Understand the key differences between Ethereum, Solana, and Aptos over the lifetime of a transaction

Author: Kevin, the Researcher at Movemaker

Comparing the technical differences between the Move language, Aptos and other public chains may be boring due to the different depth of observation. General analysis is inevitably scratching the itch, and going deep into the code is easy to see the forest for the trees. To quickly and accurately understand the difference between Aptos and other public chains, it is crucial to choose a suitable anchor.

The author believes that the life cycle of a transaction is the best entry point. By analyzing the complete steps of a transaction from creation to final state update—including creation and initiation, broadcasting, sorting, execution, and state update—we can clearly grasp the design ideas and technical trade-offs of the public chain. Taking this as a benchmark, take a step back and be able to understand the core narratives of different public chains; Take it a step further and explore how you can build market-appealing apps on Aptos.

As shown below, all blockchain transactions revolve around these five steps, and this article will focus on Aptos, dissect its unique design, and compare the key differences between Ethereum and Solana.

! Understand the main differences between Ethereum, Solana and Aptos in the lifecycle of a transaction

Aptos: Optimistic Parallel and High-Performance Design

Aptos is a public chain with an emphasis on high performance, and its transaction lifecycle is similar to that of Ethereum, but with a significant improvement through unique optimistic parallel execution and mempool optimization. Here are the key steps in the transaction lifecycle on Aptos:

Create & Initiate

The Aptos network consists of light nodes, full nodes, and validators. The user initiates a transaction through a light node (such as a wallet or application), and the light node forwards the transaction to a nearby full node, which in turn synchronizes to the validator.

Broadcast

Aptos retains mempools, but they are not shared between mempools after QuorumStore. Unlike Ethereum, its mempool is more than just a transaction buffer. After transactions enter the mempool, the system pre-sorts them according to rules (such as FIFO or gas fees) to ensure that there are no conflicts in subsequent parallel executions. This design avoids Solana’s high hardware requirement of declaring read-write collections in advance.

Sorting

Aptos adopts the AptosBFT consensus, proposers cannot freely sort transactions in principle, and AIP-68 gives proposers the right to additionally fill in delayed transactions. Conflict avoidance has been done in advance for mempool pre-ordering, and block generation relies more on validator collaboration rather than proposer-led.

Execution

Aptos uses Block-STM technology for optimistic parallel execution. Transactions are assumed to be conflict-free and processed at the same time, and if a conflict is found after execution, the affected transaction will be re-executed. This approach uses multi-core processors to improve efficiency, with TPS up to 160,000.

Status Update

Validators synchronize the state, and finality is confirmed by checkpoints, similar to Ethereum’s Epoch mechanism, but more efficient.

The core advantage of Aptos is the combination of optimistic parallelism and mempool pre-ordering, which not only reduces node performance requirements, but also greatly improves throughput. As shown in the diagram below, Aptos’ network architecture clearly supports this design:

! Understand the main differences between Ethereum, Solana and Aptos in the lifecycle of a transaction in simple terms

Source: Aptos whitepaper

### Ethereum: The benchmark for serial execution

Ethereum, as the pioneer of smart contracts, is the origin of public chain technology, and its transaction life cycle provides a basic framework for understanding Aptos.

#### **Ethereum Transaction Lifecycle**

Create and initiate: The user initiates a transaction through the wallet through the relay gateway or RPC interface. Broadcast: Transactions go into a public memory pool and are waiting to be packaged. Sorting: After the PoS upgrade, block builders package transactions based on the principle of maximizing profits, and the relay layer bids on them and submits them to the proposer. Execution: EVM processes transactions serially, updating state in a single thread. Status Update: Blocks need to be checked through two checkpoints to confirm finality.

Ethereum’s serial execution and mempool design limit performance, with a block time of 12 seconds/slot and a low TPS. In contrast, Aptos has achieved a qualitative leap forward through parallel execution and mempool optimization.

! Understand the main differences between Ethereum, Solana and Aptos in the lifecycle of a transaction in simple terms

Solana: Extreme optimization with deterministic parallelism

Solana is known for its high performance, and its transaction lifecycle differs significantly from Aptos, especially in terms of mempool and execution.

Solana Transaction Lifecycle

• Create & Initiate: The user initiates a transaction through the wallet.
• Broadcast: No public mempool, transactions are sent directly to the current and next two proposers.
• Sorting: The proposer packs the block based on PoH (Proof of History), and the block time is only 400 milliseconds.
• Execution: Sealevel Virtual Machine adopts deterministic parallel execution, and read/write sets need to be declared in advance to avoid conflicts.
• Status update: BFT consensus quick confirmation.

The reason Solana doesn’t use mempools is that they can become a performance bottleneck. Due to the absence of mempools and Solana’s unique PoH consensus, nodes are able to quickly reach transaction order consensus, avoiding the need for transactions to be queued in the mempool, and transactions can be filled almost instantaneously. However, this also means that if the network is overloaded, transactions may be dropped instead of waiting and users will need to resubmit.

In contrast, Aptos’ optimistic parallelism does not require the declaration of read/write sets, and the node threshold is lower, but the TPS is higher.

