[Feature] Is Aptos Overhyped with Its Slow TPS and Shady Tokenomics?

Aptos, the highly anticipated Layer 1 blockchain using Move language has announced its mainnet launch in the early morning of October 18, 2022 (GMT+8).

Subsequently, FTX, Binance, Huobi Global, Coinbase and many other top-tier exchanges announced the listing of Aptos APT token as well.

Aptos has attracted a lot of attention in the industry with the success completion of multiple rounds of fundraising from top VCs including a16z, FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto, and Binance Labs. Its valuation is set at $2 billion, four times higher than their previous valuation just six months earlier.

Since then, however, Aptos might have overpromised and the hype may not be similar to reality.

What is the current transaction speed of Aptos?

A major promise of Aptos is the delivery of a high-scaling, high-throughput public chain promising 100k TPS in its finalized version.

However, according to Aptos explorer data, Aptos’ current TPS is around 4 transactions per second, even lower than Bitcoin with only a total of 102 active validators.

And most of these transactions are not even actual transactions, just merely validators communicating and setting block checkpoints (StateCheckpoint), as well as writing metadata to the chain (BlockMetadata).

In addition, according to Twitter user @ParadigmEng420, between Aptos genesis and 1:30 pm PT, Aptos discord was disabled and users could not chat or ask any questions. Selected channels were opened not long after, however, important channel such as development resources is still closed.

Aptos' officially responded that their network is operating as expected and will see increase in activities as more ecosystem projects are onboarded. This was also the reason why the comment section of Aptos social channels was closed, to protect the community from scams during this period. Developers are actively monitoring, and the above channels will return to normal in due course.

Aptos Token Economics: 80% of tokens are controlled by the team and investors

Shown below is a deep dive analysis of the token economics for Aptos on the data on the chain.

The total supply of Aptos (APT) is 1,000,778,596.08, but 821,150,724.78 is currently staked. This means that over 80% of the token supply is controlled by the team and investors.

There were no airdrops or other ways to earn mainnet Aptos tokens, nor was there a public sale or any other rounds for retail investors to invest in.

We can likely conclude from this that almost most of the token supply goes to private parties.

Furthermore, after subtracting staked Aptos tokens from total supply, where are the remaining 200 million liquid Aptos (APT) tokens? We can assume that they may be future validator incentives, or worse, they could be sitting in an investor’s exchanges wallet, such as FTX, Binance, Huobi Global, and Coinbase, ready to be dumped on retail.

Finally, @ParadigmEng420 bluntly reiterated that Aptos retail investors will on the losing end and dumped on. The only play for Aptos would be to quick farm and dump.