Aptos implements tokenomics overhaul to reduce supply growth

Aptos has implemented significant changes to its tokenomics designed to reduce inflation and enhance long-term scarcity. Following governance decisions, the network's annualized net supply growth fell to approximately 1.5%, down from roughly 5% prior to the March 2026 changes.

Key measures include a tenfold increase in gas fees, which has increased the amount of APT burned through transactions. While fee burns currently offset about 10% of new issuance, they would only match issuance if daily transactions reached an estimated 91 million, roughly ten times current activity levels. Additionally, staking rewards were reduced from 5.19% to a flat annual rate of 2.6%.

The overhaul also established a 2.1 billion APT supply cap and permanently locked 210 million APT. Despite the higher gas fees, network activity has expanded, with daily transactions doubling to approximately nine million. This growth has been partially driven by decentralized derivatives platforms like Decibel, which utilizes a fully onchain perpetual futures order book.