End of Vesting Program for Early Backers and Contributors

Aptos, a Layer-1 blockchain network, has completed its four-year vesting schedule for core contributors and early backers. The final tranche of these allocations was distributed on September 12, 2026, aligning with the fourth anniversary of the network’s mainnet launch in October 2022. At genesis, the network assigned 190 million APT to core contributors and 134.78 million APT to early backers, totaling 324.78 million tokens or 32.48% of the initial 1 billion APT supply.

These tokens were subject to a 12-month lockup period followed by monthly releases over the subsequent 36 months. Previously, approximately 11.31 million APT were released each month, with 6.77 million directed to core contributors and early backers. With the cycle now complete, monthly distributions will drop to 4.54 million APT, all allocated to community and foundation pools for release until 2032 at a rate of one 120th of the remaining tokens per month.

This 60% cut in supply emissions follows the foundation’s earlier tokenomics update and will bring grant distributions down by more than half for 2027 onward.

Tokenomics Overhaul and Supply Management

The changes are part of a broader governance proposal to stabilize the token economy. The foundation will permanently lock and stake 210 million APT, representing about 37% of its original mainnet holdings. These tokens will not be sold or distributed; instead, rewards from the stake will fund ongoing foundation operations.

Annual staking rewards will fall from 5.19% to 2.6%, resulting in roughly 19.8 million new APT minted each year. As of late September 2026, 763 million APT, or 63% of the total supply, were already staked with validators. Unstaking requires up to 14 days. All transaction fees paid in APT are burned to reduce circulating supply, with the network having destroyed 1.9 million APT since launch through mid-September 2026.

A recent update increased gas fees tenfold, while stablecoin transfers remain low-cost at approximately $0.00014 per transaction. The network has a hard cap of 2.1 billion APT on token supply, which requires governance approval for any further minting. At launch, 1 billion APT was minted, staking has added another 196 million, and with the cap in place, roughly 904 million APT could still enter circulation.

Institutional Adoption and Real-World Asset Integration

Aptos supports tokenized real-world assets valued at around $723 million on its network. Major institutions including Franklin Templeton and BlackRock have issued tokenized fund products on the platform. In January, Bitnomial launched the first regulated APT futures contracts in the United States.

Transaction activity remains robust, with the network approaching 5 billion transactions. The combination of reduced supply emissions, fee burns, and institutional products positions the blockchain for continued growth in staking and ecosystem participation.