Aptos Ends Four-Year Insider Vesting as Monthly Issuance Drops 60%

According to BlockchainReporter, Aptos concluded its four-year insider token schedule on October 12, cutting scheduled APT issuance by approximately 60%. The milestone marks the end of the unlock cycle for initial investors and core contributors, removing the network's two largest scheduled seller cohorts from its supply schedule. Core contributors originally received 190 million APT and early backers received 134.78 million APT at genesis.

Following the change, only the Community and Aptos Foundation pools remain on the unlock schedule, reducing monthly releases from 11.31 million to 4.54 million APT. Annualized releases fall from roughly 135.7 million to 54.5 million APT. This reduction accompanies a wider tokenomics overhaul approved via on-chain governance as Proposal #183, which instituted a 2.1 billion APT hard cap, lowered annual staking rewards from 5.19% to 2.6%, and raised gas fees tenfold with all fees burned. The Foundation also permanently staked and locked 210 million APT.

While the change lowers scheduled supply, it does not stop new issuance entirely, as staked tokens continue to mint approximately 19.8 million APT annually. The Foundation relies on rising burns from activity like the Decibel perpetuals exchange to potentially outpace emissions.