公司与公司首席执行官谢赫一起被告上了法庭。发起这场诉讼的是莎莉·格莱泽及其旗下区块链投资公司Swoon Capital。据其指控，谢赫和程并非该初创企业唯一的创始人，相反，作为合作伙伴，她原本与谢赫约定各自拥有该公司50%的权益，因而她有权获得该初创企业一半的“创始人股份”（据她声称，这些股份至少价值10亿美元）。
耿耿于怀
在5月初的一次视频通话中，程和谢赫并排坐着，看起来活力满满：程外形非常干练，但着装比较休闲，而谢赫则留着一头飘逸的灰白头长发。（程开玩笑说，在他第一次见到谢赫本人时，就像去相亲一样：“他的照片看起来非常职业，身着正装，一头短发，亲眼见到他本人时，我感觉挺意外的。”）
如果你问他们如何评价自己，二人会说自己还有对方都是那种非常争强好胜的人。
两人都很喜欢打篮球，据二人介绍，他们周末常去斯坦福大学的校园里与各大区块链公司的球友切磋球技（谢赫提醒说，程“跳投神准，而且特别喜欢展示自己的这项绝技”）。最初，二人只是通过Zoom与对方有所交集，因为据谢赫说，当时他还住在东海岸，2021年年底，二人在Meta工作时才第一次见到对方真人，然后又因球结缘。
在程眼中，他在檀香山的成长经历“愉快而轻松……大家都是把家人和朋友放在首位，每天都在享受生活”。而谢赫的生活则是另一番景象。据谢赫介绍，出生于阿布扎比的他在1990年随家人移民纽约布莱顿海滩，一直在地下室生活，据他说，“那时的自己卑微到了泥土里”。
萨马尼觉得谢赫和程都属于那种“心里憋着一股劲儿的人”，他认为，“对于企业家而言，具有这种特点一般都是好事”，这说明他们俩都不愿意自己花在Diem上的心血付诸东流。
由Facebook母公司Meta牵头成立的Diem原本拥有远大的雄心，力图打造一款（稳定币形式的）全球性数字货币，让民众能够轻松、低成本地在全球各地完成支付、汇款操作。2019年，Meta推出了这一雄心勃勃的项目，同时，其他一些公司也组成了一个联盟，以独立团体的形式（Diem协会）对该项目进行监管。
谢赫和程都曾经在Meta旗下负责电子钱包业务的子公司Novi工作，谢赫供职于战略合作部门，而程则是该公司的首席软件工程师，主要负责开发Diem的底层区块链。该项目成立之后可谓历经磨难，多次遭到美国国会的盘问，在监管机构和政界人士的严格审查之下，Diem寸步难行，在两年多的时间里仅仅成功推出了Novi的测试版本。之后不久，Meta加密货币业务的负责人大卫·马库斯就宣布自己将于2021年年底离开公司。在公开亮相之前，该稳定币和Diem的底层区块链已经胎死腹中。（2022年1月，Diem将其知识产权和其他资产打包出售给了Silvergate Bank。）
程说：“纵观我的职业生涯，还没有成功推出过任何产品。”
当被问及Meta是否投资了Aptos Labs时，一位发言人告诉《财富》杂志，由于“仍然有官司在打”，所以不予置评。Aptos Labs告诉《财富》杂志，Aptos和全体员工均未卷入与Meta有关的诉讼。
Aptos Labs并非唯一一家从Diem的废墟中诞生的公司。Mysten Labs同样如此，该初创企业成立于2021年，正在依靠若干Meta前工程师构建Web3基础设施，有一些投资了Aptos的机构对该公司也有投资，a16z就在其列。Mysten Labs的联合创始人及首席执行官埃文·程去年在接受媒体The Information采访时表示，与Aptos一样，Mysten Labs使用的也是Move语言，其目标是进一步提升区块链的处理速度，最终达到每秒处理200000笔交易的水平。
虽然按照谢赫回忆，他是与Meta前同事共同创办了Aptos Labs，但格莱泽告诉了我们一个不同的故事。
对半合伙
在格莱泽及其公司Swoon Capital对谢赫和Matonee, Inc.（Aptos Labs的登记名称）发起的诉讼中，格莱泽声称，2021年夏天，她通过美国伟凯律师事务所（White & Case）的合伙人普拉丁·瓦拉巴内尼认识了谢赫（瓦拉巴内尼拒绝就此事向《财富》杂志发表评论），并通过她的投资公司Swoon Capital于2021年8月以35000美元的酬劳聘请谢赫担任顾问一职，帮助她或她的公司寻找现有区块链，并在既有基础上加以改造，用于在体育、媒体和娱乐等产业开展业务。
格莱泽称，她与谢赫分享了自己的“机密商业计划”。她指出，2021年8月底，谢赫提议修改计划，（从投资其他区块链）转为自主推出全新的区块链，她接受了谢赫的提议，并同意让谢赫在该项目中成为与自己“平起平坐”的合伙人，格莱泽声称，双方同意“将此前的‘咨询合作模式’转为‘合伙成立合资公司’”，并且同意在初始阶段避免使用风险投资代替她投入的资金，以免稀释自己的股权。
格莱泽声称，在双方沟通的过程中，她同意帮助谢赫引进工程师人才，并将把谢赫介绍给自己广泛的人脉网络。据格莱泽在诉讼中提交的来往电子邮件显示，她在与瓦拉巴内尼、谢赫沟通的过程中表示：“我将与谢赫直接合作，一起推进这个项目。”她在提交给法庭的宣誓书中进一步指出，两人同意引入“Meta的首席区块链工程师”程，不过身份并非“共同创始合伙人”，而是“受薪员工”。
但是正如格莱泽声称的那样，谢赫最终没有与其携手，而是从a16z等风投公司处争取到了外部资金，并且自行成立了Matonee, Inc.（格莱泽声称，二人原本同意共同创办这家公司）。她认为，自己“有权”获得这家“区块链技术企业”的合伙人身份，因为遭受谢赫蒙骗才黯然出局，并且声称自己和谢赫有口头协议，双方同意在这家公司中各占50%的股份，同时表示，为使公司各项业务顺利启动，自己原本打算投资1000万美元，并且愿意在必要时投入更多资金，而且还准备从福克斯公司再争取1000万美元的投资（一名福克斯公司的新闻发言人在接受《财富》杂志采访时表示，该集团最终并未投资这家初创公司）。对于《财富》杂志发出的多次置评请求，格莱泽及其律师均未作出回应。
不过谢赫和他的律师认为，撇开其他不谈，即便有口头协议，那也不具备法律效力。根据（谢赫在申请驳回格莱泽诉求时提供的）法庭文件，要想修改谢赫与格莱泽公司签订的咨询合同，必须以书面形式方才具有法律效力（根据附件中提供的合同副本，并不存在此种情况）。谢赫否认有格莱泽所说的那种协议，并在文件中称格莱泽是该公司的“潜在投资者”，而不是“联合创始人”。
在反驳格莱泽的文件中，谢赫提供了他与格莱泽的WhatsApp聊天记录，在对话中谢赫告诉格莱泽，外面会有很多“对新公司很感兴趣”的风投公司，而且1000万美元并不足以启动公司的各项业务，谢赫称，通过这些聊天记录可以看出，即便双方曾经约定不在创业初期引入其他投资者，格莱泽也不可能相信。谢赫进一步声称，格莱泽“打算引入福克斯投资”的证言恰恰说明，她自称有权获得该公司一半股权的说法不足为信，因为无从知晓该集团通过该笔投资将会获得何种类型、数额的股权，又如何做到不稀释格莱泽的所谓股权。
萨马尼在一份电子邮件声明里告诉《财富》杂志，在这场针对谢赫和Aptos的诉讼中，他的公司将会“为谢赫、程、整个Aptos团队和他们的技术提供支持”，他们认为，格莱泽的说法“毫无根据”。
谢赫在给《财富》杂志的一份声明中写道：“相关指控完全站不住脚，处处都是严重错误和漏洞，（格莱泽的）目的就是抢走他人创造的劳动果实。”
该起诉讼目前仍然在进行之中，何时结束无从知晓。但在打官司的同时，谢赫和程也没有放慢自己的脚步，仍然计划在今年晚些时候正式推出Aptos区块链。
企业区块链
直到2021年11月的非同质化代币行业年会NFT.NYC上，程才表示，团队“长期以来一直埋头工作，真正跟外界的接触太少”。
