Movement combines key security features with enhanced performance and user experience, which is a complete vision for achieving Web3 transformation.
Author: Ed Roman
Compilation: Deep Tide TechFlow
Taking a New Step
Today is an important day for our portfolio company @movementlabsxyz as they officially launch their mainnet test version and native tokens. At Hack VC, we co-led their Series A funding. This article will share our investment logic for Movement.
Question
From the early development of Web3, smart contract vulnerabilities have been a significant issue that has yet to be effectively resolved. In 2022 alone, over $3 billion was lost due to smart contract vulnerabilities.
Addressing smart contract vulnerabilities is key to the mainstream adoption of Web3 and DeFi. In traditional finance, systems operate behind firewalls, and codebases are private, making significant security incidents relatively rare. For instance, when you use Stripe for payments, wire transfers, or Venmo transactions, you don't have to worry about whether the code executing these transactions is vulnerable to attack.
However, in the current Web3 environment, users have to worry about code security. Web3 systems operate on open networks, and codebases are public, which essentially provides hackers with a 'treasure map' where the size and location of the treasure are obvious.
One of the root causes of the problem lies in the programming language itself. Ethereum dApps are often written in Solidity, but Solidity lacks type safety, memory safety, and formal verification, making it easy for developers to make mistakes. These flaws lead to frequent vulnerability attacks, with reentrancy attacks being one of the main causes of a $3 billion loss.
Background: Move Programming Language
The Move programming language provides a new approach to addressing the security issues of smart contracts. Compared to existing mainstream tools, Move offers strong type support (reducing developer errors) and formal verification (lowering vulnerability risks), making it easier for developers to identify and fix issues.
Sui and Aptos are the first projects to use Move in the Web3 space. They aim to challenge Ethereum and some early blockchains such as Avalanche, Hashgraph, and Polkadot. Sui and Aptos have built different versions of the virtual machine based on Move.
Movement's Vision
Movement Labs is building a modular chain network based on the Move programming language, aiming to enhance security, performance, and user experience in Web3. Its first product is an Ethereum L2 based on Move, allowing dApps in the Ethereum ecosystem to leverage the advantages of Move while using data availability services provided by Celestia.
Movement's design embodies the following values:
New dApps can be built directly on Ethereum L2 using Move, without relying on Solidity. This provides developers with a more secure environment, avoiding common vulnerabilities associated with Solidity.
Existing dApps running on Sui or Aptos can easily migrate to Ethereum, thus accessing Ethereum's greater liquidity and user base.
Cross-chain deployment of Move dApps will expand their user base while attracting more developers and applications to Sui and Aptos.
Overall, this will drive the growth of the Move developer ecosystem, helping Move become a more mainstream development language.
Additionally, Movement supports Solidity to be compatible with existing codebases.
Movement's security advantages
Movement has the following characteristics in terms of security:
The built-in 'bytecode verifier' can check the resource safety, type safety, and memory safety of transactions, ensuring that each value has only one mutable reference at the same time.
The bytecode interpreter will only execute transactions when all safety conditions are met.
Users can set access permissions for modules and accounts to ensure that smart contracts can only run through expected methods, avoiding unintended modifications.
Type safety and memory safety designs effectively prevent reentrancy attacks.
Verification tools can identify the target call state and use it to ascertain the effects of procedural calls.
Additional advantages beyond security
Movement's tech stack not only excels in security but also brings many other innovations:
Movement has developed Fractal, a tool that can convert traditional Solidity code into a Move virtual machine (VM) environment. This process, known as 'transpilation,' allows existing Solidity dApps to run in the Move environment while maintaining compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem. This innovation is particularly important compared to other Move environments like Aptos or Sui, as developers can access EVM liquidity and ensure that the code passes Move's formal verification, reducing potential risks.
Movement's M1 orderer is deeply integrated with its Ethereum L2, providing fast deterministic ordering to achieve reorganization protection and high availability. M1 supports parallel processing capabilities, with performance improvements of up to 10 to 100 times. This performance advantage makes Movement an ideal choice for high-performance scenarios such as gaming and low-latency DeFi, while low transaction costs also support quick minting of NFTs and other granular transactions.
Movement has implemented bridging functionality to Bitcoin through Snowman, introducing more liquidity support to the ecosystem.
Movement supports the IBC protocol, enabling interoperability with the Cosmos network, further expanding the ecosystem's connectivity.
Movement adopts a dual-staking model to provide economic incentives for the operation of decentralized orderers, ensuring the stability and security of the network.
Movement's ecosystem supports atomic transactions (such as atomic swaps) between Rollups, enhancing the flexibility and efficiency of transactions.
Movement provides support for Typescript, allowing Web2 developers to easily transition into Web3 development. This support lowers the learning curve and attracts more developers to the Move ecosystem.
Development status
Movement has already achieved significant results in its launch phase:
Movement's tech stack has attracted over 200 teams for development.
More than five Move tech stack networks have formed, including Lumio, Up Network, Lync, Nexio, and @ionet (which is also another company in the Hack VC portfolio).
Over seven teams natively built on Movement have completed funding.
Over $150 million in total locked value (TVL) has been committed.
With over 1.2 million Galxe followers (ranked 20th globally).
Over 1 million active addresses.
52 regional Movement Twitter and Telegram groups are active.
Movement meetups cover five continents.
More than 30 million transactions were completed within the second week of the testnet.
Movement has raised over $30 million to ensure long-term financial stability.
The graduate teams of Movement's self-accelerator project 'Move Collective' have raised over $10 million in funding.
Movement's future direction
Movement's vision is to expand its technological ecosystem to a broader range of blockchain fields. Its goal is to create an execution environment that supports the Move programming language to run on any blockchain, regardless of the Rollup framework or data availability (DA) layer. This is made possible by Movement's fully decentralized shared orderer (M1), which allows different blockchains to interact through a unified settlement layer.
Through this vision, developers can create dedicated dApp chains according to specific needs, while blockchains like Avalanche, Polkadot, and Hashgraph will also be able to leverage the advantages of the Move programming language. Ultimately, this will provide greater user bases and higher total locked value (TVL) for Move-based dApp developers, further driving the development of Web3.
Summary
At Hack VC, we firmly believe that security is key to the scalability and mainstream adoption of Web3. Movement presents a comprehensive vision that we believe can effectively reduce or even eliminate the issues of smart contract vulnerabilities. While it all starts with the Move programming language, Movement's roadmap also includes integrating more security innovations, ultimately providing a robust and comprehensive solution.
Movement combines key security features with enhanced performance and user experience, which we believe is a complete vision for achieving Web3 transformation. We are honored to co-lead Movement's Series A funding and congratulate the team on the successful launch of their tokens. We look forward to embarking on the future journey with Movement.
Learn more:
X Website
Movement official website
Movement documentation
Disclosure statement
The information contained in this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice, nor should it be used as a basis for evaluating any investment decisions. For accounting, legal, tax, business, investment, or other related advice, please consult your professional advisor. The content of this article reflects the author's current views and does not represent the position of Hack VC or its affiliates. Certain information comes from public sources or third parties and may not be updated to the latest status at the time of this article's publication. Hack VC is not responsible for the accuracy or completeness of this information and assumes no obligation to update or notify.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. The forward-looking statements in this article are based on the author's experience and assumptions and do not guarantee future performance, which may be subject to unpredictable risks and uncertainties.