Movement goes beyond the Libra vision, and the mainnet launch is imminent.

Written by: Biteye core contributor Fishery

Preface

Five years ago, Facebook's Libra/Diem project came out of nowhere and attracted worldwide attention. However, this ambitious project finally came to an end in 2022, leaving an unfinished mark of the times. However, Libra's technological legacy, the Move language, is being reborn through its "heirs."

As we all know, Aptos and Sui carry this technological legacy.

Today, the emergence of Movement Network has made people see the possibility of breaking through the original concept of Libra. Through its modular design and the concept of ecological interconnection, Move has drawn a blueprint that is far more ambitious than the original design of Libra/Diem.

The development of smart contract public chain

Ethereum has become the most popular public chain after Bitcoin thanks to its EVM smart contract function, and has also driven the popularization of EVM's Solidity programming language.

After Ethereum, many emerging public chains are trying to find new ways to "follow the trend" and create their own smart contract programming languages ​​to replicate Ethereum's successful path. For example, NEO experimented with C# and JavaScript, Waves launched Ride, and Cardano chose Haskell. However, despite the novel technical intentions of these public chains, most of them did not achieve significant market share and ultimately failed to replace Solidity's dominant position.

In the development of DeFi over the years, the drawbacks of Solidity have gradually become apparent: its complex language design, prone to vulnerabilities, and cumbersome development process have made more and more teams and users feel exhausted.

The market demand for a new generation of smart contract languages ​​that are simpler and more secure is becoming increasingly apparent.

The Move language just meets such a demand. Its core is to emphasize the security and uniqueness of data resources, which comes from a deep understanding of financial security and resource management. This design thinking caters to the core needs of blockchain asset management and is more easily accepted by groups that emphasize security and stability.

In this round of market, the Move ecosystem has been steadily developing, and developers and users have gradually "voted with their feet" and chosen to migrate to the Move blockchain. This is different from the "follow-the-trend speculation" behavior of the previous explosion of smart contract languages. The popularity of Move is due to its practical solution to the needs of developers and the market.

By observing the development path of the Move ecosystem, we can find that Move’s progress presents a growth trajectory that is completely different from Ethereum, and also different from the path of rapid expansion of early smart contract platforms in the market boom. The Move ecosystem has chosen a more pragmatic development strategy, focusing on solving practical problems and meeting market needs.

Move Ecosystem and Ethereum Ecosystem

There are many literatures comparing Move and Ethereum from a technical perspective. This section will take a different approach and discuss the paths to their rise.

The biggest difference between the two is that Move's infrastructure team has a closer connection with the ecological project team.

In the process of Ethereum's development, the developer team has been relatively distant from the ecological projects, lacking a clear attitude of support. When the price of ETH fell from $1,400 to $80 in 2018, there were almost no applications running on the entire chain. Many readers know the story that followed. The support of the DeFi grassroots team and miners saved Ethereum.

The Ethereum Foundation has not made any special support or affirmation for these contributions, but has instead focused on promoting Layer 2 and PoS. Although this has ensured the continuity of the technical route, it has also to some extent restricted the diversified development of the ecological infrastructure.

In a sense, Ethereum’s success stems from the smart contract functions developed by the Ethereum developer team and the first batch of grassroots DeFi teams. Both are indispensable.

In comparison, in the early stages of the development of the Move ecosystem, the infrastructure team actively supported various applications and developers in the community, especially in terms of development tools, financial support, and resource sharing, reflecting a more cooperative and win-win relationship. The establishment of this relationship not only enhances the cohesion of the community, but also lays the foundation for the prosperity of the Move ecosystem.

At the same time, the Move ecosystem has shown a stronger market orientation. The Movement project is particularly noteworthy. As the only solution in the Move ecosystem that is similar to Ethereum Layer 2, its development path reflects the Move ecosystem's keen grasp of market demand.

Movement is not restricted by the technical decisions 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 between the choice of Beam and Layer2 like Ethereum.

In the long run, the market-oriented technology development path of the Move ecosystem may be more conducive to cultivating a vibrant innovation environment.

It allows technology upgrades to respond more directly to the needs of users and developers, rather than being restricted by the established plans of a centralized organization. This feature also makes the Move ecosystem more adaptable and has greater development potential in the rapidly changing blockchain market.

Move History

The development of the Move infrastructure ecosystem can be divided into three stages.

In the first phase, in 2019, Facebook (now Meta) hoped to create a global digital currency through the Libra/Diem project and develop a new programming language Move to ensure the security of smart contracts. Due to US policy, 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, two Move Layer 1 public chains, Aptos and Sui, were born one after another. These projects were founded by members of the original Libra/Diem team and aim to continue to develop and bring the innovative ideas in the Libra/Diem project to the market.

