PONTEM NETWORK

1. Aptos

‍
Aptos is focused on delivering the safest and most production-ready Layer 1 blockchain while creating universal and fair access to web3 and decentralized assets for billions of people. Aptos is building key innovations like the Move language and the Diem-BFT consensus. Aptos recently announced a $200M Seed round led by a16z crypto with participation from Multicoin Capital, Katie Haun, ParaFi Capital and Coinbase Ventures, among others to scale the Aptos ecosystem. The team is comprised of the original creators, researchers, designers, and builders of Diem, the blockchain that was first built to serve this purpose.

Diem, developed by Meta engineers, is one of the most advanced and mature blockchain codebases with over 16k stars, 2.6k forks, and 3+ years of development across hundreds of contributors. As of June 2022, Aptos has already seen strong developer adoption of the Aptos blockchain with 18k+ connected nodes and several hundred projects already beginning development on the network less than 3 months post developer testnet launch. The team has several incentive programs in development to continue developer and ecosystem adoption.

For more information on Aptos, please visit https://aptoslabs.com

‍

2. Pontem Overview

Pontem is building primitives on Aptos that enable the growth of new products based on the Move / Aptos technology stack pioneered at Meta. Pontem is Partnered with Aptos to build the first app integrated wallet.

Pontem's wallet and embedded apps will inherit the security, performance and reliability of the Aptos blockchain.

Aptos "designed and implemented a highly efficient, multi-threaded, in-memory parallel execution engine that can execute over 160k non-trivial Move transactions per second by leveraging the preset order of transactions and combining Software Transactional Memory techniques with a novel collaborative schedule." - Block-STM: How We Execute Over 160k Transactions Per Second on the Aptos Blockchain d
‍
Through production ready applications, Pontem will enable institutional adoption of decentralized applications in order to onboard 1 billion users to web3.

‍

3. Architecture

Pontem is an open-source permissionless blockchain that shares a number of design and feature similarities (and aims to become fully compatible) with Diem. Below is a description of the Pontem architecture:

3.1 Move VM

The Move language and the Move Virtual Machine, both developed by the Diem team, are among the safest smart contract technologies to date. Unique features implemented in Move VM and language include:

• Access Control - In Move, any custom asset can be declared as a resource type, making it safe and access-controlled by default. This feature allows for example to maintain ownership information and privileges of digital assets even within smart contracts. If an asset is sent to a smart contract, ownership is not changed. For example, if a hacker gets access to a Move smart contract, he would not be able to withdraw the assets to his own wallet unless that functionality is a feature of the smart contract.
• Atomic resources architecture - Prevents developers from making basic mistakes that are common in smart contracts development such as reentrance errors or double-spending errors. In Move, resources can never be copied or implicitly discarded, only moved between storage locations.
• Modules - Are similar to banks. Each resource is stored in an individual vault, controlled by the owner’s account. Resource operations are limited by the functions supported by the specific module, which may be called from outside the module. Developers can deploy new modules to the network.
• Scripts - Each transaction on the network may contain a script that can call several modules or initiate several actions. Developers can use one transaction to engage a number of actions which significantly reduces the number of smart contracts required for an application. This results in safer applications, better user experience, and significantly more flexibility.
• Bytecode verifier - An integral part of Move which checks new modules and scripts for security properties before these are published. Once verified, the Bytecode interpreter module executes the code. This feature reduces the number of runtime errors.
• Formal verification - Modules can be verified using formal verification automatically before being deployed.
• Gas system - Similar to the Solidity gas usage system, users set gas and gas prices for their transactions.

3.2 Parachain

Technology-wise Pontem aims to bring the Move VM and Move language to Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche and other L1 ecosystems while maintaining compatibility with Aptos. to start, and if economically feasible, the Pontem network will implement its own Parachain or parathread and include a Move VM pallet (A module that enables Move VM to operate on Substrate). An alpha version of the Move VM pallet is already implemented. The pallet will further need to be upgraded in order to support Substrate storage and gas. Pontem received a Web3 grant for the development of the pallet.

The Parachain will have its own validators who secure the network and connect to the Polkadot Relay Chain using Parathreads. Users and validators are also expected to participate in protocol governance. Through Parathreads and the Relay Chain, Pontem may access liquidity and users from other Parachains and, if supporting bridges exist, even from other protocols like Ethereum, Cosmos, Avalanche, or Binance Chain.

3.3 Standard Library

Aptos features the Standard Library, a framework for smart contracts development that allows product managers and entrepreneurs to quick-start their projects. The library contains features such as smart contracts to work with accounts and their balances, hashes, timestamps, fixed-point math, account limits, and more. In order to maintain compatibility with Aptos, Pontem implements the same standard which allows developers to use their code on both networks. Standard Library still needs to be adopted for Substrate requirements as its currently missing native functions such as block number/timestamp, signatures, and more.

3.5 Liquidswap

In order to enable the the primitive function of trading on Move VM, Pontem will develop an upgradeable trading decentralized protocol which will support uncorrelated pairs like Uniswap and correlated pairs like Curve. It will also utilize a modified version of Solidly's improvement over Curve's token utility and governance model using voting escrow for time weighted voting. Over time new features will be added to capture more trading utility market share.

3.6 Governance

Governance is an important part of the Pontem network as decentralized governance is one of the key aspects of decentralization. Governance handles network decisions such as network code upgrades, deciding the rewards mechanism & details for validators and voting for which liquidity pairs get emission rewards. For the Move VM, Pontem is going to use the standard Polkadot governance module, a stake-based voting mechanism allowing anyone in the network to participate in proposals votes or to create new proposals. While most proposals are active for a period of 8 days during which votes are accepted and at the end of the period a resolution is reached, emergency, shorter period proposals, are also possible. Governance uses a council mechanism, referring to several community elected nodes which approve proposals to reach a referendum and decline dangerous or malicious proposals.

On Aptos, we will collaborate with them to either create a public good governance framework or build our own.

4. The Pontem Tokens

The Pontem network Move VM and EVM is fueled by the PONT token which will have multiple utilities and functions within the network. Upon the launch of the network, inflation may be necessary to be added in order to maintain the financial incentives for liquidity providers and for validators to continue securing the network. 

Pontem's Liquidswap is fueled by the LQDS token which will have multiple utilities and functions within the protocol, Upon the launch of the protocol, inflation may be necessary to be added in order to maintain the financial incentives for liquidity providers and for validators to continue securing the network. 

For security and separation of concerns in the token economies of each protocol developed by Pontem, PONT token holders will receive an airdrop of LQDS corresponding to their PONT allocation also adhering to any vesting terms.

Allocations for community growth and sustainability of each protocol will be made to ensure the health and long term success of each of the protocols.

• Transactions fees 
• Gas for Move VM execution instructions
  
• Rewards for  validators & nominators
• Rewards for liquidity providers
• Staking rewards
• Governance
  

More tools will be constantly developed in order to provide developers with a “Swiss knife” within the Pontem ecosystem.

4.1 Initial Token Distribution

The total token supply at launch will be 700,000,000. The table below describes the initial token distribution planned. A public sale may or may not occur, details of which will be set at a later date. Unsold and unallocated tokens will be assigned to the Pontem company.

4.2 Token Vesting Schedule