当时程和谢赫还在Meta工作，于是他们带着团队前往非同质化代币创作者、创始人、加密和Web3团体参与的多日论坛。程还记得当时坐在纽约一家酒店房间里，跟团队讨论看到的“酷项目”，也在想如果他们的项目还在，能够为论坛提供哪些贡献。“这次经历让很多人大开眼界，感受也改变了很多，比如，我们如何尽可能为社区做贡献？”
正如谢赫所说，那一周“非常特别，因为团队目睹了丰富的Web3生态，以及生态对此类加密技术的渴望”，具体而言指的是Aptos的区块链。
很大程度上说，新的L1区块链自认为具备几大特点：是更快也更便宜的以太坊（Ethereum）替代品。以太坊是业内根基深厚的领导者，仍然支撑着去中心化金融服务等领域大部分活动，然而使用起来往往又慢又昂贵。Aptos也不例外，尽管联合创始人声称它很快（初创公司表示“正努力”达到每秒100000笔交易，然而截至6月初每秒交易量约为10000笔）。
更重要的问题是，很多L1区块链已经上线也吸引了用户，行业真需要再来一个吗？
“你必须提供跟比特币和以太坊不一样的产品，要么就比现有产品更有趣。”加密研究公司Messari的高级分析师汤姆·邓拉维认为。“你的L1区块链可以带来什么，抢占加密货币市场空白？是不是更去中心化？亦或更快，更便宜？”
只有一件事情他们确定需要？就是名字。谢赫回忆道，他和程见投资人时，还没有找到合适的公司名字，所以把公司称为“XYZ项目”。但早在2022年，谢赫多次动摇后意识到，初创公司要尽快有名字。“有天晚上，我告诉程：‘嘿，来我这里。有个问题必须解决。’”他说，地点在他帕洛阿尔托的公寓，是离开东海岸后到加州协助成立Aptos时刚搬的新居。他回忆道：“大概晚上9点程来了……我燃起壁炉，放了点音乐，点了几根蜡烛，然后一起禅宗冥想。”在浓咖啡帮助下，两人最终想到帕洛阿尔托附近一个城镇的名字Aptos，该词来源于居住在湾区的奥隆部落，意思是“人民”。谢赫说，两人“认为这个名字能够完美体现努力目标。”
公司成立以来，Aptos Labs团队一直明确表示，希望针对企业和大公司进行优化。
“我们希望采用企业级技术的最佳实践，为有兴趣使用新技术的十亿新用户服务。”谢赫告诉《财富》杂志。“如果我们跟大机构合作，就可以轻松找到十亿新用户。”Aptos已经为实现目标奠定了基础。
今年3月，谢赫在宣布Aptos募资的博客中称，包括Anchorage、Binance、Blockorus、Coinbase、Livepeer、Moonclave、Paxos、Paymagic、Rarible和Streaming Fast等数家公司已经开始参与项目并贡献代码。“很多大机构对我们的项目很兴奋，我们也很激动。”谢赫说。
谢赫称，他们正在社交网络、媒体娱乐、游戏和金融（包括传统金融）等关键领域“寻找合作伙伴”。未来可能将区块链整合到流行的社交媒体应用程序中。谢赫表示，希望有一天，Snapchat、推特（Twitter）和Instagram（属于他的前雇主）等开始测试将非同质化代币整合到平台上的公司会使用Aptos区块链。4月该公司还宣布，将与谷歌云（Google Cloud）合作，为其节点基础设施或运行区块链网络的服务器供电。
一些观察人士认为，进军企业圈可能是明智之举。Messari的分析师邓拉维表示，对于该领域很多L1区块链来说，“现在很多真的只是营销游戏。”他认为“企业级区块链用例确实尚未解决”。
程声称，希望所有人都能够使用Aptos区块链。他说，虽然大机构是“版图的关键”，但“公司目标不仅仅是大机构”。
用新语言写代码
5月初，Aptos团队在位于帕洛阿尔托的办公室举办了首届个人黑客竞赛，这是加密领域常见的活动，参与者包括开发者、程序员和创始人，竞赛内容是在区块链上开发项目。
毕业于帕洛阿尔托本地斯坦福大学的杰森·赵就是参与竞赛的开发者之一，之前他曾经在DeepMind和Google X工作，现在是一家尚未公布的Web3初创公司的联合创始人。他表示，自己一直在学习并使用区块链语言，例如Solidity（用于以太坊）和Rust（用于Solana），尽管黑客竞赛中他和其他开发者遇到了一些“怪事”，但对Aptos使用的移动编码语言“印象深刻”，尤其是该区块链还处于早期阶段。
据Aptos Labs介绍，在黑客竞赛期间，杰森·赵和自己的团队参与了一个非同质化代币市场项目，也是竞赛孵化的12个项目之一。
Aptos的区块链还没有白皮书，所以使用权益证明（PoS）模型，公司指出，今年晚些时候推出公链时，该模型将完全开放且无须许可。团队表示，正在努力提升安全性并改善用户体验，尤其是不熟悉加密领域的用户。在私有网络测试中，公司声称可以在不停机情况下更新协议，并表示一致性协议的安全性已经过审核验证。
根据Aptos文件，该区块链设计更安全，能够阻止经常困扰其他加密平台的拒绝服务攻击（DoS）。程表示，目前团队仍然在测试网络，构建区块链时也考虑到日后升级的情况。Aptos Labs尚未推出代币，但谢赫称，已经研究代币经济学相关的各种文件也就是代币供需机制，最终文件即将确认，希望设计出可能情况下“最公平”的代币经济。
Messari公司的研究分析师蔡斯·德文斯表示，区块链与以太坊虚拟机（EVM）不兼容。以太坊虚拟机是在以太坊上创建智能合约的软件，以太坊虚拟机“既是需要克服的障碍”，从竞争角度来看“又有点像护城河”，因为如果Aptos可以吸引开发者使用其语言，就能够将开发者“圈起来”。
至少，杰森·赵之类开发者似乎已经有所体会。“我不敢说精通这门语言，但也不完全像学习新语言。感觉有点熟悉。”他说。
“逆流而上”
毫无疑问，Aptos推出的时机并不理想。2022年，比特币和以太币等头部加密货币从去年11月的高点下跌了60%以上，5月大型算法稳定币TerraUSD和Luna币崩溃，引发市场雪崩。与此同时，广受欢迎的加密借贷平台Celsium Network冻结提款。报道称由于偿还债务困难，公司正准备破产。即便在私人市场，投资者也预测加密初创公司估值下降，不会保持之前让人血脉贲张的水平。
很多人保持怀疑，Messari的德文斯就是其中之一，他说：“最近市场状况不佳，加上加密技术不断发展，对新加入L1区块链竞争的公司来说并不友好。”他通过电子邮件告诉《财富》杂志。“2021年L1区块链之所以繁荣，主要原因是以太坊交易费用过高，以及为了获客推出代币激励活动。”他指出，并补充称“用户对类似稀释活动已经不感兴趣，与此同时以太坊拓展方案也已经起飞。两大问题都会损害新L1区块链系统未来的价值主张。除非L1区块链已经可以自然增长，否则就是逆流而上。”
但谢赫认为，经济低迷可消除不健康的投机炒作，方便团队埋头研发项目。如今该公司仍然要处理10亿美元的诉讼，今年晚些时候Aptos区块链推出运行之前，团队无法对网络安全性和扩展性进行全面测试。
“正式启动后才能遇到挫折。”投资者萨马尼指出，“之前看不出来。我相信会遇到问题。”
目前，他们正在勇往直前。或者，正如萨马尼描述的那样：见鬼去吧，先实现再说。（财富中文网）
译者：梁宇
审校：夏林
坏消息是Diem已经行将就木，好消息是莫·谢赫和埃弗里·程或将给该项目带来新生。
2021年感恩节前一周，在一场会议散会后，二人走出Meta Platforms（原Facebook）位于美国加州门洛帕克的办公室。此时，他们意识到，经过近三年的痛苦和挣扎之后，他们一手塑造、此时深陷困境的加密货币支付网络——Diem（原名Libra）或许能够在Meta之外获得新生。