! Understand the main differences between Ethereum, Solana and Aptos in the lifecycle of a transaction

Source: Shoal Research

### Two paths for parallel execution: Aptos vs Solana

The execution of a transaction represents an update of the block state, and is the process by which the transaction initiation instruction is transformed into a final state. How is this change understood? The node assumes that the transaction is successful and calculates its impact on the state of the network, and this calculation process is executed.

Thus, parallel execution in a blockchain refers to the process by which multiple core processors simultaneously compute the state of the network. In the current market, parallel execution is divided into two ways: deterministic parallel execution and optimistic parallel execution. The difference between the two development directions is rooted in how to ensure that parallel transactions do not conflict – i.e., whether there are dependencies between transactions.

It can be seen that in the transaction lifecycle, the timing of parallel transaction dependency conflicts is determined, which determines the differentiation between the two development directions of deterministic parallel execution and optimistic parallel execution, and Aptos and Solana choose different directions:

• Deterministic Parallel (Solana): Before the transaction is broadcast, the read-write set needs to be declared, and the Sealevel engine processes conflict-free transactions in parallel according to the declaration, and the conflicting transactions are executed serially. The advantage is high efficiency, and the disadvantage is high hardware requirements.
• Optimistic Parallel (Aptos): Assuming that there is no conflict in the transaction, Block-STM executes the transaction in parallel and verifies it, and retries if there is a conflict. Mempool pre-ordering reduces the risk of collisions and reduces the burden on nodes.

For example, if the balance of account A is 100, trade 1 to 70 to B, and trade 2 to 50 to C. Solana confirms the conflict in advance by declaring it, and handles it sequentially; If the balance is insufficient after Aptos is executed in parallel, the balance will be readjusted. The flexibility of Aptos makes it more scalable.

Optimistic parallelism through mempools to acknowledge conflicts in advance

The core idea of optimistic parallelism is the assumption that transactions processed in parallel do not conflict, so the application does not need to submit a transaction statement before the transaction is executed. If a conflict is found during post-transaction validation, Block-STM will re-execute the affected transaction to ensure consistency.

However, in practice, if you do not confirm whether the transaction dependencies are conflicting in advance, a large number of errors may occur during the actual execution, resulting in the lag of the public chain. Therefore, optimistic parallelism is not simply assuming that the transaction is conflict-free, but avoiding risks in advance at a certain stage, which is the transaction broadcast stage.

On Aptos, after transactions enter the public mempool, they are pre-ordered according to certain rules (such as FIFO and gas fees) to ensure that transactions within a block do not conflict when executed in parallel. It can be seen that the proposer of Aptos does not actually have the ability to order transactions, and there is no block builder in the network. This pre-ordering of transactions is the key to Aptos’ optimistic parallelism. Unlike Solana, which requires transaction declarations, Aptos does not require this mechanism, so the requirements for node performance are significantly reduced. In terms of the network overhead of ensuring that transactions do not conflict, the impact of Aptos joining the mempool on TPS is much smaller than the cost of introducing transaction declarations in Solana. As a result, Aptos has a TPS of up to 160,000, more than double that of Solana. The impact of transaction pre-ordering is that it is more difficult to capture MEV on Aptos, which has both advantages and disadvantages for users, and will not be repeated here.

Security-based storytelling is where Aptos is headed

• RWA: Aptos is actively promoting real-world asset tokenization and institutional financial solutions. Compared with Ethereum, Aptos’ Block-STM can process multiple asset transfer transactions in parallel, avoiding delays in confirming rights due to network congestion. On Solana or Sui, despite the fast transaction speed, the mempool-free design may drop transactions when the network is overloaded, affecting the stability of RWA ownership. Aptos’ mempool pre-ordering ensures that transactions are executed sequentially, maintaining the reliability of asset records even during peak periods. RWA requires complex smart contract support, such as asset splitting, yield distribution, and compliance checks. The modular design and security of the Move language make it easier for developers to build reliable RWA applications. In contrast, the complexity and risk of vulnerabilities in Ethereum Solidity increase the cost of development, while Solana’s Rust programming, while efficient, requires a high learning curve for developers. The eco-friendliness of Aptos is expected to attract more RWA projects to land, forming a positive cycle. Aptos’ potential in the RWA space lies in the combination of security and performance. In the future, it can focus on cooperating with traditional financial institutions to put high-value assets such as bonds and stocks on the chain, and use the Move language to create a highly compliant tokenization standard. This “security + efficiency” narrative is what makes Aptos stand out in the RWA market.

• In July 2024, Aptos officially announced the introduction of Ondo Finance’s USDY into the ecosystem, and integrated it with major DEXs and lending applications, as of March 10, USDY’s market capitalization on Aptos is about $15 million, accounting for about 2.5% of USDY’s total market capitalization. In October 2024, Aptos announced that Franklin Templeton had launched the Franklin On-Chain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) represented by the BENJI token on the Aptos Network. In addition, Aptos partnered with Libre to advance the tokenization of securities, bringing investment funds from Brevan Howard, BlackRock, and Hamilton Lane on-chain to enhance institutional investor access.

