Aptos Stumbles Out The Gate

In a previous edition of CoinSnacks, we covered the new layer-1 blockchain Aptos and its arguable scary amount of venture capital funding.

As a quick refresher, Aptos is run by the developers of the failed Meta blockchain project, Diem. Like Diem, Aptos’ main selling point is its use of the Move programming language, which in theory, enables performance far beyond the dominant smart contract language, Solidity.

In that story, we told you to cautiously keep an eye on it. Cautiously, because it is still a very new and unproven project. But, keep an eye on it because of its $350 million VC-funded war chest.

With the official launch of Aptos on Monday, it’s the perfect time to re-assess where we stand on the ambitious L1.

Concerning Signs

Unfortunately, Aptos has stumbled out of the gates.

To start, the blockchain’s most important feature – the game-changing 160,000 transactions per second (TPS) throughput – is currently only doing 4 TPS. To show how bad that is, Ethereum, the non-scalable blockchain Aptos is built to replace, is currently handling 13 TPS.

Making matters worse, most of these ‘transactions’ are just validators communicating with each other and sending metadata back and forth. Actual users are having difficulty accessing the blockchain, and the team in the Aptos discord has not provided any relief.

The most concerning component of the Aptos launch, however, is the shady tokenomics.

Leading up to and immediately following the launch, there was no publicly available info on Aptos’s tokenomics. Once the tokenomics were finally released, it became clear that a large percentage of tokens are held by insiders, as over 80% of the total token supply is already staked, even though there was no method for the public to obtain tokens.

Not great.

Our Take

If we told you that you could invest in a blockchain handling fewer transactions than promised, is not usable for the average user, is censoring Discord channels, has a token that is 80% held by insiders, and is being listed by major exchanges before tokenomic details are released, would you do it?

Of course not.

We’ve seen this story over and over again. As investors, it’s important to assess reality, rather than hype, when looking at new opportunities.

In crypto, the next big opportunity is always on the horizon. Don’t get greedy and try to chase Aptos.