Aptos Accelerates as the Global Trading Engine
According to a recent Messari Aptos H1 2025 report, that vision is becoming reality. From explosive DeFi growth to powerful infrastructure upgrades, Aptos delivered across the board in the first half of 2025.
Here are the key takeaways.
Network Efficiency & Growth: Fast, Cheap and Built to Scale
Aptos continues to set the bar for blockchain performance.
With block times under 130ms and user finality at 650ms, it remains one of the fastest and most efficient Layer-1s in production today. Backed by ecosystem innovations like Raptr, Zaptos, and Shardines—set to unlock 1 million TPS—Aptos is steadily positioning itself as the leading platform for global value movement and real-time financial applications.
This performance doesn’t come at the cost of the end user. In Q2, average transaction fees fell 61.1% quarter-over-quarter to just $0.00052, reinforcing Aptos as up to 100x cheaper than other Layer-1 networks. This drop, alongside the network surpassing 3 billion lifetime transactions in July, underscores both its scalability and efficiency.
Additionally, governance proposals like AIP-119 helped optimize staking rewards, reducing annual staking rewards from 7% to 6.54% while maintaining economic sustainability for the ecosystem. With 76.4% of eligible APT supply staked, it’s clear the Aptos community is in strong support of this new Aptos Improvement Proposal (AIP).
Explosive DeFi Ecosystem Expansion
Aptos DeFi is thriving. The network’s stablecoin market cap grew by 85.9% in H1 to $1.2 billion, driven by surging adoption of native USDT and USDC on Aptos.
Meanwhile, DEX volume jumped 310.3% QoQ to reach $9.0 billion in Q2, with Aptos-native projects like Hyperion and ThalaSwap V2 leading the charge.
While DeFi total value locked (TVL) remained above $1B, the adoption of real-world assets (RWAs) also climbed to over $723M—making Aptos the third largest RWA chain.
Major Technical Milestones: Shelby, Decibel & Beyond
Aptos’ infrastructure stack continues to push the frontier of blockchain performance. The Baby Raptr consensus upgrade improved validator finality latency by 20%, shaving off critical milliseconds to optimize transaction finality.
Two landmark ecosystem launches further reinforced Aptos’ position as the Global Trading Engine:
Shelby: Web3's first cloud-grade infra layer built by Aptos Labs in partnership with Jump Crypto, offering low-latency storage that bridges onchain and offchain performance standards.
Decibel: A new fully on-chain engine for unified spot, perps, and smart liquidity built on Aptos’ central limit order book (CLOB).
What’s more, new features such as Orderless Transactions and Stateless Accounts further showcase Aptos' continued advancements promoting developer flexibility and user-centric innovation.
Strategic Momentum: Fueling the Ecosystem
The Aptos Foundation committed $200 million in H1 to drive ecosystem growth, with a special focus on DeFi grants, liquidity provisioning and new protocol deployments. A major milestone was Aave V3’s governance-approved deployment on Aptos: the first non-EVM expansion for one of the largest DeFi protocols in the world.
This strategic alignment of capital, community and code cements Aptos as a high-performance home for next-generation finance and trading.
The Pace Picks Up
Aptos is not just growing, it’s accelerating.
With a suite of innovations that prioritize speed, accessibility and scalability, Aptos is becoming the go-to network for global trading. What began as a vision at the start of the year is now taking shape across infrastructure, products and developer activity.
There’s no slowing down for Aptos ecosystem—and H2 is set to deliver even more.
Read the full Messari Report: Aptos H1 2025.