埃弗里·程，现年42岁，是Diem区块链和Meta加密货币钱包项目的软件工程师，谢赫现年36岁，是Novi的战略合作伙伴项目负责人。此前，二人已经在讨论，一旦监管机构封杀Diem的举动趋于明朗，就将Diem的开源代码库带出Meta并在外部继续开发。而在这场会议之后，谢赫回忆道：“程和我相互看着对方，跟彼此说：‘嘿，我想我们可以开始干了。’”
凯尔·萨马尼是加密货币投资公司Multicoin Capital的联合创始人及执行合伙人。萨马尼称，去年12月初，自己公司的峰会刚刚结束，因为忘了自己跟谢赫二人还约了电话探讨潜在的投资事宜，对方来电时他正在迈阿密的一处游泳池边休息，于是就在那里接起了电话。
谢赫和程向萨玛尼推介了自己正在蓬勃发展的区块链初创公司。萨玛尼回忆道“打完电话，我走到图沙尔（图沙尔·贾殷，Multicoin的联合创始人及执行合伙人）面前，他就坐在6米外”。我向图沙尔介绍了刚刚与这个初创团队（即后来的Aptos Labs）通话的内容进，“听完介绍，他说：‘没问题，这个项目我们投了。’可以说没有丝毫犹豫。”萨马尼回忆道。Multicoin以代币权证（token warrants）形式投入了大量资金。在此类交易中，这种做法颇为常见。Multicoin还投资了Aptos的竞争对手——Solana。
萨马尼回忆道，谢赫和程的推介主要围绕“高效利用Diem代码库并以之为基础开展运营工作”展开，即构建、推出一条“第一层区块链（L1区块链）”。萨马尼认为，Aptos的一大竞争优势在于，其使用的是Meta设计的Move编程语言，在他看来，这种语言“在设计上自成一派，因而也更不容易出现漏洞。”萨马尼说，在Meta为实现该技术付出的努力以失败告终之后，“我很高兴看到他们说：‘去他的，不管Facebook或官方怎么说，我们就是要做成这件事情。’”
作为Aptos的联合创始人，谢赫和程于去年12月正式从Meta离职，目前在这家位于帕洛阿尔托的初创企业分别担任首席执行官和首席技术官的职位，他们雄心勃勃，想要“打造下一个拥有十亿级用户的L1区块链”，不过目前还在努力解决基础问题。虽然现在有许多L1区块链都在致力于降低区块链应用的开发和使用门槛、减少其使用成本，但大多仍然饱受宕机、高昂使用费用和安全漏洞等问题的困扰。Aptos区块链目前处于测试阶段（公开、正式版本预计将于2022年晚些时候推出），其目标是成为一个去中心化的通用区块链（general purpose blockchain）——为非同质化代币（NFT）项目、社交媒体、DeFi（去中心化金融）等领域的开发者提供一种更安全且更具扩展性的基础设施。
拥有科技巨头背景的创始团队，未来可期的顶尖技术，加上刚刚帮助其于今年3月完成新一轮2亿美元融资的加密货币领域顶级风投机构——除Multicoin外，Aptos还吸引到了安德森·霍洛维茨基金（Andreessen Horowitz，又称a16z）、凯蒂·豪恩、老虎环球基金（Tiger Global）、FTX Ventures的投资，Aptos Labs似乎已经具备了许多在区块链领域取得成功所需的要素。据报道，这家初创公司的估值在10亿美元到20亿美元之间，目前约有60名员工（该公司拒绝对其估值予以置评）。
但除了最近几周加密货币市场骤然出现的灾难性下跌外，这家初创企业还面临着另一个更为直接的问题：今年3月初，该公司与公司首席执行官谢赫一起被告上了法庭。发起这场诉讼的是莎莉·格莱泽及其旗下区块链投资公司Swoon Capital。据其指控，谢赫和程并非该初创企业唯一的创始人，相反，作为合作伙伴，她原本与谢赫约定各自拥有该公司50%的权益，因而她有权获得该初创企业一半的“创始人股份”（据她声称，这些股份至少价值10亿美元）。
耿耿于怀
在5月初的一次视频通话中，程和谢赫并排坐着，看起来活力满满：程外形非常干练，但着装比较休闲，而谢赫则留着一头飘逸的灰白头长发。（程开玩笑说，在他第一次见到谢赫本人时，就像去相亲一样：“他的照片看起来非常职业，身着正装，一头短发，亲眼见到他本人时，我感觉挺意外的。”）
如果你问他们如何评价自己，二人会说自己还有对方都是那种非常争强好胜的人。
两人都很喜欢打篮球，据二人介绍，他们周末常去斯坦福大学的校园里与各大区块链公司的球友切磋球技（谢赫提醒说，程“跳投神准，而且特别喜欢展示自己的这项绝技”）。最初，二人只是通过Zoom与对方有所交集，因为据谢赫说，当时他还住在东海岸，2021年年底，二人在Meta工作时才第一次见到对方真人，然后又因球结缘。
在程眼中，他在檀香山的成长经历“愉快而轻松……大家都是把家人和朋友放在首位，每天都在享受生活”。而谢赫的生活则是另一番景象。据谢赫介绍，出生于阿布扎比的他在1990年随家人移民纽约布莱顿海滩，一直在地下室生活，据他说，“那时的自己卑微到了泥土里”。
萨马尼觉得谢赫和程都属于那种“心里憋着一股劲儿的人”，他认为，“对于企业家而言，具有这种特点一般都是好事”，这说明他们俩都不愿意自己花在Diem上的心血付诸东流。
由Facebook母公司Meta牵头成立的Diem原本拥有远大的雄心，力图打造一款（稳定币形式的）全球性数字货币，让民众能够轻松、低成本地在全球各地完成支付、汇款操作。2019年，Meta推出了这一雄心勃勃的项目，同时，其他一些公司也组成了一个联盟，以独立团体的形式（Diem协会）对该项目进行监管。
谢赫和程都曾经在Meta旗下负责电子钱包业务的子公司Novi工作，谢赫供职于战略合作部门，而程则是该公司的首席软件工程师，主要负责开发Diem的底层区块链。该项目成立之后可谓历经磨难，多次遭到美国国会的盘问，在监管机构和政界人士的严格审查之下，Diem寸步难行，在两年多的时间里仅仅成功推出了Novi的测试版本。之后不久，Meta加密货币业务的负责人大卫·马库斯就宣布自己将于2021年年底离开公司。在公开亮相之前，该稳定币和Diem的底层区块链已经胎死腹中。（2022年1月，Diem将其知识产权和其他资产打包出售给了Silvergate Bank。）
程说：“纵观我的职业生涯，还没有成功推出过任何产品。”
当被问及Meta是否投资了Aptos Labs时，一位发言人告诉《财富》杂志，由于“仍然有官司在打”，所以不予置评。Aptos Labs告诉《财富》杂志，Aptos和全体员工均未卷入与Meta有关的诉讼。
Aptos Labs并非唯一一家从Diem的废墟中诞生的公司。Mysten Labs同样如此，该初创企业成立于2021年，正在依靠若干Meta前工程师构建Web3基础设施，有一些投资了Aptos的机构对该公司也有投资，a16z就在其列。Mysten Labs的联合创始人及首席执行官埃文·程去年在接受媒体The Information采访时表示，与Aptos一样，Mysten Labs使用的也是Move语言，其目标是进一步提升区块链的处理速度，最终达到每秒处理200000笔交易的水平。
虽然按照谢赫回忆，他是与Meta前同事共同创办了Aptos Labs，但格莱泽告诉了我们一个不同的故事。
对半合伙
在格莱泽及其公司Swoon Capital对谢赫和Matonee, Inc.（Aptos Labs的登记名称）发起的诉讼中，格莱泽声称，2021年夏天，她通过美国伟凯律师事务所（White & Case）的合伙人普拉丁·瓦拉巴内尼认识了谢赫（瓦拉巴内尼拒绝就此事向《财富》杂志发表评论），并通过她的投资公司Swoon Capital于2021年8月以35000美元的酬劳聘请谢赫担任顾问一职，帮助她或她的公司寻找现有区块链，并在既有基础上加以改造，用于在体育、媒体和娱乐等产业开展业务。
