Aptos is the new Solana and Circle is a Gas Station Provider

If a blockchain network goes down for many hours but nobody is there to listen to the transactions, did it really go down?

Such is the case with Aptos tonight after the network suffered a 4-5 hour outage overnight. It reminds us of the days past (and present) when Solana would treat us to some very similar headlines to the one below:

New networks becoming unusable and stopping block production is nothing new this year, with protocols like Base seeing similar issues. At the time the network went down the Aptos community was celebrating its 1st anniversary.

As an anniversary celebration they all got together and made a live on chain painting together - right before the lights went out.

The art is kind of cool I have to say, though there is no way Aptos has 4k active users using 1 application at the same time.

The reason for the network failure is still unclear, but normal activity resumed about 5 hours after going down. Aptos has been compared to Solana for a long time because of its extremely fast block times, high TPS, and gigantic amounts of funding they’ve raised. Now they share another thing in common: a propensity for the network to go down anytime there is sufficient activity. Bros 4 life.

Circle is Offering Services like Gas Stations

Stablecoin issuer Circle is now getting into the services business. For years Circle has been operating a variety of businesses (from an exchange and OTC desk to a stablecoin) before streamlining to focus solely on USDC.

Now, it looks like the company is expanding its core product set after gaining significant market share in the stablecoin space. They announced two new products for developers called Gas Station and Smart Contract Platform that will allow for builders to create applications using USDC.

While details are still limited on how these products will work Gas Station will use account abstraction to create a gasless experience for onboarding new users into the Circle ecosystem. Smart Contract Platform will create a better way to integrate smart contract interactions into existing applications.

Imagine a normal, Web 2 fintech application for merchants that begins to accept USDC as payment. They will then be able to leverage Circle’s suite of services to build (or use other people’s) applications that bring in smart contracts and programability into the back end.

While both current merchant adoption and smart contract use cases specifically for stablecoins are low, the functionality is cool and you can envision a future in which this is useful. This opens us merchants tapping into DeFi for treasury management, users getting micro-loans on their asset for use in payments - the scope is large.

Circle is in a very interesting position where their product market fit is extremely clear and very valuable to the market. The issue is that forces outside of their control (regulatory concerns) have caused their market share to slip to a competitor that does not have those same concerns (Tether) so they are forced to innovate in other ways.

While I do not expect services to be the core part of Circle’s business anytime soon, this is a smart strategic play for a company in need of as many growth opportunities as possible.

Deep Dive: The State of DeFi with special guest Jack Melnick

The Decent universe is growing. This week we have an amazing guest: Head of DeFi at Polygon, Jack Melnick. Jack is one of the sharpest minds in the space on all things DeFi.

He talks about new innovations in the lending market that support new token types, updates on the DEX front, how UNI v4 will change things, and much more.

This was one of the most informative episodes we have ever done, you don’t want to miss it.

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