Flexibility, Composability and Scalability of the Aptos Digital Asset Standard

Token standards play a key role in driving interoperability, efficiency and innovation in the expanding blockchain space. They lay the foundation for the creation, transfer and management of digital assets in decentralized ecosystems.

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Today, we launched the Aptos Digital Asset Standard (DA), a revolutionary token standard designed to address the limitations of its predecessor and open up a new era of possibilities for creators, developers, and users. This upgrade emphasizes the importance of an evolving token standard to keep up with the changing needs of the blockchain ecosystem.

Digital Assets (DA) represents a significant advancement in the token space, with a special focus on the irreplaceable token (NFT) in the Aptos blockchain. Based on valuable feedback and extensive research, DA utilizes the groundbreaking Move object model to provide unparalleled flexibility and programmability. Unlike its predecessor, DA enables creators to evolve their NFTs over time, ensuring a dynamic and adaptive token ecosystem. By decoupling extensions from core changes, DA makes it easy to implement enhancements that enable seamless airdrops, token soul binding, improved replaceability, enhanced performance, and more efficient on-chain data management.

By simplifying token management, improving the user experience, and creating the ability to create composable NFTs, DA enables creators, developers, and users to unlock the full potential of their projects in the blockchain ecosystem. We invite partners to join us on this exciting journey to shape the future of token standards and revolutionize the blockchain landscape.

Comparative Analysis of Popular Token Standards

Previous token standards, including TokenV1 (Aptos), SPL (Solana Program Library), and ERC721 (Ether's NFT standard), played a crucial role in the early stages of blockchain development. However, these standards have certain limitations, which DA aims to overcome.

For example, TokenV1 lacks the necessary flexibility to meet changing user needs. SPL, while effective for the Solana blockchain, poses challenges to interoperability with other networks. ERC721, the forerunner of NFT, was not designed for efficiency, leading to high Gas costs and performance issues. In addition, neither the ETH nor the SOL token standards were designed to facilitate large/complex on-chain operations with token data. They tend to push almost everything down the chain, which means a huge reliance on indexers and a huge hassle to write smart contracts that rely on on-chain data.

Digital Assets introduces unique enhancements to address these issues and make significant improvements to Aptos by providing enhanced flexibility, improved performance, reduced Gas costs, and the ability to handle large/complex on-chain operations with token data. DA provides a standardized and adaptable framework for irreplaceable tokens that enables seamless interaction with digital assets on different networks.

Revealing the advantages of digital assets

Enhanced flexibility and evolution

DA enables the growth of irreplaceable tokens (NFTs), allowing creators to innovate and meet changing user needs. This ability to grow dynamically is critical in the digital asset space, where continuous improvement and adaptation are essential to remain relevant and competitive.

Easy airdrops and seamless transfers

The process of airdrops is greatly simplified, making the transfer of token ownership easier and user-friendly. This seamless transfer feature enhances user engagement and adoption, creating a more vibrant and active digital asset ecosystem.

Simplification of substitutability

DA simplifies substitutability and enhances interoperability as the token model allows for the modeling of fungible assets in separate contracts. The simplified approach to fungible tokens makes it easier for developers to create fungible assets and for users to manage and trade their digital assets more easily, thus enhancing the overall user experience.

Improve performance and reduce gas costs

By implementing the Aptos Improvement Proposal (AIP), DA improved performance and reduced Gas costs by more than 50%, ensuring efficient storage usage, shorter retrieval times and optimized data access. These improvements make transactions faster and more efficient and enable users to interact with digital assets more economically. By adopting the Aptos Digital Asset Standard, organizations can achieve cost reductions of more than 50% in many cases.

Enhanced data accessibility and indexing

Improved data accessibility is important for data-driven applications and analytics, enabling them to provide more accurate and comprehensive insights to users. DA enforces strict attribute mapping, making data on the chain more accessible and easier to index.

True composability

DA introduces the concept of truly composable NFTs, enabling the creation of interconnected digital assets. This feature offers tremendous benefits to developers, users and the broader blockchain ecosystem, fostering innovation and expanding the possibilities for digital asset creation and management.

Digital assets in action

While still in its infancy, there are multiple iterations of DA in real time on the Aptos mainnet, with more planned.

We are proud to share the stories of these programs that have successfully adopted DA.

Metapixel:
DA's object model enables dynamic, flexible on-chain management of game assets, allowing NFTs to evolve, combine and customize. With DA, game items can be seamlessly cast, upgraded, and bound to user accounts, providing true ownership and value validation outside of the game environment. DA integration simplifies complex processes, provides efficient storage utilization, and improves data access, resulting in enhanced development capabilities and reduced retrieval times for developers such as METAPIXEL.

By leveraging DA's object model, METAPIXEL demonstrates how game assets can be cast as NFTs, soul-bound, and upgraded in real-time, all within a single Token object. This approach allows for the creation of composable NFTs that revolutionize the gaming experience and disrupt traditional markets. METAPIXEL's use cases demonstrate the power and versatility of DA, giving you a glimpse into the future of web3 games and the value they can provide to users.

Moksha:
Mokshya has also skillfully implemented this new standard through its Digital Asset Packaging module. The module is designed to wrap existing tokens into DAs for a seamless migration that preserves the ownership and attributes of the original tokens.

This Medium article details the Token Packaging Program, which destroys existing NFTs and mints the same NFTs in a new token standard. This process provides an elegant solution for projects seeking to upgrade to the new standard without sacrificing the integrity of existing tokens. Check out the detailed explanation and full code here.

Smash 3R

BRAWL3R is an online platform fighting game featuring the Blue Chip Aptos NFT as a character. Using the Aptos DA standard, players can equip their characters with in-game items such as swords and guns, allowing for unprecedented customizability and flexibility in character creation. This allows players to mix and match different NFTs to create unique and powerful Brawlers that fit their style of play. In addition, the game uses the DA object model to encapsulate Soul Binding stats, ELO ratings, and Achievement credentials in an overarching Profile object. This reputation framework can be extended to any game, allowing for the creation of composite "gamerscores" up the chain.

Our Vibrant Ecosystem: A Foundation for Innovation

Hungry for innovation too? Adoption of the Aptos Digital Asset Standard is not limited to gaming. Our thriving ecosystem provides DA-enabled infrastructure that paves the way for innovative digital asset management:

NFT Markets: Topaz, BlueMove, Wapal, Mercato

Wallets: Petra, Rise, Martian, Fewcha, Pontem

Explorer: Aptscan

Their support and cooperation emphasize the flexibility and universal applicability of DA standards, opening up endless opportunities for future projects.

reach a verdict
DA represents a major leap forward in token standards, redefining what is possible within the blockchain ecosystem. By introducing unrivaled flexibility, enhanced functionality and simplified token management, DA enables creators and developers to unlock the true potential of their projects. With its seamless scalability and innovative features, DA promises to open up a new frontier of decentralized innovation.

We invite developers, creators, and enthusiasts to join us on this transformative journey. Whether you are building a new project or looking to enhance an existing one, implementing DA can revolutionize the way you interact with digital assets in the blockchain ecosystem. Our team at Aptos Labs is committed to supporting you every step of the way, providing SDKs, marketplace integration examples, and migration tools to facilitate a smooth transition.