• Stablecoin payments: Stablecoin payments need to ensure the finality of transactions and the security of assets. Aptos’ Move language ensures the accuracy of every stablecoin transfer by preventing double-spending through a resource model. For example, when users pay with USDC on Aptos, transaction status updates are strictly protected to avoid the loss of funds due to contract vulnerabilities. In addition, Aptos’ low gas fees (thanks to the high TPS cost sharing) make it extremely competitive in micropayment scenarios. Ethereum’s high gas fees limit its payment applications, and while Solana is low-cost, the risk of transaction drops when the network is overloaded can affect the user experience. Aptos’ mempool pre-ordering and Block-STM ensure the stability and low latency of payment transactions.

• PayFi and stablecoin payments need to be both decentralized and regulatory. AptosBFT’s decentralized consensus reduces the risk of centralization, while its modular architecture allows developers to embed KYC/AML checks. For example, a stablecoin issuer can deploy compliant contracts on Aptos to ensure that transactions comply with local regulations without sacrificing network efficiency. This is superior to Ethereum’s centralized relay model, and it also makes up for the potential compliance shortcomings led by Solana’s proposers. Aptos’ balanced design makes it more suitable for financial institutions to enter.
• Aptos’ potential in the PayFi and stablecoin payment space lies in the trinity of “security, efficiency, and compliance”. In the future, we will continue to promote the large-scale adoption of stablecoins, build cross-border payment networks, or cooperate with payment giants to develop on-chain settlement systems. The high TPS and low cost can also support micropayment scenarios, such as real-time tipping by content creators. Aptos’ narrative can focus on “next-generation payment infrastructure” that attracts two-way traffic to businesses and users.

Aptos’ security strengths – mempool pre-ordering, Block-STM, AptosBFT, and Move – not only improve attack resistance, but also provide a solid foundation for RWA and PayFi storytelling. In the RWA space, its high security and throughput support asset tokenization and large-scale transactions; In PayFi and stablecoin payments, low cost and high efficiency have driven the implementation of real-world applications. Compared with Ethereum’s robust but inefficient, and Solana’s high speed but high threshold, Aptos breaks new ground with a balanced approach. In the future, Aptos can leverage these advantages to shape the narrative of a “security-driven value network” and become a bridge between the traditional economy and the blockchain.

Summary: Aptos’ Technical Differences and Future Narratives

Through the lens of the transaction lifecycle, we were able to clearly compare the technical design differences between Aptos and Ethereum, Solana, and Sui, and reveal their core narratives. The following table summarizes the similarities and differences between the four in the broadcast, sequencing, and execution phases, highlighting the unique advantages of Aptos:

! Understand the main differences between Ethereum, Solana and Aptos in the lifecycle of a transaction

Aptos is designed to strike a smart balance between performance and security. Its mempool pre-ordering, combined with Block-STM’s optimistic parallelism, lowers the node barrier and achieves a high throughput of 160,000 TPS, surpassing Solana’s deterministic parallelism and Sui’s object-level parallelism. Compared with Ethereum’s serial execution, Aptos’ parallelism brings a qualitative leap; In contrast to Solana’s and Sui’s aggressive optimizations that cut out memory pools, Aptos retains a pre-ordering mechanism to ensure the stability of the network under high loads. This idea of “seeking speed while maintaining stability”, supplemented by the resource model of the Move language, gives Aptos greater security - whether it is to defend against DDoS attacks or prevent contract vulnerabilities, which is better than Ethereum’s traditional architecture and Solana’s high hardware dependency. Compared to Sui, which is also based on the Move language, the differentiation of Aptos and Sui is more revealing. Sui is object-centric and pursues extreme performance through DAG ordering and object-level parallelism, which is suitable for high-concurrency asset management scenarios. Aptos, on the other hand, is account-centric, relying on mempools and optimistic parallelism, taking into account both versatility and ecological compatibility. This difference not only reflects the choice of technology path, but also indicates a divergence in application direction: Sui may be more adept at manipulating complex assets, while Aptos has an advantage in security-driven scenarios. It is based on this combination of security and performance that Aptos shows great potential in the RWA and PayFi narrative. In the RWA space, Aptos’ high throughput supports large-scale asset on-chain feeding, and recent partnerships with Ondo Finance (USDY market capitalization of about $15 million), Franklin Templeton, and Libre have begun to bear fruit. In PayFi and stablecoin payments, Aptos’ low cost, high efficiency, and compliance support for micropayments and cross-border settlements, making it a strong candidate for “next-generation payment infrastructure.”

In summary, Aptos incorporates security and efficiency considerations into every aspect of the transaction lifecycle, which is different from Ethereum’s robustness and inefficiency, Solana’s high performance and high threshold, and Sui’s extreme object-driven optimization. In the future, Aptos can rely on the narrative of “security-driven value network” to connect traditional finance and blockchain ecosystems, continue to make efforts in the field of RWA and PayFi, and build a new public chain pattern with both trust and scalability.