Author: Biteye Core Contributor Fishery
Preface
5 years ago, Facebook's Libra/Diem project burst onto the scene and attracted worldwide attention. However, this ambitious project ultimately met a sad end in 2022, leaving an unfinished mark of the times. Nevertheless, Libra's technical legacy - the Move language - is being revived through its "successors".
As everyone knows, Aptos and Sui are carrying on this technical heritage.
Now, the emergence of the Movement Network has opened up the possibility of breaking through the original vision of Libra. Through its modular design and the concept of ecological interconnectivity, it has drawn a grander blueprint for Move than the original Libra/Diem design.
The Development of Smart Contract Blockchains
Relying on its EVM smart contract functionality, Ethereum has become the most popular blockchain after Bitcoin, and has also driven the widespread adoption of the Solidity programming language.
After Ethereum, many emerging blockchains have tried to blaze a new trail, "following the trend" to create their own smart contract programming languages, in an attempt to replicate Ethereum's successful path. For example, Neo tried to use C# and JavaScript, Waves launched Ride, and Cardano chose Haskell. However, although the technical intentions of these blockchains were novel, most of them failed to gain significant market share and ultimately failed to replace Solidity's dominant position.
In the course of DeFi's development in recent years, the shortcomings of Solidity have gradually emerged: its complex language design, the ease with which vulnerabilities can be generated, and the cumbersome development process have made more and more teams and users feel fatigued.
The market's demand for a new generation of simpler and more secure smart contract languages has become increasingly evident.
The Move language happens to meet such a demand, with its core emphasis on the security and uniqueness of data resources, stemming from a deep understanding of financial security and resource management. This design philosophy is in line with the core needs of blockchain asset management, and is also more easily accepted by groups that emphasize security and stability.
In the current market cycle, the Move ecosystem has been steadily building, with developers and users gradually "voting with their feet" to migrate to Move-based blockchains. This is different from the previous "speculative following" behavior of the smart contract language boom. The popularity of Move is due to its ability to effectively solve the needs of developers and the market.
By observing the development trajectory of the Move ecosystem, we can find that the progress of Move presents a growth trajectory that is completely different from that of Ethereum, and also different from the path of rapid expansion in the market frenzy of early smart contract platforms. The Move ecosystem has chosen a more pragmatic development strategy, focusing on solving practical problems and meeting market demands.
The Move Ecosystem and the Ethereum Ecosystem
There are many technical comparisons between Move and Ethereum in the literature, so this section will take a different approach and talk about the paths of their respective rises.
The biggest difference between the two is that the core infrastructure teams and ecosystem project teams in the Move ecosystem have a much closer connection.
In the course of Ethereum's development, the connection between the developer team and the ecosystem projects was relatively remote, lacking a clear attitude of support. When the ETH price plummeted from $1,400 to $80 in 2018, there were hardly any applications running on the entire chain, and the rest of the story is known to many readers - it was the support of the grassroots DeFi teams and miners that saved Ethereum.
The Ethereum Foundation has not provided any special support or recognition for these contributions, but has instead focused on pushing Layer 2 and PoS, which has ensured the continuity of the technical roadmap, but has also to some extent limited the diversified development of the ecological infrastructure.
In a sense, Ethereum's success stems from the smart contract functionality developed by the Ethereum developer team and the first batch of grassroots DeFi teams, both of which are indispensable.
In comparison, in the early stages of the Move ecosystem's development, the core infrastructure team actively supported various applications and developers in the community, especially in terms of development tools, funding support, and resource sharing, demonstrating a more win-win cooperative relationship. The establishment of this relationship not only strengthened the cohesion of the community, but also laid the foundation for the prosperity of the Move ecosystem.
At the same time, the Move ecosystem has shown stronger market orientation. Particularly noteworthy is the Movement project, as the only solution in the Move ecosystem that is similar to Ethereum's Layer 2 positioning, its development path reflects the Move ecosystem's keen grasp of market demand.
Movement is not limited by the technical decision-making of a centralized organization, and can provide Move infrastructure products that meet market demand based on market feedback. It will not jump back and forth in the choice of Beam and Layer2, as Ethereum has done.
In the long run, this market-oriented technical development path of the Move ecosystem may be more conducive to cultivating a vibrant innovative environment.
It allows technology upgrades to respond more directly to the needs of users and developers, rather than being constrained by the predetermined plans of a centralized institution. This feature also makes the Move ecosystem exhibit stronger adaptability and development potential in the rapidly changing blockchain market.
The Evolution of Move
The development of the Move infrastructure ecosystem can be divided into three stages.
In the first stage, in 2019, Facebook (now Meta) hoped to create a global digital currency and develop a new programming language, Move, through the Libra/Diem project, to ensure the security of smart contracts. Due to US policy reasons, the project was terminated in 2022, which also put the first commercial application of the Move language on hold.
In the second stage, with the termination of the Diem project, the two Move Layer 1 blockchains Aptos and Sui were subsequently born, these projects were founded by former Libra/Diem team members, aiming to further develop and bring to market the innovative ideas of the Libra/Diem project.
Aptos was founded by former Diem executives such as Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, and launched its mainnet in October 2022. Aptos aims for high performance and low latency, and has attracted the attention of developers through the use of the Move language and a unique consensus protocol, and has quickly accumulated a large amount of capital support.