格莱泽称，她与谢赫分享了自己的“机密商业计划”。她指出，2021年8月底，谢赫提议修改计划，（从投资其他区块链）转为自主推出全新的区块链，她接受了谢赫的提议，并同意让谢赫在该项目中成为与自己“平起平坐”的合伙人，格莱泽声称，双方同意“将此前的‘咨询合作模式’转为‘合伙成立合资公司’”，并且同意在初始阶段避免使用风险投资代替她投入的资金，以免稀释自己的股权。
格莱泽声称，在双方沟通的过程中，她同意帮助谢赫引进工程师人才，并将把谢赫介绍给自己广泛的人脉网络。据格莱泽在诉讼中提交的来往电子邮件显示，她在与瓦拉巴内尼、谢赫沟通的过程中表示：“我将与谢赫直接合作，一起推进这个项目。”她在提交给法庭的宣誓书中进一步指出，两人同意引入“Meta的首席区块链工程师”程，不过身份并非“共同创始合伙人”，而是“受薪员工”。
但是正如格莱泽声称的那样，谢赫最终没有与其携手，而是从a16z等风投公司处争取到了外部资金，并且自行成立了Matonee, Inc.（格莱泽声称，二人原本同意共同创办这家公司）。她认为，自己“有权”获得这家“区块链技术企业”的合伙人身份，因为遭受谢赫蒙骗才黯然出局，并且声称自己和谢赫有口头协议，双方同意在这家公司中各占50%的股份，同时表示，为使公司各项业务顺利启动，自己原本打算投资1000万美元，并且愿意在必要时投入更多资金，而且还准备从福克斯公司再争取1000万美元的投资（一名福克斯公司的新闻发言人在接受《财富》杂志采访时表示，该集团最终并未投资这家初创公司）。对于《财富》杂志发出的多次置评请求，格莱泽及其律师均未作出回应。
不过谢赫和他的律师认为，撇开其他不谈，即便有口头协议，那也不具备法律效力。根据（谢赫在申请驳回格莱泽诉求时提供的）法庭文件，要想修改谢赫与格莱泽公司签订的咨询合同，必须以书面形式方才具有法律效力（根据附件中提供的合同副本，并不存在此种情况）。谢赫否认有格莱泽所说的那种协议，并在文件中称格莱泽是该公司的“潜在投资者”，而不是“联合创始人”。
在反驳格莱泽的文件中，谢赫提供了他与格莱泽的WhatsApp聊天记录，在对话中谢赫告诉格莱泽，外面会有很多“对新公司很感兴趣”的风投公司，而且1000万美元并不足以启动公司的各项业务，谢赫称，通过这些聊天记录可以看出，即便双方曾经约定不在创业初期引入其他投资者，格莱泽也不可能相信。谢赫进一步声称，格莱泽“打算引入福克斯投资”的证言恰恰说明，她自称有权获得该公司一半股权的说法不足为信，因为无从知晓该集团通过该笔投资将会获得何种类型、数额的股权，又如何做到不稀释格莱泽的所谓股权。
萨马尼在一份电子邮件声明里告诉《财富》杂志，在这场针对谢赫和Aptos的诉讼中，他的公司将会“为谢赫、程、整个Aptos团队和他们的技术提供支持”，他们认为，格莱泽的说法“毫无根据”。
谢赫在给《财富》杂志的一份声明中写道：“相关指控完全站不住脚，处处都是严重错误和漏洞，（格莱泽的）目的就是抢走他人创造的劳动果实。”
该起诉讼目前仍然在进行之中，何时结束无从知晓。但在打官司的同时，谢赫和程也没有放慢自己的脚步，仍然计划在今年晚些时候正式推出Aptos区块链。
企业区块链
直到2021年11月的非同质化代币行业年会NFT.NYC上，程才表示，团队“长期以来一直埋头工作，真正跟外界的接触太少”。
当时程和谢赫还在Meta工作，于是他们带着团队前往非同质化代币创作者、创始人、加密和Web3团体参与的多日论坛。程还记得当时坐在纽约一家酒店房间里，跟团队讨论看到的“酷项目”，也在想如果他们的项目还在，能够为论坛提供哪些贡献。“这次经历让很多人大开眼界，感受也改变了很多，比如，我们如何尽可能为社区做贡献？”
正如谢赫所说，那一周“非常特别，因为团队目睹了丰富的Web3生态，以及生态对此类加密技术的渴望”，具体而言指的是Aptos的区块链。
很大程度上说，新的L1区块链自认为具备几大特点：是更快也更便宜的以太坊（Ethereum）替代品。以太坊是业内根基深厚的领导者，仍然支撑着去中心化金融服务等领域大部分活动，然而使用起来往往又慢又昂贵。Aptos也不例外，尽管联合创始人声称它很快（初创公司表示“正努力”达到每秒100000笔交易，然而截至6月初每秒交易量约为10000笔）。
更重要的问题是，很多L1区块链已经上线也吸引了用户，行业真需要再来一个吗？
“你必须提供跟比特币和以太坊不一样的产品，要么就比现有产品更有趣。”加密研究公司Messari的高级分析师汤姆·邓拉维认为。“你的L1区块链可以带来什么，抢占加密货币市场空白？是不是更去中心化？亦或更快，更便宜？”
只有一件事情他们确定需要？就是名字。谢赫回忆道，他和程见投资人时，还没有找到合适的公司名字，所以把公司称为“XYZ项目”。但早在2022年，谢赫多次动摇后意识到，初创公司要尽快有名字。“有天晚上，我告诉程：‘嘿，来我这里。有个问题必须解决。’”他说，地点在他帕洛阿尔托的公寓，是离开东海岸后到加州协助成立Aptos时刚搬的新居。他回忆道：“大概晚上9点程来了……我燃起壁炉，放了点音乐，点了几根蜡烛，然后一起禅宗冥想。”在浓咖啡帮助下，两人最终想到帕洛阿尔托附近一个城镇的名字Aptos，该词来源于居住在湾区的奥隆部落，意思是“人民”。谢赫说，两人“认为这个名字能够完美体现努力目标。”
公司成立以来，Aptos Labs团队一直明确表示，希望针对企业和大公司进行优化。
“我们希望采用企业级技术的最佳实践，为有兴趣使用新技术的十亿新用户服务。”谢赫告诉《财富》杂志。“如果我们跟大机构合作，就可以轻松找到十亿新用户。”Aptos已经为实现目标奠定了基础。
今年3月，谢赫在宣布Aptos募资的博客中称，包括Anchorage、Binance、Blockorus、Coinbase、Livepeer、Moonclave、Paxos、Paymagic、Rarible和Streaming Fast等数家公司已经开始参与项目并贡献代码。“很多大机构对我们的项目很兴奋，我们也很激动。”谢赫说。
谢赫称，他们正在社交网络、媒体娱乐、游戏和金融（包括传统金融）等关键领域“寻找合作伙伴”。未来可能将区块链整合到流行的社交媒体应用程序中。谢赫表示，希望有一天，Snapchat、推特（Twitter）和Instagram（属于他的前雇主）等开始测试将非同质化代币整合到平台上的公司会使用Aptos区块链。4月该公司还宣布，将与谷歌云（Google Cloud）合作，为其节点基础设施或运行区块链网络的服务器供电。
一些观察人士认为，进军企业圈可能是明智之举。Messari的分析师邓拉维表示，对于该领域很多L1区块链来说，“现在很多真的只是营销游戏。”他认为“企业级区块链用例确实尚未解决”。
程声称，希望所有人都能够使用Aptos区块链。他说，虽然大机构是“版图的关键”，但“公司目标不仅仅是大机构”。
用新语言写代码
5月初，Aptos团队在位于帕洛阿尔托的办公室举办了首届个人黑客竞赛，这是加密领域常见的活动，参与者包括开发者、程序员和创始人，竞赛内容是在区块链上开发项目。
毕业于帕洛阿尔托本地斯坦福大学的杰森·赵就是参与竞赛的开发者之一，之前他曾经在DeepMind和Google X工作，现在是一家尚未公布的Web3初创公司的联合创始人。他表示，自己一直在学习并使用区块链语言，例如Solidity（用于以太坊）和Rust（用于Solana），尽管黑客竞赛中他和其他开发者遇到了一些“怪事”，但对Aptos使用的移动编码语言“印象深刻”，尤其是该区块链还处于早期阶段。
