Four years of heavy selling pressure officially comes to an end today, and monthly token unlocks are slashed by 60% 🦖
📢 ⏰ 消息群里第一时间说
Aptos’s four-year vesting schedule for core contributors and early investors ends on October 12—that’s today. The final tranche was released on September 12. According to the Foundation, monthly unlocks will drop from 11.31 million APT to 4.54 million, a reduction of about 60%. Annual unlocks will fall from 135.7 million to 54.5 million 📉
First, let’s get the historical numbers straight. When Aptos mainnet launched in October 2022, 190 million of the initial 1 billion tokens went to core contributors, and 134.78 million went to early backers. That’s 324.78 million tokens combined, or 32.48% of the initial supply. The terms were a 12-month lockup, followed by monthly vesting over 36 months. For the past few years, 11.31 million tokens were unlocked each month, with 6.77 million going to these low-cost insiders. They could sell as soon as their tokens unlocked, creating a constant source of selling pressure on the market.
So why do I say the story is only just beginning after today? Because the tap for new tokens isn’t turning off—it’s just changing hands. Another 4.54 million tokens will still be released each month, all from the community and Foundation pools, with 1/120 of each pool’s remaining balance distributed monthly through 2032. These two pools still hold 331.69 million APT in lockup. As of September 30, the circulating supply was 871.02 million, and the total supply was close to 1.2 billion. There’s still a significant amount of supply growth ahead.
The second variable is staking. Staking rewards have now overtaken unlocks as the main source of new supply. The annual reward rate has dropped from 5.19% to 2.6%, adding only about 19.8 million APT a year. Around 763 million APT—63% of the total supply—is staked with validators. To sell, holders first have to wait through an unbonding period of up to 14 days. The upside is that selling pressure won’t hit all at once; the downside is that supply has become a slow-moving variable, so price reactions may lag.
The third variable is token burns. Aptos burns all on-chain transaction fees. From launch through mid-September this year, about 1.9 million tokens had been burned. A recent upgrade increased gas fees tenfold, which should significantly speed up the burn rate. The hard cap of 2.1 billion tokens has been locked in through a proposal. Proposal 183 received 335.2 million votes in favor, with only about 1,500 against.
There’s another move that’s easy to overlook: the Foundation announced it will permanently lock and stake 210 million APT, about 37% of its mainnet holdings. The tokens won’t be sold or distributed, and the rewards will be used to fund operations ⚖️ In effect, it has turned itself from a potential seller into a long-term holder.
In other words, this isn’t a bullish announcement so much as a shift in the supply structure. There are three things to watch: first, the unlock wave running through 2032 is giving way to staking issuance of around 20 million tokens a year; second, the Foundation has permanently locked up its tokens, taking its own ammunition off the table; and third, whether burns and institutional adoption can absorb the remaining new supply. On the fundamentals side, real-world assets on Aptos are worth about $723 million, and Franklin Templeton and BlackRock have both launched tokenized fund products on the network.
Back to the price: APT is currently around $0.899, up 2.54% in 24 hours, with a market cap of about $783 million. At the same time, Bitcoin is at $83,561 and Ethereum at $2,540. Unlocks are being cut by 60%, yet the market cap is still under $800 million and the price is hovering below $1. The key thing to watch is whether the actual monthly increase in circulating supply really does come down 📈
Do you think this is a supply turning point, or just another sentiment-driven rebound? Let’s talk in the comments.
Tap the profile picture to watch the livestream.
Every day, we bring you the latest hot topics in the crypto market—not just what’s happening, but the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀
📢 ⏰ 消息群里第一时间说
Aptos’s four-year vesting schedule for core contributors and early investors ends on October 12—that’s today. The final tranche was released on September 12. According to the Foundation, monthly unlocks will drop from 11.31 million APT to 4.54 million, a reduction of about 60%. Annual unlocks will fall from 135.7 million to 54.5 million 📉
First, let’s get the historical numbers straight. When Aptos mainnet launched in October 2022, 190 million of the initial 1 billion tokens went to core contributors, and 134.78 million went to early backers. That’s 324.78 million tokens combined, or 32.48% of the initial supply. The terms were a 12-month lockup, followed by monthly vesting over 36 months. For the past few years, 11.31 million tokens were unlocked each month, with 6.77 million going to these low-cost insiders. They could sell as soon as their tokens unlocked, creating a constant source of selling pressure on the market.
So why do I say the story is only just beginning after today? Because the tap for new tokens isn’t turning off—it’s just changing hands. Another 4.54 million tokens will still be released each month, all from the community and Foundation pools, with 1/120 of each pool’s remaining balance distributed monthly through 2032. These two pools still hold 331.69 million APT in lockup. As of September 30, the circulating supply was 871.02 million, and the total supply was close to 1.2 billion. There’s still a significant amount of supply growth ahead.
The second variable is staking. Staking rewards have now overtaken unlocks as the main source of new supply. The annual reward rate has dropped from 5.19% to 2.6%, adding only about 19.8 million APT a year. Around 763 million APT—63% of the total supply—is staked with validators. To sell, holders first have to wait through an unbonding period of up to 14 days. The upside is that selling pressure won’t hit all at once; the downside is that supply has become a slow-moving variable, so price reactions may lag.
The third variable is token burns. Aptos burns all on-chain transaction fees. From launch through mid-September this year, about 1.9 million tokens had been burned. A recent upgrade increased gas fees tenfold, which should significantly speed up the burn rate. The hard cap of 2.1 billion tokens has been locked in through a proposal. Proposal 183 received 335.2 million votes in favor, with only about 1,500 against.
There’s another move that’s easy to overlook: the Foundation announced it will permanently lock and stake 210 million APT, about 37% of its mainnet holdings. The tokens won’t be sold or distributed, and the rewards will be used to fund operations ⚖️ In effect, it has turned itself from a potential seller into a long-term holder.
In other words, this isn’t a bullish announcement so much as a shift in the supply structure. There are three things to watch: first, the unlock wave running through 2032 is giving way to staking issuance of around 20 million tokens a year; second, the Foundation has permanently locked up its tokens, taking its own ammunition off the table; and third, whether burns and institutional adoption can absorb the remaining new supply. On the fundamentals side, real-world assets on Aptos are worth about $723 million, and Franklin Templeton and BlackRock have both launched tokenized fund products on the network.
Back to the price: APT is currently around $0.899, up 2.54% in 24 hours, with a market cap of about $783 million. At the same time, Bitcoin is at $83,561 and Ethereum at $2,540. Unlocks are being cut by 60%, yet the market cap is still under $800 million and the price is hovering below $1. The key thing to watch is whether the actual monthly increase in circulating supply really does come down 📈
Do you think this is a supply turning point, or just another sentiment-driven rebound? Let’s talk in the comments.
Tap the profile picture to watch the livestream.
Every day, we bring you the latest hot topics in the crypto market—not just what’s happening, but the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