Now for a counterintuitive conclusion: Aptos is now one of the very few mainstream general-purpose L1 chains that can make holders’ net gains exceed operator costs. Four months ago, it was still causing holders to lose money continuously; now this turnaround has been sustained for three months. This isn’t sentiment—it’s on-chain data in plain numbers.
First, look at a key metric—THNI (Token Holder Net Income). Its algorithm is total network revenue minus the fees paid to validators; staking rewards are counted only as redistribution among holders and are not included as expenses. By this measure, Aptos officially turns positive in May 2026, while Ethereum, Solana, and Sui are still entirely stuck in negative territory.
To avoid narrative noise, we lock the scope to only general-purpose L1s. Hyperliquid is essentially an appchain; BNB is deeply tied to Binance; TRON is more like a stablecoin-dedicated chain; Avalanche is a multi-subnet architecture. Excluding these is what allows a clean comparison of Aptos with Ethereum, Solana, and Sui.
Based on the annualized contribution of every $10,000, Aptos was at the bottom in January 2025, but by July 2026 it directly took the top spot—an upside reversal of more than $110. This ranking shift isn’t luck; it’s the four protocol-level reforms that were densely deployed between Feb 19 and Mar 19 this year.
First, Gas prices were increased by 10x. Second, staking rewards were cut in half, fixed at 2.6%. Third, the hard cap on the total supply was locked at 2.1 billion tokens. Fourth, 210 million tokens were permanently locked. The result is very straightforward: network revenue surged by about 16x, while operator commissions were also cut in half. Both the income side and the expense side improved at the same time. Even more valuable is that demand didn’t shrink due to the price hike—daily transactions rose from about 4.5 million to more than 12 million, and fees are now 10x what they were originally.
The real burning engine comes from a full-chain perpetual contract order book called Decibel. It accounts for the vast majority of transaction counts on the Aptos chain. The key mechanism is: for each $1 of trades executed through the full-chain order book, the average APT burned is about 50x the APT burned when swapping $1 in a typical liquidity pool. That’s because every quote, cancellation, and fill is a separate transaction that independently requires paying Gas. Because of this, even though Decibel contributes only a bit more than half of the transaction volume by dollar value on Aptos, it accounts for 97% of the transaction count. Full-chain CLOB (central limit order book) is only economically viable under Aptos’s current fee level and throughput.
More worth long-term tracking than THNI turning positive is the “burned portion as a share of issuance.” In January this year, that figure was 0.2%; now it’s close to 10%. The reason this matters is that token issuance itself creates continuous sell pressure—validators may sell rewards to cover operating costs, and the foundation may also sell rewards to realize gains. Now that the reward rate is already fixed, large-scale unlock pressure after October will drop significantly, while Decibel’s product roadmap is still expanding.
Quick scan of the macro market as well. Yesterday, crypto stocks broadly led across the board: +2.9%, BTC slightly down 0.4%, and S&P 500 down 0.2%. Sector rotation was clear: Oracle +5.8% led; Meme coins +3.0%, exchange tokens +2.5%, and RWA +2.4% followed closely. Next came DEX -4.1%, privacy track -3.7%, and the Solana ecosystem -3.1% lagged significantly. On a weekly basis, the crypto stock group gained +12.0%, outperforming all assets—above Oracle’s +7.6% and gold’s +7.1%. BTC fell 0.7% on the week, S&P 500 down 0.4%, with most token sectors closing lower. The Solana ecosystem -10.0% and crypto miners -11.2% finished at the bottom.
In terms of market sentiment, July’s nonfarm payrolls actually decreased by 23k, far below the expected increase of 80k. This data directly reduced the probability of a September Fed rate hike, and gold’s rise is driven by that.
This wave of crypto stocks is basically Circle’s one-man show. CRCL surged 16.0% this week. BLSH +4.4% and GLXY +2.3% contributed modest gains, while FIGR -4.0% and GEMI -3.2% fell completely behind. Broader crypto stock indices were only up 0.1%.
On Aug 5, Circle released its 2026 Q2 financial report: total revenue and reserve income combined were $701 million (+7% year over year). Adjusted EBITDA was $143 million. USDC in circulation was $73.3 billion (+19% year over year). Total on-chain transfer volume was $14.8 trillion (up 151% year over year). Interestingly, the market reaction wasn’t a sudden spike on the report day—it slowly warmed up. On the day CRCL released its earnings it rose only 3.2%, but by last Friday the cumulative gain expanded to 8.7%. Yesterday it closed at about $71, up 16.0% cumulatively versus before the earnings.
Behind it are two forward-looking catalysts continuously brewing. First is the Arc mainnet: scheduled to go live on September 16, with heavyweight institutions like BlackRock, Visa, and DTCC participating as founding validators. Second is that Circle National Trust has already been approved by federal regulators, becoming one of the first stablecoin issuers to obtain a federal banking license. Once both land, Circle’s narrative room and business ceiling will be clearly expanded.
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