据Aptos Labs介绍，在黑客竞赛期间，杰森·赵和自己的团队参与了一个非同质化代币市场项目，也是竞赛孵化的12个项目之一。
Aptos的区块链还没有白皮书，所以使用权益证明（PoS）模型，公司指出，今年晚些时候推出公链时，该模型将完全开放且无须许可。团队表示，正在努力提升安全性并改善用户体验，尤其是不熟悉加密领域的用户。在私有网络测试中，公司声称可以在不停机情况下更新协议，并表示一致性协议的安全性已经过审核验证。
根据Aptos文件，该区块链设计更安全，能够阻止经常困扰其他加密平台的拒绝服务攻击（DoS）。程表示，目前团队仍然在测试网络，构建区块链时也考虑到日后升级的情况。Aptos Labs尚未推出代币，但谢赫称，已经研究代币经济学相关的各种文件也就是代币供需机制，最终文件即将确认，希望设计出可能情况下“最公平”的代币经济。
Messari公司的研究分析师蔡斯·德文斯表示，区块链与以太坊虚拟机（EVM）不兼容。以太坊虚拟机是在以太坊上创建智能合约的软件，以太坊虚拟机“既是需要克服的障碍”，从竞争角度来看“又有点像护城河”，因为如果Aptos可以吸引开发者使用其语言，就能够将开发者“圈起来”。
至少，杰森·赵之类开发者似乎已经有所体会。“我不敢说精通这门语言，但也不完全像学习新语言。感觉有点熟悉。”他说。
“逆流而上”
毫无疑问，Aptos推出的时机并不理想。2022年，比特币和以太币等头部加密货币从去年11月的高点下跌了60%以上，5月大型算法稳定币TerraUSD和Luna币崩溃，引发市场雪崩。与此同时，广受欢迎的加密借贷平台Celsium Network冻结提款。报道称由于偿还债务困难，公司正准备破产。即便在私人市场，投资者也预测加密初创公司估值下降，不会保持之前让人血脉贲张的水平。
很多人保持怀疑，Messari的德文斯就是其中之一，他说：“最近市场状况不佳，加上加密技术不断发展，对新加入L1区块链竞争的公司来说并不友好。”他通过电子邮件告诉《财富》杂志。“2021年L1区块链之所以繁荣，主要原因是以太坊交易费用过高，以及为了获客推出代币激励活动。”他指出，并补充称“用户对类似稀释活动已经不感兴趣，与此同时以太坊拓展方案也已经起飞。两大问题都会损害新L1区块链系统未来的价值主张。除非L1区块链已经可以自然增长，否则就是逆流而上。”
但谢赫认为，经济低迷可消除不健康的投机炒作，方便团队埋头研发项目。如今该公司仍然要处理10亿美元的诉讼，今年晚些时候Aptos区块链推出运行之前，团队无法对网络安全性和扩展性进行全面测试。
“正式启动后才能遇到挫折。”投资者萨马尼指出，“之前看不出来。我相信会遇到问题。”
目前，他们正在勇往直前。或者，正如萨马尼描述的那样：见鬼去吧，先实现再说。（财富中文网）
译者：梁宇
审校：夏林
The bad news? Diem was dying. The good news? Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching saw a way they could give it an afterlife.
It was the week before Thanksgiving in 2021, and the pair recall walking out of a meeting at the offices of Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, in Menlo Park, Calif., and realizing that after a fraught nearly three years, the project they had been working on—Meta’s embattled crypto payments network, Diem, previously called Libra—could perhaps find new life outside the social media giant.
The duo (Ching, 42, a software engineer working on the Diem blockchain and Meta’s crypto wallet, Novi, and Shaikh, 36, who led strategic partnerships at Novi) had already been discussing taking the open-source codebase of Diem out of Meta and building it out externally once it was clear regulators would squash Diem. And following that meeting, “Avery and I looked at each other…and we said, ‘Wow, I think we just got the green light’” to build the blockchain outside, recounts Shaikh.
By early December, Kyle Samani, the managing partner and cofounder of crypto-focused investment firm Multicoin Capital, recalls relaxing by the pool in Miami after his firm’s summit had just wrapped up. Samani says he forgot he had a call scheduled with a couple of founders to pitch a prospective investment—but, poolside, he hopped on the phone.
Shaikh and Ching pitched their burgeoning blockchain startup to Samani, and “after the phone call was over, I walked over to Tushar [Jain, cofounder and managing partner at Multicoin], who was, like, sitting 20 feet away,” and explained the conversation he just had with the team at what would later be called Aptos Labs, Samani recalls. “And [Jain] was like, ‘All right, we’re in. Let’s go.’ It was a very fast decision,” Samani recounts. Multicoin chipped in a chunk of cash (they invested in equity with token warrants, which is a common structure for such deals. Samani declined to provide the size of their investment). Multicoin is also invested in rival blockchain Solana.
