Aptos (APT) is the native cryptocurrency of the Aptos blockchain, a layer-1 network built by former Meta engineers using the Move programming language. APT pays transaction fees, is staked to secure the network and is used to vote on governance proposals. The network launched in October 2022 and is used for payments, stablecoins, tokenized funds and decentralized finance.
Aptos and Sui (SUI) are sister projects in a sense: both were founded by veterans of Diem, Meta's abandoned stablecoin project, and both use versions of Move, though their designs differ. Aptos is a single, high-throughput chain in the same broad group as Solana (SOL), rather than a layer 2 built on top of Ethereum. Aptos Labs develops the software and the Aptos Foundation supports the ecosystem.
Aptos in plain terms
Picture a bank with many cashiers. In some systems every customer must pass through one cashier in a strict line, which keeps things tidy but slow. Aptos lets all the cashiers work at once, then quietly double-checks afterwards whether any two of them touched the same account. If they did, only those two transactions are redone; everyone else has already left.
The rules of the bank are written in Move, a language designed so that digital money cannot be copied or lost by accident, much as a physical coin cannot be in two pockets at once. APT is the fee customers pay for each transaction, and people who lock up APT to support the cashiers earn a modest reward for doing so.
History
Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, who had worked on Meta's Diem and Novi projects, founded Aptos Labs in 2021 after Meta wound Diem down. In 2022 the company raised $200 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and a further $150 million led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto. Mainnet launched on 17 October 2022, drawing criticism for low early activity and for publishing token allocations only at launch. Avery Ching became chief executive in December 2024. In 2025 Bitwise filed for a US spot APT exchange-traded fund, and the dollar stablecoin World Liberty Financial USD (USD1) launched natively on Aptos in October 2025, joining Tether (USDT) and USDC.
How it works
Aptos uses proof of stake with AptosBFT, a form of Byzantine fault tolerance descended from Diem's consensus design. Its execution engine, Block-STM, runs transactions in parallel and re-executes only those that conflict. Smart contracts are written in Move, which treats tokens as resources that the language will not let a program duplicate or discard. Accounts can rotate their keys without changing address, which makes security recovery easier, and the protocol itself can be upgraded through on-chain governance without a disruptive hard fork. Aptos has cut its block times steadily since launch, and by late 2025 they were well under a second. Holders can delegate APT to validators and earn rewards, paid out at a rate set by governance:
- is the annual staking reward, in APT.
- is the amount of APT staked.
- is the yearly reward rate, written as a decimal.
At a rate of 2.6 percent, staking 1,000 APT earns about APT a year, before any validator commission.
Supply and tokenomics
Aptos started with 1 billion APT, allocated roughly 51 percent to the community, 19 percent to core contributors, 16.5 percent to the foundation and 13.5 percent to investors, with insider tokens unlocking over four years. Supply grew through staking rewards with no limit until early 2026, when token holders approved a package that set a hard cap of 2.1 billion APT, cut the staking reward rate from about 5.19 percent to about 2.6 percent, and raised gas fees, which Aptos burns rather than paying to validators. The aim was to tie the token more closely to network usage; see tokenomics.
In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission named Aptos (APT) among their examples of "digital commodities" in a joint interpretation issued in March 2026, meaning it is not treated as a security under federal securities law.
Uses and criticism
- Fees. Every transaction is paid for in APT, and those fees are destroyed.
- Staking and governance. Staked APT secures the chain and carries voting power.
- Payments and tokenized assets. Stablecoins and tokenized funds, including BlackRock's BUIDL fund, are issued on Aptos.
Developers also use Aptos for decentralized exchanges, lending markets and on-chain order books, and the network's very short block times have attracted trading applications that need quick confirmation. Supporters argue that the Move language and the ability to upgrade the protocol through on-chain governance give Aptos a safer and more flexible base than older chains.
Critics point to the large share of supply held by insiders and the steady pressure of token unlocks, to the gap between theoretical throughput and real demand, and to strong competition from Sui, Solana and other fast chains. The early-2026 changes to supply and rewards also showed that the token's economic rules can be rewritten by a governance vote in which large holders, including the foundation and early investors, carry significant weight.