Aptos overhauls tokenomics with 10x gas fees, halved staking rewards, and a 2.1B APT hard cap

Aptos just rewrote its economic playbook. The Layer-1 blockchain approved proposal AIP-140, a sweeping tokenomics overhaul that introduces a hard supply cap of 2.1 billion APT, slashes annual staking rewards nearly in half, and cranks gas fees up by a factor of ten. Every single one of those higher fees gets permanently burned.

What changed, and by how much

The centerpiece is the 2.1 billion APT hard cap. Before AIP-140, there was no ceiling on how many tokens could ever exist. Now there is, and lifting it would require a fresh round of community governance. At the time the proposal went through, circulating supply sat at roughly 1.196 billion APT, leaving about 904 million APT of headroom for future growth.

Annual staking rewards dropped from 5.19% to 2.6%. Transaction costs on Aptos are now ten times higher than they were before the proposal. The critical detail is what happens to those fees: 100% of collected gas gets permanently burned, removing tokens from circulation forever.

The burn math

As of mid-September 2026, the network had burned roughly 1.8 million APT cumulatively since its mainnet launch in October 2022. The 10x fee increase is designed to accelerate that number substantially. If network usage grows alongside higher per-transaction burns, Aptos could eventually reach a point where tokens destroyed through fees outpace tokens created through staking rewards.

The Aptos Foundation added its own signal to the mix by permanently locking and staking 210 million APT. That’s approximately 18% of the circulating supply at the time, pulled out of liquid circulation and committed to the network indefinitely.

Why this matters beyond Aptos

By cutting rewards and redirecting fee revenue into burns, Aptos is trying to break that cycle. It’s the same philosophical shift Ethereum made with EIP-1559, though the execution details differ. Ethereum burns a portion of base fees while still paying validators through tips and block rewards. Aptos is going further by burning 100% of gas fees.

The 904 million APT of remaining headroom between current supply and the hard cap also creates a governance dynamic worth watching. Any proposal to mint tokens beyond the 2.1 billion ceiling would need community approval, effectively giving APT holders veto power over future dilution.

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