APT monthly releases drop to 4.54 million as Aptos team and investor vesting closes

On October 12, Aptos will conclude its four-year vesting schedule for early backers and core contributors, trimming the planned monthly $APT releases by approximately 60%.

Releases drop from 11.31 million tokens to 4.54 million.

Core contributors and early backers took their last tranche September 12

The last monthly tranche delivered to both groups was on September 12, 2026. The Aptos Foundation counts the fourth anniversary of the October 2022 mainnet launch as the formal end of the cycle.

At genesis, core contributors were assigned 190 million $APT, and early backers 134.78 million. Combined, that’s 324.78 million tokens, or 32.48% of the 1 billion $APT minted at launch.

Each grant was subject to a 12-month cliff and thereafter vested monthly through month 48. Both groups took 6.77 million of the 11.31 million $APT released each month.

Only the 4.54 million $APT going to the Community and Aptos Foundation pools trickles in, and that lasts until 2032. Those pools disburse 1/120 of their remaining balance each month.

The planned releases on a yearly basis are falling from around 135.7 million $APT to 54.5 million. The Aptos Foundation projected the same 60% cut in its February 18 tokenomics update, and said its grant distributions fall more than 50% from 2026 to 2027.

Another 331.69 million $APT of genesis supply remains locked in vesting, all in the Community and Foundation pools. The circulating supply of $APT stood at 871.02 million as of September 30 with a total supply of about 1.2 billion.

Staking at 2.6% now mints about 19.8 million tokens a year

The primary source of new $APT is now staking rewards. The annual reward rate has fallen from 5.19% to 2.6%.

About 763 million $APT, or 63% of all tokens, is staked with validators. At 2.6%, that stake mints about 19.8 million $APT a year, and unstaking takes up to 14 days.

The transaction fees are all burned. From launch until mid-September 2026, the network burned around 1.9 million $APT.

The same overhaul saw gas fees jump tenfold. The Aptos Foundation said stablecoin transfers still cost around $0.00014.

A hard cap of 2.1 billion $APT hangs over all of this. Proposal #183 passed onchain with 335.2 million $APT voting in favor and around 1,500 voting against.

Mainnet minted 1 billion $APT, and staking added another 196 million by February. Under the cap, that left 904 million $APT of headroom.

The Aptos Foundation also said it would lock up and permanently stake 210 million $APT, which it said would never be sold or distributed. The stake is about 37% of the Foundation’s mainnet holdings and its rewards fund Foundation operations.

Aptos is home to around $723 million in real-world assets, with Franklin Templeton and BlackRock operating tokenized funds there, Cryptopolitan reported in January. On January 14, Bitnomial launched the first regulated $APT futures in the US.