Aptos was co-founded by Mo Shaikh (CEO) and Avery Ching (CTO), both former Meta employees who worked on the Diem blockchain project. Shaikh brings experience in financial services, private equity, and venture capital. Ching served as a principal software engineer at Meta. They launched Aptos Labs in January 2022 after Diem was discontinued, assembling researchers, designers, and engineers from the Diem project.

In March 2022, Aptos raised $200 million in a seed round led by a16z, with participation from Tiger Global and Multicoin Capital. In July 2022, it raised another $200 million in Series A from Dragonfly, Franklin Templeton, Animoca Brands, and others. Binance Labs made a strategic investment in September 2022. Mainnet launched on October 18, 2022, making Aptos the first blockchain deployed with Move technology. The AIT testnet campaign onboarded over 100 projects including Solrise Finance and Pontem Network.

Aptos is built on Move, a Rust-based smart contract language designed for safety and verifiability. The network uses Block-STM, a parallel execution engine that processes all transactions simultaneously and validates afterward, with failed transactions re-executed or aborted through software transactional memory libraries. The consensus layer runs AptosBFT (version 4), a BFT protocol based on HotStuff with automatic leader rotation and Byzantine fault tolerance. The blockchain supports horizontal throughput scalability through native sharding.

APT has an initial total supply of 1 billion tokens with 8 decimal precision (smallest unit called Octa). Initial distribution: Community 51.02%, Core Contributors 19.00%, Foundation 16.50%, Investors 13.48%. Community tokens are held by Aptos Foundation (410M) and Aptos Labs (100M), unlocking monthly over 10 years. Core Contributors and Investors are subject to a four-year lock-up from mainnet launch. Staking rewards have a maximum rate starting at 7% annually, declining 1.5% annually to a floor of 3.25%. Transaction fees are currently burned.

Aptos employs a Proof-of-Stake mechanism where token holders stake APT to validators who participate in consensus. Over 82% of tokens on the network are currently staked. The network uses AptosBFT, a Byzantine Fault-Tolerant consensus protocol that continues operating even if some validators go offline or turn malicious. The algorithm automatically adjusts leader rotations without human intervention when validators become non-responsive. All protocol upgrades, reward mechanisms, and key parameters are modifiable through on-chain governance voting.

Aptos targets real-world blockchain adoption across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and enterprise applications. The LayerZero-powered Aptos Bridge launched in October 2022 enables cross-chain transfers of ETH, USDC, and USDT from Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, and Optimism. The ecosystem has onboarded over 100 projects during its testnet phase, including DeFi protocols like Solrise Finance and Pontem Network. The network's high throughput and low fees aim to support mainstream consumer applications beyond speculative trading.