After Months of Silence, Aptos Injects New Controversy and Vitality into the Ecosystem by Reducing Staking Rewards

After the Aptos ecosystem was silent for several months, a community proposal called AIP-119 injected new controversy and vitality into this Layer 1 public chain.

After months of silence from the Aptos ecosystem, a community proposal called AIP-119 has injected new controversy and vitality into this Layer 1 public chain.

On April 18, Aptos community member moon shiesty initiated the "Phase-by-Phase Reduction of Staking Rewards" proposal "AIP-119", suggesting that the staking reward rate be reduced from the current approximately 7% by 1% per month over the next three months, and the final annualized rate of return be reduced to 3.79%.

The proposal believes that reducing the staking reward rate will contribute to the long-term growth of the Aptos ecosystem, especially promoting more active competition in the DeFi field, and will also help enhance the token economics of APT to support its long-term sustainable development. As the first step in the reform of the Aptos economic model, the proposal will accept community feedback, and if the proposal is passed, a 6-month observation period will be set to evaluate the impact.

In the eyes of many observers, this is not only an adjustment in technical governance, but also an attempt to reconstruct the underlying logic of the Aptos economic model.

Hidden dangers of high returns and structural inflation

Aptos’ current staking yield ranks among the top in the L1 public chain, but the problems it brings are becoming increasingly prominent. Although the 7% risk-free annualized return has attracted a large number of users to lock APT to participate in staking, it has also caused serious inflationary pressure and inefficient use of funds.

The community generally believes that this model is constantly diluting the value of tokens and hindering the flow of ecological funds to more risky and innovative applications. As the initiator of the proposal said, the staking reward plays the role of "central bank interest rate" on the chain, and the "interest rate" at this moment may have deviated from the actual market.

In the past two years, although Aptos has attracted developers with its ultra-high performance and the security of the Move language, the activity of the ecosystem has never matched it. At the same time, Sui, which is also the "Move twin star", continues to grow stronger, forming a sharp contrast.

Many community members attribute this to the structural problems of the Aptos token model - a high proportion of tokens are concentrated in the hands of the foundation and core nodes. Combined with the high staking returns set in the early days, the ecosystem funds are overly concentrated on "passive income", which in turn inhibits constructive innovation.

Three things a new official does when he takes office

The proposal was made against the backdrop of a series of recent changes in the management and market positioning of Aptos. According to community sources, Aptos founder Mo Shaikh had a legal dispute with early members, and the final result was that Chinese Avery Ching took over as CEO of Aptos Labs (formerly CTO), and Mo Shaikh withdrew from daily management.

After he took office, Aptos' strategic narrative also shifted from "scalable L1" to "next-generation global trading engine", and more clearly emphasized performance and trading experience as core competitiveness.

What is more remarkable is that Aptos has re-embraced the Chinese-speaking market: setting up the Chinese community MovemakerCN, hosting multiple hackathons and providing tens of millions of dollars in ecological funding, demonstrating its determination to rebuild community trust and expand the global developer network.

In terms of technology, Aptos is also constantly promoting performance optimizations such as Zaptos upgrades and Block-STM v2, hoping to attract developers in the new "low-return, high-performance" ecosystem to rebuild prosperity with PMF (product-market fit) driven by real needs as the core.

What does the community think?

Although the proposal of AIP-119 touched the pie of vested interests, the overall feedback from the community did not fall into emotional confrontation. On the contrary, opinions from multiple parties, including Amnis Finance, the largest liquid pledge agreement, showed a more rational review and feedback. Amnis pointed out in a public response that the current proposal direction is reasonable, but the execution pace is too aggressive and may damage the competitiveness of Aptos. They believe that the pledge yield is similar to the interest rate tool in emerging markets. For public chains like Aptos, high returns are the key to attracting capital.

If it drops to 3.79%, Aptos will be in the lowest yield tier in the L1 camp, which may cause funds to flow to higher-return options such as Solana or U.S. Treasuries. In addition, opponents worry that a sharp drop in returns will weaken retail investors' motivation to lock positions, increase the market circulation of APT, and thus intensify selling pressure. The DeFi ecosystem may also face the risk of a decline in TVL due to the shrinking of leveraged staking strategies.

Regarding the verification nodes, opponents pointed out that the reduction in yields will significantly