Aptos has approved AIP-140, a sweeping tokenomics overhaul that caps total supply at 2.1 billion APT, cuts annual staking rewards nearly in half, and raises gas fees tenfold, with every fee permanently burned. The Aptos Foundation also locked 210 million APT indefinitely, adding its own supply signal to the change.
Aptos has rewritten its token economics. The Layer-1 blockchain approved proposal AIP-140, introducing a hard supply cap of 2.1 billion APT, cutting annual staking rewards nearly in half, and raising gas fees by a factor of ten. Every one of those higher fees gets permanently burned.
A hard cap replaces unlimited supply
Before AIP-140, Aptos had no ceiling on how many tokens could ever exist. Now it does: circulating supply stood at roughly 1.196 billion APT when the proposal passed, leaving about 904 million APT of headroom before the 2.1 billion cap. Raising that ceiling would require a fresh round of community governance.
Rewards drop, fees rise, and burns take over
Annual staking rewards dropped from 5.19% to 2.6%, while transaction costs on the network rose tenfold. The key mechanic is what happens next: 100% of collected gas now gets permanently burned, pulling tokens out of circulation forever.
The network had burned roughly 1.8 million APT cumulatively since its October 2022 mainnet launch as of mid-September 2026. The tenfold fee increase is meant to accelerate that pace substantially. If usage grows alongside heavier per-transaction burns, Aptos could eventually reach a point where fee-driven destruction outpaces reward-driven issuance.
Foundation locks 210 million APT
The Aptos Foundation reinforced the shift by permanently locking and staking 210 million APT, about 18% of circulating supply at the time, removing it from liquid circulation indefinitely.
The move echoes a philosophy Ethereum introduced with EIP-1559, though Aptos pushes it further: Ethereum burns only a portion of base fees while still paying validators through tips and block rewards, whereas Aptos now burns its entire gas take. The remaining headroom to the 2.1 billion cap also hands APT holders an effective veto over any future dilution, since minting beyond that ceiling needs community approval.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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