Diem Team Members Raise $200M, Launch Its Spinoff Blockchain

A former Meta employee and key figure behind the firm's defunct stablecoin project Diem has raised $200 million to expand a new project called "Aptos."

Aptos was co-founded by Mo Shaikh, former head of strategic partnerships at Meta’s crypto division Novi, and technology lead Avery Ching. The two now serve as CEO and CTO of the new company, respectively. Both left Meta last December, after which Diem was sold to Silvergate Capital in February this year.

The team is building a decentralized layer 1 blockchain based in part on Move, the coding language originally developed for Diem. The company is currently growing its developer ecosystem and attracting projects to the blockchain, which it claims will be a low-cost, secure and scalable network.

According to a March 16 statement, Aptos’ $200 million strategic funding round was led by venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and received top-tier funding from Three Arrows Capital, FTX Ventures, Paxos, and Coinbase Ventures. company support.

The funds will be used to recruit new staff and support “companies, brands and builders” looking to develop projects on the Aptos blockchain. The startup says that several DeFi, NFT, Web3, social media and payment projects are already in the pipeline.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Aptos declined to disclose a specific valuation, but said it was "well into unicorn territory" with a valuation of about $1 billion.

Along with the funding announcement, Aptos also launched a public development network with an open-source codebase. Big names like Anchorage, Binance, and Coinbase have been providing guidance and contributing code to the development network, the team told Cointelegraph. Its statement stated:

“Later in Q2, there will be an incentivized testnet to help scale the network and stress test it as it moves towards mainnet. We are now inviting validators and other infrastructure providers to join our community.”

Aptos expects a mainnet launch later this year in the third quarter, giving developers about six months to build projects before the network opens up to the public.

In a blog post late last month, Aptos emphasized that its blockchain's focus is based on "absolute security, scalability, and trusted neutrality," while being able to operate without the scrutiny of regulators like Diem. development of its ideas.

"Since leaving Meta (formerly Facebook), we've been able to put our ideas into action, cut through the bureaucratic red tape, and build a whole new network from the ground up to make those ideas a reality."

The blog post added: “Aptos is using Move, a safe and secure language originally developed for Diem. The ideas we conceived then still apply and will be an important foundation for a secure, scalable, upgradeable Web3. Our Plans for decentralization and permissionless access are advancing rapidly and will be made publicly.”

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