Shaikh and Ching’s pitch was effectively taking the Diem codebase “and running with it,” recalls Samani, which meant building and launching a layer one, or L1, blockchain. He believes a competitive differentiator for Aptos is the Move coding language that it uses, designed at Meta, which he considers to be “very opinionated in how it’s designed, and it’s meant to make it harder to have bugs, quite frankly.” And after the failure of bringing the technology to life at Meta, “I love the fact that they said, ‘Fuck this,’ like, ‘I don’t care what Facebook and the government says, we’re gonna go make it happen,’” says Samani.
Aptos’s cofounders Shaikh and Ching—who officially left Meta in December and are now CEO and CTO of the Palo Alto–based startup, respectively—espouse a grandiose vision of “building a L1 for the next billion users”—but they’re trying to solve a basic problem. Despite numerous layer one blockchains working on making crypto applications easier and cheaper to build and use, many of the current options still come with outages, high fees, and security vulnerabilities. The Aptos blockchain, currently in a testing phase (the public, and live, version is expected to launch later in 2022), is aimed at being a decentralized, general purpose blockchain—a safer and more scalable base for builders of things like NFT projects, social media, and DeFi, or decentralized finance.
With ex–Big Tech founders, promising technology, and the top VC backers in crypto (in addition to Multicoin, the startup also attracted Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, Katie Haun, Tiger Global, FTX Ventures, and others) to raise its March $200 million round, Aptos Labs appears to have many of the ingredients for a recipe for success in the space. The startup raised funds at a valuation that’s reportedly between $1 billion and $2 billion, and currently has about 60 employees (the company declined to comment on its valuation).
But in addition to the rapid and disastrous descent of the crypto market over recent weeks, the startup is facing another, more direct problem: In early March, the company and CEO Shaikh were hit with a hefty lawsuit. Shari Glazer, an entrepreneur and philanthropist whose family is the Glazer family, which owns NFL team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and English football club Manchester United, claims along with her firm Swoon Capital that Shaikh and Ching weren’t the only founders of the startup. Instead of Ching, she claims, she was a “50/50” partner with Shaikh in the venture, entitled to half the startup’s “founder’s shares” in equity—what she claims is at least $1 billion.
A chip on their shoulder
On a video call in early May, Ching and Shaikh look very dynamic sitting side by side: Ching is fairly clean-cut, but casual; Shaikh sports a voluminous head of flowing gray hair (Ching jokes that when he first met Shaikh in person, it was like going on a blind date: “He has professional pictures, like a suit and short hair, and I met him in person, [and] I was very surprised.”).
If you ask them, the pair describe themselves, and each other, as competitive.
