Aptos and Solana: Decoding the 
Best Blockchain for Your Needs

 

Have you been wondering about Aptos vs Solana for your blockchain project? How do they rank among the top choices for smart contract development? This post will compare the architectural choices, specifications, and developer experiences of the two blockchains.

 

Aptos Blockchain

Silicon Valley innovators Avery Ching and Mo Saikh founded Aptos, a Layer-1 blockchain, in October 2022. Since its inception, many have called Aptos a “Solana Killer”. People title it this while pointing to Aptos’ better security, backward compatibility, and maintainability over its rival blockchain, Solana. That said, a developer must consider more than just these factors when choosing which blockchain to work with.

I first came across the Aptos Blockchain through a YouTube video titled something like, “NEW SOLANA KILLER: APTOS BLOCKCHAIN”. This bold headline fired up my inner degen so I had to click. So began my journey in understanding the Aptos vs Solana battle. The video explained this new blockchain with crazy initial funding (USD 350 million), Silicon Valley connections, and technological feats that Solana couldn’t match. After my initial intro to this new blockchain, I looked into its subreddit page. Here, I was exposed to its smart contract programming language, Move.

 

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Move Programming Language

Move is a programming language derived from Rust, developed by Meta’s Diem blockchain. The programming language is very developer-friendly. It is the primary smart contract programming language for several blockchains including Aptos and Sui. 

In addition to this, from talking to our senior blockchain developers who have worked with Move, I learned that the Move programming language is more efficient, easier to pick up, and safer to experiment with. Unlike Rust, Move allows you to define assets as resources tied to an owner’s account. This means devs can define ownership and access controls over assets. To simplify, when someone interacts with a contract, it stores the results under the owner's account. The benefit of this is that it could help prevent the manipulation and exploitation of contracts on other various blockchains. This can make the smart contract development process overall more safe and secure.

 

 

Solana Blockchain

In 2024, Solana gained notoriety for its surging prices, memecoins, smart contracts, and a vast NFT ecosystem. Anatoly Yakovenko and his team launched the Solana blockchain four years ago, aiming to address scalability issues plaguing other blockchains. Solana provides developers with a robust, efficient infrastructure for diverse blockchain applications. Its scalable architecture handles thousands of transactions per second while its focus on scalability, speed, and affordability makes it a promising blockchain solution.

As a sales development representative at EastCode Blockchain Labs, I placed thousands of calls to Web3 companies globally. Out of those projects, only one considered migrating to the Aptos blockchain and using Move for their project. This comparison to some might seem unfair, but it demonstrates the disparity in users and project enrichment in the battle between Aptos vs Solana.

It’s worth mentioning that Solana’s smart contract programming language Rust is notoriously difficult to learn and develop with. If you don’t have a Rust developer on your team, contracting one will be very costly. This is because there is a lack of people looking to specialize and build in this difficult-to-learn language. 

Aptos vs Solana

Conclusion

Solana has far more users and a much richer ecosystem than Aptos. That said, Aptos is making massive moves. Solana projects are migrating to their blockchain, enticed by an easier smart contract language and abundant funding opportunities.


At the end of the day, the decision between Aptos vs Solana will come down to the wants and needs of your team. Aptos offers easier development and potential funding support for builders opting to work with them. It may be harder for your project to get good traction due to the lack of users. Conversely, Solana presents ample adoption opportunities amidst a bustling and saturated landscape. Solana development costs are high due to Rust's complexity and the scarcity of skilled Rust developers available.

 

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