On Tuesday, 18th October, prominent layer-1 blockchain network Aptos successfully released its mainnet. The developers of the project were Meta employees who were working at the company’s highly anticipated open source Diem project. The project later met ill fate and some members collectively went on to create Aptos Labs and its layer-1 blockchain.
Given the utilities and very high transaction per second speed, Aptos blockchain started being recognized as a potential “Solana killer”. For instance, Solana was among the flagship blockchain of last year which boasted its speed to hold upto 50K transactions per second. Aptos blockchain claimed to attain the speed of 130K transactions per second during its testing.
Aptos Questioned Over Major Ownership of APT Token
However, soon after the launch of mainnet of Aptos blockchain, the crypto community witnessed issues and raised them. Crypto critics also went on to put questions on the claims of the layer-1 blockchain. Twitter user dubbed as Paradigm Engineer noted in his post on Tuesday that Aptos transaction speed is even slower than Bitcoin’s transaction speed—which is approx seven transactions per second.
In addition to the high transaction speed claims, the engineer also raised questions on the project’s tokenomics. In another Tweet, the user noted that out of more than 1 billion APT tokens, over 821 million are currently staked. This accounts for slightly more than 80% of the overall supply. Doubtful here is that these staked tokens are under the control of developer team and investors—implied from the fact that there was no airdrop or any event to distribute the tokens.
Given such a scenario behind the token supply and its possession to limited people, it strengthens the possibility of pump and dump. This could be expected as the APT token holders were only holding till dumping the token at once.
Drop in APT Token Price
The expectation took its actual form when soon after the mainnet launch, the price of APT token moved up to 13.73 USD. However, the price witnessed a decline of approx 45% just in a day. This was inferred as a massive sell-off by the investors and VCs holding the tokens.
Prominent crypto exchanges including Binance, Coinbase and FTX are among the top investors within the project alongside Andresseen Horowitz and ParaFi Digital, etc. Crypto exchanges took the lead in listing APT token which several community members also criticized.
Several Twitter users argued that Binance and FTX like crypto exchanges are listing the Aptos token (APT) without even any transparency over its tokenomics at all. They ask to make it essential for exchanges to let their users know everything and avail them information of what asset they are buying.
Meanwhile there are several crypto analysts who also suggest keeping distance from APT token given the sentiment around the crypto asset.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/10/19/apt-token-drops-approx-45-despite-the-aptos-blockchain-mainnet-launch/