The duo share a love of basketball: They say they play a pickup game at the Stanford campus on weekends with other basketball enthusiasts at blockchain companies (Shaikh warns that Ching “has an amazing jump shot, and he’s not afraid to show it”). The two initially bonded over the sport when they first met in person in late 2021 while working at Meta, after only seeing each other over Zoom, since Shaikh says he was living on the East Coast at the time.
Ching describes his upbringing in Honolulu as “very relaxed…It was all about prioritizing family and friends and taking time to just enjoy life,” he says. Shaikh, meanwhile, says he was born in Abu Dhabi, and that his family immigrated in 1990 to Brighton Beach, New York, where Shaikh claims he grew up “quite humbly in a basement apartment.”
According to Samani, Shaikh and Ching have a “chip on [their] shoulder,” he says. “When you can sense that in an entrepreneur, it’s usually a very good sign,” he posits. In practice that meant neither was prepared to see the work they had done on the Diem project go to waste.
Diem, spearheaded by Facebook parent Meta, was envisioned as a global digital currency (in the form of a stablecoin) that would enable people to easily and inexpensively make payments and send money around the world. Meta announced the bold project in 2019, which was overseen by a consortium of other companies as an independent group (the Diem Association).
Shaikh and Ching both worked on the digital wallet unit, Novi, which was a subsidiary of Meta, with Shaikh working on strategic partnerships and Ching serving as a principal software engineer, focused largely on the underlying Diem blockchain. After over two years of setbacks and grilling at Congress, the project, thwarted by regulators’ and politicians’ scrutiny, had only managed to launch a pilot version of Novi. Shortly after, David Marcus, the executive who had spearheaded Meta’s crypto efforts, declared he was leaving the company by the end of 2021. The stablecoin and the underlying Diem blockchain never publicly debuted. (Diem sold its intellectual property and other assets to Silvergate Bank in January of 2022.)
“I’ve never not launched a product [before], no matter what thing I’ve been a part of,” Ching says.
When asked whether Meta invested in Aptos Labs, a spokesperson told Fortune the company could not comment due to an "ongoing legal matter." Aptos Labs told Fortune that neither Aptos nor anyone at the startup was currently involved in litigation with Meta.
Aptos Labs isn’t the only company born out of the carnage of the Diem project. Mysten Labs, a startup that’s building Web3 infrastructure from some fellow ex-Meta engineers, was founded in 2021 and also garnered backing from some of Aptos’s investors like a16z. Like Aptos, Mysten Labs uses the Move language and is targeting speed with its blockchain: a goal of over 200,000 transactions per second, cofounder and CEO Evan Cheng told The Information last year.
But while CEO Shaikh recounts dreaming up Aptos Labs with his cofounder and fellow Meta colleagues, Glazer remembers a different story.
50/50 partners
According to her and her firm Swoon Capital’s lawsuit against Shaikh and Matonee, Inc. (the legal name for Aptos Labs), Glazer claims she met Shaikh through White & Case law partner Pratin Vallabhaneni in the summer of 2021, per Glazer’s deposition transcript (Vallabhaneni declined to comment to Fortune), and, through her investment firm, Swoon Capital, hired Shaikh as a consultant in August of 2021 to help her or her firm find existing blockchains to acquire to repurpose for sports, media, and entertainment endeavors, for $35,000 in payment, per the complaint.
Glazer says she shared her "confidential business plans" with Shaikh. Glazer alleges that at the end of August, Shaikh proposed that they modify the plan and instead launch a new blockchain, and she agreed to make Shaikh an “equal” partner in the endeavor, alleging they agreed to “change their consulting arrangement into a partnership in the Venture.” She alleges they agreed to initially eschew venture investing in lieu of funding she would put up because it would dilute her equity.
She claims that she agreed to help Shaikh secure engineers to join the venture, and that she would introduce Shaikh to her “extensive” network. According to what Glazer submitted as an email chain shared in the lawsuit, where Glazer communicated with Vallabhaneni and included Shaikh, Glazer described it as something “Mo and I are going to partner on…directly and do it together.” She further alleges in an affidavit filed for the lawsuit that the pair agreed to bring on “Meta’s lead blockchain engineer,” Ching, as a “salaried employee” and not a “co-founding partner.”
But, as Glazer alleges, Shaikh instead sought external funding from VCs including a16z, and incorporated Matonee, Inc. without her (she alleges they agreed to incorporate it together). She alleges Shaikh cheated her out of her “rightful share” of a partnership in a “blockchain technology venture,” claiming that she and Shaikh had an oral agreement that they were to be “50/50 partners” in the venture, and that she would initially contribute $10 million, or more if necessary, and secure an additional $10 million in financing from Fox (a Fox spokesperson told Fortune the conglomerate didn’t end up investing in the startup), per documents attached to the lawsuit, to get the project off the ground. Glazer and her lawyers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
However, Shaikh and his lawyers argue that, among other things, an oral agreement wouldn’t legally hold up. According to the court filings (Shaikh filed to dismiss Glazer’s lawsuit), Shaikh’s consulting contract could only be legally amended in writing (which it was not, according to a copy submitted as an exhibit). Shaikh denies there was such an agreement as Glazer described, and in filings describes Glazer as a prospective investor in the venture, not a cofounder.
In what his filing says are WhatsApp messages with Glazer submitted in the filing to dismiss the complaint, Shaikh told Glazer of various venture investors who “would be very interested,” and told Glazer that $10 million “won’t be enough” to get the project off the ground, arguing that she could not have believed that they had an agreement not to bring on other investors early on. He further claims that the alleged investment from Fox puts Glazer’s allegation of being owed an equal share of the equity in the startup into question, as it’s unclear what type or amount of equity the conglomerate would have obtained for its investment that would not dilute her share.
Of the lawsuit against Shaikh and Aptos, Multicoin’s Samani says his firm stands “behind Mo, Avery, the entire Aptos team, and their technology,” and that they believe Glazer’s claims “are without merit,” he told Fortune in an emailed statement.
In a statement to Fortune, Shaikh wrote the “allegations are filled with material inaccuracies and mischaracterizations that attempt to take credit for the work of others.”
The lawsuit is ongoing, and the timeline is murky. But as they fight the litigation, Shaikh and Ching aren’t slowing down their plans to launch the Aptos blockchain later this year.
The enterprise blockchain
Up until NFT.NYC in November of 2021, Ching says the team had been “building heads down for a long time and not really engaging very much with the outside” community.
Still working for Meta, Ching and Shaikh took their team to the multiday gathering of NFT creators, founders, and crypto and Web3 groups, and Ching remembers sitting in a hotel room in New York talking with the team about all the “cool projects” they were seeing and wondering what they could bring to the space if their project was live. “It was definitely an eye-opening experience for many of us. That changed a lot of our feelings in terms of, like, how do we best affect this community?”
As Shaikh claims, that week proved “really special because it showed our team how rich the Web3 ecosystem is and how desperate it is for this type of technology,” referring to Aptos’s blockchain.
