Aptos is aiming for a $2 billion valuation for its bid to bring the Diem blockchain to users. This will mean a lot for the planned blockchain roadmap.

A team with knowledge of the Facebook-initiated Libra stablecoin project created plans to bring the network to the public sphere – albeit under a different moniker and seemingly different focus. According to two anonymous sources, the team is raising $200 million at a $2 billion valuation to accomplish this. People familiar with the transaction, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and several other cryptocurrency venture capital firms were involved. They think it will be a huge impact on the blockchain roadmap. 

Aptos announced in a blog post that it was taking another shot at bringing the ill-fated Diem blockchain roadmap to life, following Meta Platforms’ confirmed winding down of its crypto-related assets.

According to two anonymous sources, the team is raising $200 million at a $2 billion valuation to accomplish this. According to people familiar with the transaction, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and several other cryptocurrency venture capital firms were involved.

If Aptos regains its footing, it will mark a stunning turnaround for Diem – a project widely heralded in 2019 but fatally crippled by regulatory backlash over the next two and a half years. Notably, the blog post does not refer to the proposed stablecoins that have enraged lawmakers in the United States and elsewhere.

“We are not starting from scratch,” Aptos wrote in its “genesis” blog post, describing plans to launch the “safest and most production-ready blockchain in the world.”

“We are the original creators, researchers, designers, and builders of Diem, the blockchain that was first built to serve this purpose,” they added. “While the world never got to see what we built, our work is far from over.”

Also, read – GEM invests $100 million in blockchain company 5ire

Aptos team was developing a new layer one blockchain based on the Libra white paper. According to the source, the pitch to prospective investors was “Libra without Facebook.” Unlike Libra, however, the initial focus will be on non-fungible tokens rather than cross-border payments, they added. General-purpose blockchains support multiple applications such as Ethereum, Solana, Flow, and now Aptos.

According to the Thursday blog post, Avery Ching and Mo Shaikh are leading Aptos. 

Shaikh was also previously employed by Novi but spent nearly three years as a director of the strategy at ConsenSys, the Ethereum venture studio based in Brooklyn, New York.

Much of the work done by Diem-affiliated teams – whether through Calibra (now Novi) or the Libra Association (now Diem Association) – was done under open-source licenses, allowing the intellectual property to be used to start a new company. The team applied for the Aptos Blockchain trademark last week, according to public records.

According to the blog post, Aptos believes that new leadership can finally bring Diem’s technology to fruition.

“Since departing Meta (formerly Facebook), we have been able to put our ideas into motion, ditch bureaucratic red tape, and build an entirely new network from the ground up that brings them to fruition,” they wrote.