Aptos MonoMove Aims to Boost Smart Contract Speeds by 55x

Aptos has introduced MonoMove, a new execution engine designed to significantly accelerate smart contract performance on its blockchain. The engine claims to run smart contracts up to 55 times faster for onchain markets, targeting a critical but often overlooked bottleneck: the speed at which the virtual machine processes transaction code.

MonoMove represents a complete overhaul of the Move virtual machine (VM) and its execution stack. The redesign focuses on two key areas: improving single-thread performance and enhancing parallelism. Technical innovations include monomorphized micro-ops, which generate specialized code ahead of time to avoid runtime type checks, and a register-based interpreter that reduces the overhead of stack operations.

Internal benchmarks highlight substantial performance gains across various transaction types. Collateral withdrawals saw up to a 55x speed boost, vault requests up to 40x, and perpetual market requests up to 38x. End-to-end throughput improved by 3-8x, with order-book matching and liquidity-pool swaps also seeing notable enhancements. However, these figures are derived from controlled tests and may differ under real-world conditions.

MonoMove is currently in development, with integration into Aptos’s block executor underway. The full feature set, including reentrancy checks and gas instrumentation, is expected by the end of 2026, with a mainnet rollout planned for 2027 pending governance approval. Aptos is also conducting differential testing and formal verification to ensure compatibility with the legacy AptosVM.