Starcoin: First Move-based Web3 Infrastructure

* By Starcoin community

Significant benefits, Move ecology ushers in new progress

The blockchain industry has been moving forward at a rapid pace, especially in the last few years with the rapid rise of DeFi. Move, known for its security, is the very smart contract language tailored for DeFi and NFT, absorbing experience and lessons learned from real contract vulnerabilities and making contract applications a big step forward in the direction of security.

In less than 3 years since its launch, Move has matured. the Move ecosystem has been revitalized and several well-known public chains have supported or plan to support Move:

• Diem, the first Public Permissioned Chain to use Move as a smart contract language
• Starcoin, the first Permissionless Public Chain using Move as a smart contract language, and the first DeFi practitioner based on Move
• Public chains such as Pontem and 0L also use Move, and public chains such as Flow and Near have announced that they will support Move too

The public chains led by Starcoin have completed the layout of DeFi, NFT, and other fields using the natural advantages of Move (more on this later), and created a complete Move ecology.

According to the news, Aptos, a new public chain established by Diem’s original team members, has completed $200 million strategic financings and joined with a strong valuation of $2 billion. This will undoubtedly inject new energy and power into the Move ecosystem. This is a very significant benefit for the entire Move ecosystem, including Starcoin.

Starcoin’s all-round efforts to solve the pain points of the industry

Throughout the development of blockchain, the public chain, as the underlying infrastructure of the blockchain industry, faces many difficulties and pain points, the most typical one being the Impossible Trinity. How to solve these difficulties and pain points and create a high-speed and scalable Web3 platform, different public chains provide different solution ideas. What kind of design ideas do each of Starcoin and Aptos, public chains that also use Move as a smart contract language, have?

Let’s start with a brief analysis of Aptos’ route from the latest news officially disclosed by Aptos.

• TPS has long been the most important issue plaguing the industry. Aptos uses BFT consensus, a very efficient Hotstuff algorithm, to reach consensus quickly between nodes, thus achieving an increase in TPS.
• High Gas fees are one of the most significant problems in the DeFi era, and Aptos’ BFT consensus can significantly improve TPS, largely avoiding network congestion and thus high Gas fees.
• Time-to-finality (TTF) is the pain point that users can perceive, and the long waiting time reduces the user experience. Aptos, with the advantage of BFT consensus, reaches consensus quickly in the whole network, reduces the uplink time, reduces the user waiting, and improves the user experience very well.
• The high-security threshold and frequent security vulnerabilities are also major pain points for DeFi. Aptos uses Move, a secure and flexible smart contract language, which not only lowers the security threshold for developers but also solves most of the common security vulnerabilities, allowing the security of smart contracts to reach a new level.

The above is a little explanation of Aptos’ design thinking. In the face of these industry pain points, what is Starcoin’s thought process? Let’s briefly analyze Starcoin’s route.

• The industry currently has two ideas to improve TPS, one is to optimize consensus, the other is layering. starcoin is a layered network and also a proponent of PoW consensus. Starcoin makes Layer1 achieve a high TPS by optimizing PoW, and then improves TPS in scenarios such as micropayments through Layer2.
• Starcoin also provides two ideas to reduce Gas fees. Layer2 inherently has very low Gas fees, which is the same idea of public chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In addition, Starcoin supports different types of Tokens to pay Gas fees, which is also a good way to reduce Gas fees.
• Starcoin is an enhanced PoW consensus that can detect the congestion of the network by itself and dynamically adjust the mining difficulty, thus shortening the block-out time and greatly improving the user experience. Meanwhile, for scenarios such as micropayments, Starcoin’s Layer2 allows users to wait almost no longer through state channels and other means.
• In terms of security, Starcoin and Aptos share the same concept of security. Especially in the DeFi scenario, Starcoin’s mainnet is already online with multiple tracks of Move applications and is a deep practitioner of secure DeFi.

Comparing Aptos and Starcoin, there is the same security philosophy, and both use Move as a smart contract language. Analyzed from other perspectives, the design ideas of Aptos and Starcoin are again very different and each has its advantages. This difference in underlying design will eventually lead to differences in upper layer application scenarios that complement each other.

The blockchain track is vast, with many public chains from Bitcoin’s Script to EVM. The Move ecology also has multiple public chains, all with very clear positioning:

• Diem, stablecoin platform, permission network
• Starcoin, secure DeFi, layered, permissionless network, Web3 infrastructure
• Aptos, secure, production-ready, Web3 infrastructure
• Pontem, Polkadot parallel chain

We see that each public chain in the Move ecosystem has its own clear and precise positioning, which is essentially a community consensus. This difference in positioning and difference in consensus will give rise to different applications and ultimately serve different groups. Inevitably, more forces will join the Move ecology in the future, such as the aforementioned Flow. This differentiation will only make the Move ecology more prosperous and ultimately benefit everyone in the Move ecology.

Nowadays, the cross-chain bridge technology is quite mature, and the future will be a situation of multi-chain coexistence, not only Move ecology but also Move ecology and EVM ecology will co-exist, complement each other and develop together for a long time. Therefore, for public chains, it is important to find their positioning, play their advantages, and work together with peers to solve pain points and serve users.

Starcoin, the first deep practitioner of Move-based Web3

As we all know, Starcoin calls for secure DeFi and strives to be the leader of secure DeFi. Compared to other smart contract languages, Move has better security and strives to secure contracts and lower the security threshold for developers using Resource-oriented programming and Formal Verification.

Since the launch of the mainnet on May 18, 2021, Starcoin has been running stably and is completely decentralized. To date, in less than a year, the Starcoin ecosystem has completed several major upgrades.

• Establishing a complete Starcoin public chain ecology, including a blockchain explorer, hardware wallet, browser plug-in wallet, Faucet, SDK, etc.
• Building a solid DeFi infrastructure, including the development of a standard Token protocol and NFT protocol, the provision of Oracle services, DAO, Airdrop, etc.
• To build a mature DeFi ecosystem, Starcoin is the first to achieve breakthroughs in multiple tracks based on Move, including IDO, DEX, NFT, Bridge, Stablecoin, etc.

As the first public chain to eat crabs, here are some important practices Starcoin ecology has done based on Move.

• Move’s Resource type is inherently NFT, which cannot be copied and dropped. So for the NFT track, Starcoin has developed an official standard NFT protocol to make NFT secure, and free to combine. There are already several NFT applications in the Starcoin ecosystem, such as Cyber Rare, KikoVerse, etc.
• Swap is the cornerstone of liquidity, and Move is the protective coat of capital security. The combination of Move and Swap allows funds to flow safely. Several Swap applications implemented based on Move are strongly present in the Starcoin ecosystem, such as Kikoswap, Starswap, etc., providing liquidity for on-chain assets.
• In the Stablecoin track, Move can also play a secure role. Several Move-implemented applications are already or will soon be launched on the Starcoin mainnet, such as WEN, FAI, etc.

As you can see from the above, the Starcoin ecosystem has already done a lot based on Move as a secure DeFi trendsetter.

Whether it is the Metaverse or Web3, blockchain still has a long way to go. Building a secure and fast Web3 platform is the common pursuit of the blockchain industry.

In terms of security, Move is the leader. Let’s all look forward to the Move ecology ushering in more benefits, to the Starcoin ecology becoming stronger and stronger, and to the whole blockchain industry becoming more and more prosperous.