Aptos Token Standards

The Aptos Digital Asset Standard defines the canonical Non-fungible Token on Aptos. Aptos leverages composability to extend the digital asset standard with features like fungibility via the Fungible Asset standard. The concept of composability comes from the underlying data model for these constructs: the Move object data model.

The rest of this document discusses how the Aptos token standards compare to the standards on Ethereum and Solana.

Data models​

To understand tokens, we begin by comparing the data models across different blockchains.

Ethereum​

Ethereum has two types of accounts:

• Externally-owned accounts which store a balance of Ether.
• Contract accounts which manage their underlying smart contracts and have an associated storage for persistent state, which can only be mutated by the associated contract.

In order to create a new NFT collection, a creator must deploy their own contract to the blockchain, which in turn will create a collection and set of NFTs within its storage.

Solana​

Unlike Ethereum or Aptos where data and code co-exist, Solana stores data and programs in separate accounts. There are two types of accounts on the Solana blockchain:

• Executable accounts only store contract code
• Non-executable accounts store data associated with and owned by executable accounts.

In order to create a new NFT collection, a creator calls an existing deployed program to populate a new collection and set of NFTs.

Aptos​

The accounts in Aptos store both smart contracts and data. Unlike Ethereum, the associated data of a smart contract is distributed across the space of all accounts in resources within accounts or objects. For example, a collection and an NFT within that collection are stored in distinct objects at different addresses with the smart contract defining them at another address. A smart contract developer could also store data associated with the NFT and collection at the same address as the smart contract or in other objects.

There are two means to create NFTs on Aptos:

• The no-code standard allows creators to call into the contract to create new collections and tokens without deploying a new contract.