2022 – A year of growth and change across the Web3 landscape. A year to strengthen community and deepen our roots. 2022 was the year Aptos went to Mainnet, kickstarting everyday crypto adoption through a better user experience, with speed and safety at scale.

It’s been an amazing ride this year: we started with the inception of Aptos, launched 4 testnets to prove the network’s speed, safety and reliability, and shipped mainnet—all within one year!

2022 had Aptos Autumn, and we can’t wait to see what the seasons of 2023 will bring. In 2023, Aptos will propel Web3 use cases across social, gaming, NFT and DeFi that will turn heads and change minds.

Let’s reflect on the unforgettable moments, memories, and milestones that defined Aptos in 2022.

The Road to Mainnet

Aptos’ vision is clear: Make Web3 for more meaningful use for real world wants and needs. To solve this, the team has delivered the safest and most reliable experience for developers and end-users alike. We will continue to evolve the network in 2023.

Deep in our tech's DNA, Aptos' foundational features were designed to lead this paradigm shift for Web3. We knew the only way to usher in the next generation of Web3 was to prioritize user experience for developers and consumers, providing a foundation to create and enable a new standard of go-to apps.

After more than four years of hard work, countless contributions from builders, and hundreds of diverse community projects across the globe, Aptos Mainnet went live in October 2022.

Together, the ecosystem supported a successful, decentralized launch–with 102 validator nodes, across 22 countries, in 39 cities. The highest stake node only had 2.65% of stakes, with all others evenly distributed. 74 node operators worked together to coordinate a smooth network bootstrap. Hundreds of entities joined the network bootstrapping effort, including ecosystem projects across DeFi, NFTs, infrastructure, and more.

In the days following launch, the network demonstrated impressive performance, as expected:

• Peak TPS 2.1k

• P90 latency 1.1s

• More than 10k fullnodes connected to mainnet

By the end of the year, we saw over 29k cumulative fullnodes live on the decentralized network!

The journey to Mainnet should also be celebrated! The Aptos blockchain and Move language were battle-tested and proven over four years to achieve what others have not - a seamless, enjoyable, and familiar experience for everyday Web3 use.

• Aptos is on the fourth iteration of the AptosBFT consensus protocol, currently the lowest latency, optimistically-responsive BFT protocol available. It features a robust, on-chain reputation system and novel methods for parallel execution—a key enabler of speed at scale.

• The Aptos Incentivized Testnet (AIT) series was comprised of three rounds to ensure the launch of a production-ready Aptos mainnet:

  • IT1: Decentralized Startup

  • IT2: Staking

  • IT3: Governance and upgrades

• To celebrate our community, Aptos minted a community-exclusive commemorative Testnet NFT, the Aptos:Zero collection! As a small token of appreciation, recipients of the Testnet NFT were the first community members to receive $APT through the Launch Community Airdrop

Community & Ecosystem

While the technology is standout, our real superpower is an unmatched dedication to ecosystem support and community growth.

Community

The Aptos community is one of developer rockstars, and its growth in 2022 built a foundation for amazing opportunities to come.

In the Aptos community, we’re proud to have over:

• 4.7k GitHub stars

• 2.7k GitHub forks

• 340k Twitter followers

• 155k Discord members

• Reaching across 35+ languages around the world!

In May 2022, our first hackathon led to phenomenal projects (AMMs, games, NFT infrastructure, order books, wallets, and more!) built in less than 36 hours. Hackers from both Web2 and Web3 demonstrated how Move on Aptos makes it super easy and efficient to code in Web3 (even with zero experience).

The sheer capacity of talent witnessed shows us that bigger dreams and innovative ideas lay ahead. We know the ‘next big idea’ is waiting to be born at the next hackathon… and to make those dreams a reality, we closed out 2022 by announcing the launch of the Aptos World Tour, starting in Seoul!

Our inaugural global hackathon series will build on the momentum of the past year and deepen connections across the Aptos community–we can’t wait to see the ideas and builds that emerge on Aptos!

Ecosystem

This community isn’t just dreaming, they’re building. Since mainnet, 50+ projects have launched in the Aptos ecosystem, with 200+ known projects currently building on Aptos to date, and more than 500 applications to the Aptos Foundation Grant Program to date.

Aptos’ end of year totals on December 31st were phenomenal, illustrating strong growth over the initial two months of Mainnet:

• 2.85M cumulative unique addresses

• 60.66M cumulative user transactions

• 520K cumulative NFT transactions

• 507M cumulative APT transfer volume

Aptos’ projects saw huge wins as well! In 2022, Aptos native wallets had cumulative 1.2M+ downloads. NFT marketplace Topaz showcased impressive trading volume in 2022: Topaz smart contracts have done 1,147,575 APT in transaction volume, with 567k unique visitors since mainnet–a peak of 100k unique visitors in one day!

Speaking of NFTs, we saw over 9100+ distinct token collections launched on Aptos by 5735 distinct creators! Projects like Aptomingos and Aptos Monkeys really took off with the Aptos community–and sold out their entire first mint!

All of these projects, across NFTs, tooling, DeFi, wallets, and more, raised a combined $50m+. