Last week, the CEO of Aptos, Avery Ching, gave a very candid talk about the journey over the past 3 years since the mainnet launch. And I must say, I rarely see a founder acknowledge mistakes so directly like this. $APT
Avery clearly stated that Aptos was too hasty during the airdrop in October 2022, which caused hot money to flow in improperly and affected the development speed as well as the structure of the ecosystem in the long run. This is something many people in the community have felt, and now the team is also reassessing it.
But moving into 2025, it can be said that Aptos has undergone quite a lot of changes
change the way to build
reorganize the team
reshape the long-term strategy
self-build products instead of being too dependent on partners.
The three most important pieces that Aptos Labs is focusing on include:
Decibel
Shelby
Namespaces
Among these three names, Decibel is clearly the strongest card and also the greatest hope to bring retail users back. Perp DEX is still the market's focus, and more importantly, it generates real revenue, not just hype.
Decibel's testnet in recent times has also shown very positive signals such as fast order matching, smooth UX, low fees, and continuously refined user protection mechanisms.
If Decibel can maintain its current pace of improvement and launch the mainnet as expected, this could very well be the biggest boost for Aptos since the day the chain was launched.
In summary, if there is ever a time when Aptos truly has the opportunity to 'reverse' the narrative and return to the big game, I think the 2026–2027 timeframe is the last chance.
At that time, the market will enter a new cycle while Aptos will also have had enough time to correct mistakes and rebuild from scratch. The important thing is whether the team can take advantage of this opportunity or not.