Aptos

In 2021 Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, engineers from Meta's Diem project, founded Aptos Labs to carry Diem's Move language and consensus research onto a permissionless public chain.

In March 2022 Aptos raised a $200 million strategic round led by a16z crypto with FTX Ventures, Jump and Coinbase Ventures participating, adding $150 million in July for roughly $350 million at a $4 billion valuation.

In October 2022 Aptos mainnet launched with a 1 billion APT genesis supply, AptosBFT consensus and Block-STM parallel execution, though its allocation and airdrop rules immediately drew "VC chain" criticism.

On October 19, 2023, the network's first anniversary, Aptos halted for about five hours and Binance, OKX and Upbit suspended APT deposits, exposing the gap between claimed throughput and real liveness.

Through 2024 Aptos pivoted to institutions: native USDT, USDC and CCTP arrived, BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin Templeton's BENJI deployed onchain, and Aptos Labs became the sole blockchain partner in the HKMA's e-HKD pilot.

In December 2024 co-founder Mo Shaikh stepped down as CEO with Avery Ching taking over, and in August 2025 Aave launched on Aptos in its first non-EVM deployment.

In March 2026 governance approved a tokenomics overhaul capping supply at 2.1 billion APT, cutting staking rewards from 5.19% to 2.6%, raising gas tenfold with full base-fee burns and locking 210 million APT with the Foundation.

On March 9, 2026 a joint SEC and CFTC release classified APT as a digital commodity, and in April Aptos enabled optional Confidential APT transfers while weekly transactions hit a one-year high of 79.2 million.

Unlock completion: On October 12, 2026, the four-year unlock schedule for core contributors and early investors concluded, cutting monthly releases from about 11.31 million to 4.54 million APT (roughly 60%), with annualized releases falling from about 135.7 million to 54.5 million.

Tokenomics tightening: Governance Proposal #183 set a 2.1 billion APT hard cap, and the Foundation permanently locked and staked 210 million APT; annual staking rewards were cut from 5.19% to 2.6%; gas fees were raised tenfold and fully burned, while the incubated Decibel perpetuals exchange is projected to burn over 32 million APT annually. APT traded around $0.82-$0.85 in mid-October, up roughly 40% over the prior four weeks.

On October 9, 2026, the Aptos Foundation unveiled tokenomics reforms: staking rewards cut from 5.19% to 2.6%, gas fees raised 10x initially, a 2.1 billion APT hard cap, and 210 million APT permanently locked and staked by the foundation; with 1.196 billion circulating and the four-year unlock ending in October, annualized unlocks fall about 60% and net inflation is already near 1.5%.

On October 6 it proposed the MonoMove execution engine, its replays of real Decibel trades showing collateral withdrawals up to 55x faster, contract trading requests 38x, order placement 22x and end-to-end throughput 11x, targeting feature completion by end-2026 and mainnet in 2027. The encrypted mempool went live network-wide on October 12 at about 20ms of added latency per block, Decibel enabled optional encrypted orders on October 21, and Aptos Labs joined the Cardano Foundation and Chainlink Labs in a comment letter urging the SEC to codify digital commodities in its crypto rule. September averaged about 9 million daily transactions, and net inflows from October 14 to 21 were $20.62 million.

Aptos's Future strategy and roadmap: Aptos is staking its deflation case on Decibel: the fully onchain DEX has done over $8.5 billion cumulatively since launching in February 2026 and is projected to burn more than 32 million APT a year as it passes 100 markets, while current monthly burns of about 174,000 APT remain far below roughly 1.5 million in staking emissions, so net deflation needs another order of magnitude in usage. The harder structural support is regulatory: on 17 March the SEC and CFTC classified it as a digital commodity and Avery Ching joined a CFTC digital-asset subcommittee, opening futures and RWA settlement, and the foundation is exploring buybacks funded by cash reserves and licensing revenue to add a demand-side tool to the deflation target; rivals Solana and Sui still win developers and stablecoin liquidity, so MonoMove's speed must convert into sustained volume.

Avery Ching, chief executive and co-founder, holds a PhD in computer engineering from Northwestern, was a principal engineer at Meta leading Diem, served as CTO from 2021 and became CEO in December 2024.

Mo Shaikh, co-founder, holds a bachelor's from Hunter College and an MBA from Rochester's Simon School, worked at KPMG, BlackRock, BCG and as strategy director at ConsenSys, served as chief executive from 2021 to December 2024, stayed on as adviser and founded Maximum Frequency Ventures in 2025.

Solomon Tesfaye, chief business officer, brings a decade in banking, venture capital and tokenization and was promoted in July 2025.

Sasha Spiegelman, head of research, holds a PhD from the Technion, was a researcher at Meta's Novi and co-authored the Narwhal and Bullshark consensus papers, joining in 2021.

Alin Tomescu, head of cryptography, holds a PhD from Boston University, was a researcher at VMware Research and joined in 2021 to lead verifiable cryptography.

The company is built around engineering and research, co-led by Spiegelman and Tomescu.

Aptos has recently seen two departures from its team. Pranav Raval, who served as Head of Infrastructure, left the company after a tenure from April 2022 to March 2026. Scott Nelson, the Events Lead, also departed, having been with the company from May 2022 to May 2026. No new hires were reported during this period.