Aptos has executed a sweeping overhaul of its economic model, cutting net annual APT supply growth by roughly 70% while its main trading venue, Decibel Trade, activated the network's encrypted mempool to reduce MEV risks.
Governance proposals approved between February 19 and March 19, 2026, reduced net annual emissions from 5% to 1.5% and established an absolute hard cap of 2.1 billion APT. The circulating supply stands near 1.21 billion units, and 210 million Foundation and Community tokens are permanently locked, preventing their transfer or use in staking schemes.
Validator staking rewards were slashed from 5.19% to a flat 2.6%, shrinking annual issuance from 43 million to roughly 20 million APT. Base gas costs also increased tenfold from $0.00004 to $0.0003, with all gas fees burned. The 30-day average daily burn rose from about $242 to $3,500, helping neutralize nearly 10% of current issuance.
According to Blockworks Research, Aptos has not yet reached net deflationary status. The network would need to expand trading activity roughly tenfold, from 105 to 1,050 transactions per second, for gas burns to outpace scheduled minting. Still, Aptos recorded a positive Net Tokenholder Income of +$4.21 per $10,000 of fully diluted value at the end of August 2026, compared with Solana at +$0.15, Ethereum at -$0.67, and Sui at -$5.67. Corporate unlock pressure is also set to decline, with annual cliff releases dropping from 135 million APT to 21 million units after October 2026.
Separately, Decibel Trade activated Aptos' Encrypted Mempool under AIP-144, authored by Aptos Labs cryptographer Rex Fernando. The feature became available on mainnet on October 12, and Decibel support followed on October 21. Traders can opt in to encrypt transaction payloads client-side, keeping order details hidden while transactions await inclusion. Validators collectively decrypt orders only after block finalization, using the network's existing stake-weighted consensus security.
Aptos testing recorded approximately 20 milliseconds of additional latency per block in a 50-node benchmark, and the design targets support for more than 1,000 transactions per second. The TypeScript SDK supports encrypted submissions from version 7.0.0 onward, and existing Move smart contracts require no modification. The Petra wallet was the first to make encryption available directly through transaction signing.
Decibel launched on mainnet in February 2026 as an onchain order-book trading exchange incubated by Aptos Labs. Its total value locked stood near $29.4 million on October 21, down from about $51 million at the end of February. Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs previously committed over $50 million toward trading infrastructure and ecosystem initiatives, including Decibel.
Following the announcements, APT gained 8.83% to trade at $0.834274, with 24-hour trading volume of $73.9 million. The token's weekly gain reached 1.84%, while its monthly performance stood at 8.29%, though it remained 73.26% below its price from a year ago.