Aptos was founded by former Diem executives such as Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, and launched its mainnet in October 2022. Aiming at high performance and low latency, Aptos has attracted the attention of developers and quickly accumulated a lot of capital support by using the Move language and a unique consensus protocol.

In contrast, Sui was founded by another group of former Diem team members, with core members coming from Mysten Labs. Sui launched its mainnet in May 2023, positioning itself as a modular and scalable high-performance public chain.

Sui is also based on the Move language, but has been further expanded on its basis, enhancing concurrent processing capabilities and developing richer developer tools to improve development experience and efficiency.

Both of them have inherited the technical accumulation of Libra/Diem and successfully established a new ecosystem in the blockchain field through their own unique technologies and market strategies based on the Move language. The rise of these projects marks that the legacy of Libra/Diem has been rejuvenated in the new public chain ecosystem, continuing the original intention of promoting the development of blockchain technology.

The birth of Aptos and Sui is not only the team's continued exploration of the unfinished work of the original project, but also the re-emergence of the Move language as the next-generation 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 this ecosystem and the future potential of the Move language.

In the third phase, Movement Labs took a step further on the Libra/Diem vision and launched Movement Network, a modular Move blockchain infrastructure with high TPS and fast decisiveness.

The timing of Movement’s creation is worth mentioning. After the popularity of Aptos and Sui subsided, the Move ecosystem was in a slump. Both Sui and Apt were at a temporary low point, and the prospects of the Move track were full of uncertainty.

At this point in time, Movement Labs announced the completion of a $3.4 million Pre-Seed round of financing in September 2023. The participation of these investors not only proves that the institutions are optimistic about the Move ecosystem, but also indirectly endorses the capabilities of the Movement team.

Movement received $38 million in funding led by Polychain in April this year, and received investment from Binance Labs in May. It is extremely popular and in great demand.

From the development history of Move, it can be seen that the Move ecosystem is different from the Ethereum Foundation’s early cold attitude towards DeFi and miners.

The Move infrastructure team actively supports innovative projects and developers in the ecosystem, and has formed a highly cohesive developer ecosystem through financial support, technical tools, and community building. This all-round support has enabled the Move ecosystem to accumulate a large number of developers and users in a short period of time, and has gradually become a new favorite for smart contract development.

Move Rising Stars Movement Network

In the Move ecosystem, the positioning of Movement Network is quite strategic. Unlike Layer 1 public chains such as Aptos and Sui, Movement does not compete with them, but plays a key bridge role in the Move ecosystem through its unique modular architecture.

As a rising star in the Move ecological infrastructure field, Movement Network is injecting new vitality into the development of the Move ecosystem with its innovative technical architecture.

The network consists of three core components: Move Executor, Fast Finality Settlement Module and 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 deep integration of the Move language and the EVM ecosystem.

Movement's Move executor, as the core component of Movement-SDK, implements dual support for MoveVM and EVM bytecode.

This dual compatibility not only allows developers to take full advantage of the advanced features of the Move language, but also maintains compatibility with existing Ethereum applications. By integrating the parallel execution capabilities of MoveVM with the existing EVM interpreter, the Move executor strikes a good balance between compatibility and scalability.

Developers can take advantage of the Move language while maintaining Ethereum settlement. Of particular note, Movement supports running both Aptos and Sui’s Move code at the same time. This innovative architecture, called “Move-EVM” (MEVM), provides developers with unprecedented flexibility.

In terms of transaction settlement, the Fast Finality Settlement Module adopts an innovative pledge verification mechanism.

Compared with traditional zk-rollups and optimistic rollups, Movement Network achieves second-level transaction certainty without requiring expensive proof generation equipment, significantly reducing latency and optimizing user experience. This module ensures network security by pledging assets through validators, improving transaction processing efficiency while ensuring the security of the encrypted economy.

These technological innovations make Movement a highly promising infrastructure project in the Move ecosystem, providing solid technical support for the widespread application of the Move language and the development of the ecosystem.

The current environment is also very favorable to Movement’s narrative. As the US regulatory environment becomes more friendly to the crypto industry, it is foreseeable that more companies will enter the Web3 field like in the previous bull market.

Move is a programming language designed by Facebook for enterprise-level design. It is likely to become the first choice for these enterprises. Especially considering the strict requirements of enterprises for system sovereignty, public chains such as Aptos/Sui cannot meet the support of enterprises for sovereignty. As the only modular solution in the current Move ecosystem, the strategic value of Movement is becoming more and more prominent.

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.

Summarize

Looking back at the development of Web2, it is not difficult to find that there is a direct positive correlation between development convenience and application quality. Aptos, Sui and Movement are bringing this experience to the Web3 field, and jointly promoting the prosperity and development of the Move ecosystem through different technical routes and innovative solutions.

The Move narrative is being written by Movement and will likely go beyond the original vision of the Libra project.