Aptos Updates Token Economic Model: Supply Cap Set at 2.1 Billion Tokens, Gas Fees Increased 10x, Buyback Program Launched

Odaily News Aptos has announced an update to the APT token economic model, shifting towards a performance-driven token supply mechanism that links APT supply to actual network usage. Specifically, this update includes the following seven key points:

1. Reduce staking reward rates and incentivize long-term stakers. The Aptos Foundation has proposed to lower the annualized staking reward rate from 5.19% to 2.6%. Furthermore, the Aptos Foundation is exploring a governance proposal to modify the staking framework to better align incentives with long-term network participation.

2. Increase Gas fees by 10 times. Aptos is currently one of the lowest-cost blockchains. Given that current transaction fees are so low, the Aptos Foundation will propose through governance to increase Gas fees to 10 times the current amount. Even after this increase, the fee for stablecoin transfers on the network will remain as low as approximately $0.00014.

3. Transaction Utilization and Fees. A new deflationary mechanism will be introduced through the Decibel decentralized exchange protocol on the Aptos chain, where high-frequency trading activities will consume and burn APT on a large scale.

Currently, all transaction or "gas fees" paid in APT on the network are permanently burned. Decibel, incubated through a collaboration between Aptos Labs and the Decibel Foundation, represents one of the first fully decentralized exchanges to execute all trading activities on-chain: every order, match, and cancellation is executed on-chain. With 100% on-chain execution, the launch of the Decibel mainnet will significantly increase the transaction throughput of the Aptos blockchain.

4. A hard supply cap is fixed at 2.1 billion APT. Once approved by the community, no new tokens can be minted beyond this cap.

5. The Foundation permanently locks 210 million APT. The Aptos Foundation will ensure that 210 million APT are locked and permanently staked on the network. These tokens will never be sold or distributed and are permanently locked.

6. Performance-linked grant issuance. In the future, the Aptos Foundation will primarily focus on providing future grants and rewards that will only be disbursed upon achieving key milestones related to Aptos's role as a "global transaction engine."

7. Launch a programmatic buyback plan. The Aptos Foundation has committed to exploring a protocol buyback plan or reserve that will programmatically repurchase APT on the open market based on market opportunities.