If you’ve been active on social media and keeping up in the crypto space, you’ve read that Aptos is the latest crypto project in which venture capitalists, or VCs, are heavily investing. And as an investor, you may be wondering if Aptos is just hype, or something to invest in. Let’s explore the proposed features of the Aptos blockchain, its tokenomics and whether it’s worthy of your investment.
Why Venture Capitalists Are Heavily Invested in Aptos
The question most people have is: Why are VCs so heavily invested in Aptos? Before we explain, let’s take a look at who’s behind this blockchain.
In 2021, Aptos was founded by a group of ex-Meta employees who were previously in charge of Meta’s Diem blockchain project. That was shut down in January 2022. The Aptos blockchain is based on the Diem blockchain initiative and uses the same Move programming language that was developed for Diem.
Aptos was introduced to the public in February 2022. With a highly experienced team of blockchain researchers and designers with the same dream of developing the safest and most scalable Layer 1 blockchain, Aptos quickly gained the attention of reputable VCs who believed in their vision.
Furthermore, due to its proposed architecture that combines Block-STM technology, Move programming language and BFT consensus, Aptos stood out from the rest of the Layer 1 blockchains in the crypto space. In March 2022, Aptos managed to secure $200 million in funding from such VCs as Andreessen Horowitz (nicknamed “a16z”), Coinbase Ventures, FTX Ventures, Kathryn (Katie) Haun and Multicoin Capital.
Launch and Financial Backing
Within the same month, Aptos released its developer testnet and achieved 20,000 full, active nodes. In May it launched the first of its four-stage incentivized testnet, and received 30,000 applications from people wanting to validate the network. At this point, Aptos claimed its blockchain has the ability to process up to 160,000 transactions per second (TPS). To put this in perspective, Solana, one of the fastest chains, has a transaction speed of only 3,000 TPS.
With that kind of speed, it’s no wonder Aptos quickly raised $150 million in July from other VCs, as well as previous investors, such as FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto, a16z, Apollo, Circle Ventures, Franklin Templeton and Griffin Gaming Partners.
Features of Aptos Blockchain
Aptos’ mainnet was officially launched on October 12, 2022. The project also launched its Aptos Names Service and Petra Wallet. NFT minting has been discussed by Aptos developers in the past, and while it hasn’t been launched yet, users can look forward to its release in the near future.
Aptos NFTs
An Aptos engineer discovered the Aptos blockchain was very efficient in NFT minting. According to the Aptos official blog post, the devnet blockchain is able to mint millions of NFTs in less than an hour. Aptos believes that this number could increase drastically on the mainnet.
Aptos is still in the midst of refining this feature, since the NFT space isn’t its main focus, but users should stay tuned. Aptos may even launch its own NFT collection in the near future, providing another way for you to invest in the project.
Aptos Name Service
Concurrent with the launch of its mainnet, Aptos also launched Aptos Names Service (ANS), which allows users to convert their wallet addresses containing long strings of alphanumeric characters into short, easy-to-read .apt names. This ties in with Aptos’ goal of making the blockchain more accessible and user-friendly.
Users can create their own web3 identity and even use their own names to send and receive transactions.
At the moment, there’s a one-year rental period (subject to increment) to register your name, and then you can choose to renew. The purpose of this is to not only encourage users to be more active on the blockchain, but also to give them a chance to register for the names they like.
Petra Wallet
Petra Wallet is the official wallet for the Aptos blockchain. It works as a Google Chrome extension, allowing you access to the Aptos ecosystem. You can store and send funds, view your transaction history, create new NFTs and browse decentralized applications (DApps).
Petra Wallet is still a demo version and has limited functionality, but the Aptos team will be creating a full-fledged version soon.
Aptos Tokenomics
After months of waiting, Aptos has finally released a summary of its tokenomics. The more comprehensive version will be released in due time.
Aptos has an initial total supply of 1 billion tokens, with 51.02% reserved for the community (of which 41.02% is held by Aptos Foundation and 10% by Aptos Labs), 19% allocated to core contributors of the project, 16.50% to the Aptos Foundation and 13.48% to the investors.
The percentage reserved for the community is meant to be distributed over ten years. However, 125 million APT tokens are available to support projects and initiatives brought forward to grow the community, and 5 million are available for Aptos Foundation initiatives. However, the tokens of the core contributors and investors are locked up for four years. They’ll start to unlock in portions following the thirteenth month after the mainnet launch (November 2023).
APT token holders looking to earn passive income can stake their tokens to a validator operator as part of securing the network. The maximum reward rate begins at 7% annually, but this number will be reevaluated during each epoch. Note that the rate will decline by 1.5% every year until it reaches 3.25% annually, which Aptos expects to take at least 50 years.
Aptos Price Prediction
APT’s price hit a peak of $13.73 as soon as it was listed on various exchanges, including Bybit. Then, a couple of hours later, the price decreased 50% to $6.73, with market analysts believing this was the result of VCs and investors dumping the token. The dip could also be the result of recent negative sentiments the project is receiving, particularly about the authenticity of 160,000 TPS. Twitter engineers reported the blockchain’s TPS is actually less than that of Bitcoin’s. Regardless, the price has now recovered a little to $7.66.
Crypto Bulls Club predicts the APT price could reach a new high of $19.67 by the end of this year before taking another dip, and hitting a new low of $6.60 in May 2023. Then they expect it to rebound to $14.16 by year-end, and continue to increase until it hits $41.88 in 2025. While CoinArbitrageBot has the same sentiments, it’s not as optimistic as Crypto Bulls Club. The APT price, it predicts, will dip to $9.36 in 2023, then increase to $29.42 in 2025.
While these predictions seem optimistic, it’s important to remember that every cryptocurrency, including Aptos, is extremely volatile. Always do your own research before investing. Aptos may not be a good long-term investment, but you can always consider shorting it instead.
How to Buy Aptos on Bybit
Bybit is one of the first few exchanges to offer Aptos on its spot trading platform, alongside Binance, FTX and OKX. The APT/USDT spot pair was listed on the Bybit spot trading platform at 1:00AM UTC on October 19, 2022. Deposits of APT opened at 12:00PM UTC on October 18, 2022, and withdrawals of APT began at 1:00AM UTC on October 20, 2022.
If you’re looking to trade APT/USDT, you’ll be glad to know that Bybit is currently running a zero fees campaign on all spot trading pairs to celebrate achieving 10 million users on its platform.
In order to trade APT/USDT on Bybit, first sign up for an account. Then you can purchase USDT through Bybit’s One-Click Buy or P2P Trading Platform. Once you have USDT, you can proceed to the APT/USDT Spot Trading page.
Closing Thoughts
Aptos does seem like a potentially great investment, especially in the short run, due to its unique architecture and its proven success on its testnet. Furthermore, the solid reputation of the Aptos development team certainly does lend credibility to the project. Ultimately, it appears to be a solid investment to consider adding to your crypto portfolio. Get started trading APT by signing up for a Bybit account today.