Aptos Overhauls APT Tokenomics with 2.1B Hard Cap, 210M Locked Tokens, and 2.6% Staking Rewards

Aptos announced an overhaul of its APT tokenomics, introducing a performance-driven supply mechanism that ties issuance to network usage and sets a hard cap of 2.1 billion APT with no additional tokens beyond this limit, while 210 million APT will be permanently staked and locked. The update cuts annualized staking rewards from approximately 5.19% to 2.6% and raises gas fees tenfold to roughly $0.00014 per stablecoin transfer to curb inefficient usage and support deflation, Aptos said. The network will enable large-scale APT burns via on-chain DEXs such as Decibel driven by high-frequency trading, with current circulating supply at approximately 1.196 billion APT and roughly 904 million tokens (43%) unissued. Future foundation grants will be disbursed only upon achieving milestones for the "Global Transaction Engine", and the foundation will explore programmatic, market-based buybacks that may involve repurchases, burns, or reserves, Aptos said.