If you’ve heard people call Aptos a “next-gen Layer-1” and wondered what makes it different, here’s the story in plain English. Aptos is a high-performance blockchain built by alumni of Meta’s Diem project. It uses the Move programming language and a parallel execution engine called Block-STM to push throughput and safety, while its APTtoken powers fees, staking, and governance. Below, we walk through where it came from, what shipped at launch, why its tech choices matter, how the token was allocated, who backed it, and how to keep tabs on the APT price today.
Origins: From Diem/Novi to Aptos Labs
Aptos Labs was founded in 2021 by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, both key contributors to Meta’s Diem (formerly Libra) effort. After Diem wound down, the team set out to build a new L1 that could bring Diem’s safety and performance ideas to the public internet—without Big Tech control. In March 2022, Aptos raised $200M in a venture round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Tiger Global, Multicoin and others, explicitly positioning the project as a Diem spiritual successor.
In July 2022, the company closed another $150M round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto; Binance Labs followed with strategic investments that same year to help grow the ecosystem. Together, those rounds gave Aptos the resources and credibility to push toward mainnet.
Mainnet: October 2022—and a bumpy first week
Aptos launched mainnet in October 2022, making headlines as the first high-profile chain to emerge directly from the Diem lineage. Early coverage noted the hype as well as some launch-week turbulence (low observed TPS at the start, confusion around the token rollout). The important bit: the network shipped, then iterated quickly as developers began deploying with Move.
The Tech Pillars (in human terms)
Move language. Move was born in the Diem research program and is now used by Aptos to write smart contracts. It treats digital assets as scarce resources at the language level—meaning many “gotchas” that cause exploits in other environments are harder to express in Move. Developers get strict access control, resource semantics, and a growing doc set and tooling. That’s a big part of Aptos’ “secure by design” pitch.
Block-STM parallel execution. Instead of executing transactions strictly one-by-one, Aptos groups them and runs them in parallel, resolving conflicts to ensure the final state matches a valid ordered execution. The academic write-up (with Aptos engineers among the authors) shows large throughput gains under realistic workloads—one reason Aptos targets low latency for consumer-grade apps.
These two choices—Move for safety and Block-STM for speed—explain why Aptos markets itself as a chain for high-volume, consumer-friendly use cases rather than just finance-only experiments.
Tokenomics: Initial Supply and Allocation
At mainnet, APT launched with an initial supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens (“1B”), with eight decimal places (the smallest unit is an Octa). The initial distribution outlined by the Aptos Foundation was: Community 51.02%, Core Contributors 19%, Foundation 16.5%, Investors 13.48%—with lockups and long-dated schedules designed to avoid sudden unlock shocks. The official “Tokenomics Overview” remains the canonical reference if you want the exact tables and release cadence.
Separate reporting at launch also highlighted that investor and contributor tranches were subject to multi-year lockups, with supply slated to release over roughly a decade—context for anyone modeling dilution and circulating float.
Notable Partnerships and Ecosystem Signals
Aptos has positioned itself beyond crypto-native circles through mainstream partnerships. In August 2023, Aptos Labs announced a collaboration with Microsoft, using Azure OpenAI services to explore AI + web3 integrations (think developer copilots, verified agents, and enterprise-grade infrastructure). It’s notable because it puts Move-based development in front of a broader set of builders and IT leaders.
On the exchange and liquidity side, Binance Labs’ strategic backing, as well as top-tier listings at launch, gave APT immediate venue coverage—useful for onboarding traders and bootstrapping DeFi liquidity.
Where APT Stands Today (and how to check it)
APT price and market cap change by the minute, so the safest way to get a current snapshot is to pull up a live dashboard like CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko, which track circulating supply, rank, and recent activity. If you want a quick trend look (addresses, transactions, DEX volume), both aggregators and on-chain analytics vendors publish periodic updates you can consult before making a move.
A practical tip: use the price page primarily to verify contract tickers and symbols, then read a recent fundamentals or developer update to see whether usage is growing alongside price.
Why Builders and Traders Care About Aptos
- Developer ergonomics. Move’s resource model plus modern tooling make it attractive for teams that want stronger safety guarantees for assets and complex app logic. That can lower the “unknown unknowns” risk in production.
- Throughput for consumer apps. Block-STM’s parallelism is engineered for workloads where lots of independent actions happen at once—think games, social, ticketing, marketplaces. It’s a design bet on mainstream activity rather than only high-value DeFi.
- Capital and partnerships. The project arrived with heavyweight backers (a16z, Jump, Binance Labs) and later struck enterprise-facing collaborations (Microsoft). That doesn’t guarantee success, but it does expand the hiring and BD surface area.
Aptos in One Breath
Aptos is a Layer-1 blockchain founded by ex-Meta (Diem) engineers, launched in October 2022, built around the Move language for asset safety and Block-STM for parallel execution. It raised large rounds from a16z, Jump, and others, disclosed an initial 1B APT supply with majority to the community, and has pursued mainstream partnerships like Microsoft—all while steadily growing its developer ecosystem. For real-time APT price and supply, use a live tracker; for due diligence, read the tokenomics post and the Move/Block-STM docs.