For the most part, new L1s have billed themselves as one of a handful of things: mainly, faster and cheaper alternatives to Ethereum, the entrenched leader that still underpins the majority of activity in areas like DeFi, but which is often slow and expensive to use. Aptos is no exception, as its cofounders claim it will be fast (the startup says it’s already “on our way” to 100,000 transactions per second, though as of early June, it was doing about 10,000).
But the bigger question is, with many L1s already live and gaining users, does the space really need another one?
“You have to be something different or something more interesting than Bitcoin and Ethereum [are] right now,” argues Tom Dunleavy, senior research analyst at crypto research firm Messari. “What does your L1 bring to the table that tries to occupy the rest of whatever crypto’s market cap is? You know, is it going to be more decentralized? Is it going to be faster, is it going to be cheaper?”
One thing they knew they needed? A name. When meeting with investors Shaikh and Ching say they didn’t yet have a proper name, so the pair were calling the venture “Project XYZ,” Shaikh recalls. But early in 2022, Shaikh realized that after much back and forth, the startup needed a name ASAP. “I told Avery one night, ‘Hey, man, you just got to come over to my place. We gotta knock this out,’” he says, referring to his apartment in Palo Alto, which he says he just moved into after leaving the East Coast to help set up Aptos in California. He recalls Ching came over “around 9 p.m. or so…I lit the fireplace, played some music in the background, [lit] some candles, and we went into our zen mode.” With the help of some highly caffeinated drinks, the pair say they eventually arrived at Aptos, the name of a town near Palo Alto that was named after a word from the Ohlone tribes, who lived in the Bay Area, that meant “the people.” Shaikh says they “thought this was the perfect meaning for what we’re trying to achieve.”
Since its inception, the Aptos Labs team has been fairly explicit that it wants to be optimized for enterprises and large companies.
“We want to take the best practices of enterprise grade technology but apply it for the next billion users that are interested in using this technology,” Shaikh told Fortune. “If we collaborate with these larger institutions, we can meet the next billion users where they are.” Aptos is already laying the groundwork for that to take shape.
In his blog post announcing Aptos’s fundraise in March, Shaikh says several companies including Anchorage, Binance, Blockorus, Coinbase, Livepeer, Moonclave, Paxos, Paymagic, Rarible, and Streaming Fast were already engaging with the startup and contributing code. “We’re very excited about a lot of the large institutions being excited about us,” Shaikh said.
Shaikh says they are “pursuing partnerships” in key areas like social networks, media and entertainment, gaming, and finance (including traditional finance, or TradFi, they say). That could include incorporating the blockchain into popular social media apps: Shaikh says he hopes the likes of Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram (owned by his former employer), which is starting to test integrating NFTs into its platform, would use the Aptos blockchain someday. The startup also announced in April it would work with Google Cloud to help power its node infrastructure, or the computer servers that run blockchain networks.
Leaning into enterprise may be a smart move, some observers suggest. For the many L1s in the space, Messari analyst Dunleavy argues, “Right now, you're seeing it’s really a marketing game.” And he suggests the “enterprise level blockchain use case really still hasn’t been solved” yet.
Ching declares they want everyone to use the Aptos blockchain. While large institutions are “key to the picture,” he says, it’s “not just these large institutions.”
Writing in another language
In early May, the Aptos team hosted their first in-person hackathon at their office in Palo Alto—a common type of event in the crypto space that gathers developers, programmers, and founders to work on projects on a blockchain.
Among those developers was Jason Zhao, a Palo Alto–based Stanford graduate who previously worked at DeepMind and Google X, and is now the cofounder of a yet-to-be announced Web3 startup. He says he’s been learning and working with blockchain languages like Solidity (used for Ethereum) and Rust (used with Solana), and though he and his fellow developers came across some “quirks” during the hackathon, he was “impressed” by the Move coding language Aptos uses, “especially given that it’s so early stage.”
During the hackathon, Zhao says his team worked on an NFT marketplace project—one of 12 projects that came out of the event, according to Aptos Labs.
Aptos’s blockchain, which still doesn’t have a white paper, uses a delegated proof of stake (PoS) model, and the company says it will be fully open and permissionless when they launch the public blockchain later this year. The team says it's working to make it safe, to improve user experience especially for those who aren’t native to the crypto space. In testing on a private network, the startup claims it’s been able to update the protocol with no downtime, and says its consensus protocol’s safety has been audited and verified.
Per Aptos’s documents, the blockchain is designed to be more secure, which could help prevent things like denial of service attacks (DoS), something that’s plagued other crypto platforms. So far, Ching says, the team is testing the network, and has built the blockchain with upgrading in mind. Aptos Labs also hasn’t launched a token yet, but Shaikh says they’ve looked at various documents for tokenomics, or the supply and demand dynamics of a token, and are finalizing them, planning to design the “most fair” tokenomics possible.
The blockchain isn’t compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), the software used to create smart contracts on Ethereum, which is “both an obstacle to overcome” and “kind of like a moat for them” competition-wise, according to Messari research analyst Chase Devens, because if Aptos is able to attract developers to use their language, it will have them “fenced in there.”
At least some developers, like Zhao, seem to be getting the hang of Move. “I wouldn’t say I’m a master of it, but it wasn’t completely like learning a new language. It felt, like, sort of familiar,” he notes.
“Swimming upstream”
But there’s no mincing words: Aptos’s timing is less than ideal. Top coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum are down well over 60% so far in 2022 from their highs in November, and big algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and token Luna collapsed in May, triggering a meltdown. Popular crypto lending platform Celsius Network, meanwhile, froze withdrawals and is reportedly preparing for potential bankruptcy as it struggles to repay its debts. Even in the private markets, investors are predicting crypto startup valuations will cool off from their nosebleed levels.
There are plenty of skeptics like Messari’s Devens, who notes that the “recent market conditions, coupled with technical developments within crypto, have been unfriendly to newer L1 competitors,” he told Fortune via email. “Most of the 2021 L1 boom was driven by Ethereum’s high transaction fees and token incentive campaigns for customer acquisition,” he noted, adding that “the appetite for these dilutive campaigns has dried up, and Ethereum’s scaling solutions are beginning to take off. Both of these hurt the value proposition for new L1 systems going forward. Unless your L1 has already established organic activity, you’re swimming upstream.”
But Shaikh believes the downturn will weed out unhealthy speculation and hype, and allow them to work heads-down on their project. The startup is still dealing with the $1 billion lawsuit, and until the Aptos blockchain is public and running later this year, the team won’t get a full test of just how secure and scalable its network actually is.
“The bumps come after you launch,” notes investor Samani, “not before. I’m sure there will be problems.”
For now, they're charging ahead. Or, as Samani might describe it: F--k this, let’s go make it happen.
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