In comparison, Sui was founded by another part of the former Diem team, with its core members coming from Mysten Labs. Sui launched its mainnet in May 2023, positioning itself as a modular and scalable high-performance blockchain.
Sui is also based on the Move language, but has further expanded on it, enhancing its concurrency processing capabilities and developing richer developer tools to improve the development experience and efficiency.
Both adhere to the technical legacy of Libra/Diem, and on the basis of the Move language, have successfully established new ecosystem systems in the blockchain field through their own unique technical and market strategies. The rise of these projects marks the revival of Libra/Diem's legacy in the new blockchain ecosystem, continuing the original intention of driving the development of blockchain technology.
The birth of Aptos and Sui not only represents the team's continued exploration of the unfinished business of the original project, but also the re-emergence of the Move language as the next generation of smart contract language in the blockchain field, demonstrating its advantages in high security and developer-friendliness. The favor and investment of institutions in these projects also reflects the market's high recognition of the future potential of this ecosystem and the Move language.
In the third stage, Movement Labs has followed up on the vision of Libra/Diem and launched the Movement Network, a modular Move blockchain infrastructure with high TPS and fast finality.
The timing of Movement's creation is worth mentioning. After the hype around Aptos and Sui's launch had subsided, the Move ecosystem was in a relatively low ebb, with Sui and Apt both at a stage low point, and the prospects for the Move track were full of uncertainty.
It was precisely at this time point that Movement Labs announced in September 2023 the completion of a $3.4 million Pre-Seed round of financing. The participation of these investors not only proves the institution's optimism about the Move ecosystem, but also serves as an endorsement of the Movement team's capabilities.
Movement received $38 million in funding led by Polychain in April this year, and investment from Binance Labs in May, becoming the hottest project in the industry.
From the development history of Move, we can see that the Move ecosystem is different from the Ethereum Foundation's early indifference to DeFi and miners.
The Move infrastructure team actively supports innovative projects and developers in the ecosystem, providing financial support, technical tools, and community building, forming a highly cohesive developer ecosystem. This comprehensive support has enabled the Move ecosystem to accumulate a large number of developers and users in a short period of time, gradually becoming the new darling of smart contract development.
Move Newcomer: Movement Network
Within the Move ecosystem, the positioning of the Movement Network is of great strategic significance. Unlike Layer 1 blockchains such as Aptos and Sui, Movement does not compete with them, but rather plays a key bridging role in the Move ecosystem through its unique modular architecture.
As a newcomer in the field of Move ecosystem infrastructure, the Movement Network is injecting new vitality into the development of the Move ecosystem with its innovative technical architecture.
The network is composed of three core components: the Move Executor, the Fast Finality Settlement Module, and the Decentralized Shared Sequencer, which together build a high-performance, secure, and interoperable infrastructure platform.
In terms of technical architecture, the innovation of Movement lies in the successful integration of the Move language and the EVM ecosystem.
The Move Executor, as the core component of the Movement-SDK, supports both MoveVM and EVM bytecode.
This dual compatibility not only allows developers to fully utilize the advanced features of the Move language, but also maintains compatibility with existing Ethereum applications. By integrating the parallel execution capability of MoveVM with the existing EVM interpreter, the Move Executor achieves a good balance between compatibility and scalability.
Developers can fully leverage the advantages of the Move language while maintaining Ethereum settlement. Notably, Movement supports the concurrent execution of Aptos and Sui Move code, and this innovative "Move-EVM" (MEVM) architecture provides developers with unprecedented flexibility.
In terms of transaction settlement, the Fast Finality Settlement Module adopts an innovative staking verification mechanism.
Compared to traditional zk-rollups and optimistic rollups, the Movement Network achieves second-level transaction finality without the need for expensive proof generation devices, significantly reducing latency and optimizing the user experience. This module ensures network security through validator asset staking, improving transaction processing efficiency while guaranteeing crypto-economic security.
These technological innovations have made Movement a highly promising infrastructure project in the Move ecosystem, providing a solid technical foundation for the widespread application of the Move language and the development of the ecosystem.
The current macro environment is also very favorable for Movement's narrative. As the US regulatory environment becomes more friendly towards the crypto industry, it can be foreseen that more enterprises will enter the Web3 space, just like the previous bull market.
As a programming language specifically designed by Facebook for enterprise-level applications, Move is likely to become the preferred choice for these enterprises. Particularly considering the strict requirements of enterprises for system sovereignty, Aptos/Sui, as public blockchains, cannot meet the support for sovereignty. Movement, as the only modular solution in the Move ecosystem, has an increasingly prominent strategic value.
Through the open-source Movement SDK, enterprises can deploy their own rollups, maintaining full control over the system while enjoying the infrastructure advantages of the Ethereum ecosystem and the Move language.
Summary
Looking back at the development history of Web2, we can easily find that there is a direct positive correlation between development convenience and application quality. Aptos, Sui, and Movement are bringing this experience into the Web3 field, driving the prosperous development of the Move ecosystem through different technical paths and innovative solutions.
The narrative of Move is being further written by Movement, and it may surpass the original vision of the Libra project.
