‘Solana Killer’—A Radical New $2 Billion ‘Facebook Spinoff’ Cryptocurrency Is Coming Despite The Huge Bitcoin, Ethereum And Crypto Price Crash

Bitcoin
BTC
and cryptocurrencies are currently snowed in as a bitter crypto winter shows no sign of thawing any time soon (though some think they’ve spotted a $28 trillion opportunity).

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The bitcoin price is stuck under the psychological $20,000 per bitcoin level after plummeting more than 70% from its all-time high of almost $70,000, while ethereum and other top ten cryptocurrencies, such as solana, are down even worse.

Now, despite fears growing market “panic” could send markets down by another 20%, a new, highly-anticipated cryptocurrency project that’s been branded a “solana killer” and valued at $2 billion by its top venture capital backers has launched to much fanfare but has recieved a mixed response.

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Aptos, a new blockchain and cryptocurrency created by former Meta employees Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching who worked on the Facebook parent’s failed libra-turned-diem bitcoin-inspired digital currency, was launched this week by Aptos Labs—with support from crypto exchanges Binance, FTX and OKX coming as soon as this week.

“We are proud to arrive here together, for the people,” Aptos developers wrote in a blog post. “This is step one in a long journey to create universal and fair access to decentralized applications for billions of people through a safe, scalable, and upgradable blockchain.”

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Aptos, using the same programming language as Facebook’s failed crypto project that’s designed to lower transaction costs and increase speeds, is aiming to become the home for the decentralized web3. Developers claim it will be able to host non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) better than the likes of ethereum, solana and other rival blockchains.

Ethereum
ETH
, which has recently undergone a long-awaited upgrade to proof-of-stake from bitcoin’s proof-of-work, is continuing to struggle with high costs and slow transaction times while solana has suffered a number of network outages.

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Developers have also claimed Aptos, a proof-of-stake blockchain, will be able to process 160,000 transactions per second (TPS). Solana
SOL
, for comparison, has an advertised TPS of 65,000, while ethereum has a mere 30 TPS. However, according to Aptos’ blockchain explorer, the network was yesterday seeing just 4 TPS, it was reported by Cointelegraph, with some users saying they’re unable to send transactions.

“The Aptos network has been performing as expected and will see increased activity as ecosystem projects onboard and get going,” the project’s official Twitter account posted in a “day one update.”

“Those 4 TPS are system transactions and don’t include any user transactions yet,” Aptos Labs added in comments reported by Bloomberg. “We expect user transactions to begin starting tomorrow. Hold tight!”

The project attracted a head-turning $1 billion valuation following a $200 million funding round in March led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with major investors including Tiger Global, Katie Haun, Multicoin Capital, FTX Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs and PayPal Ventures. Then in July, Aptos closed a $150 million Series A round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, with participation from Binance Labs, giving it a reported valuation of $2 billion.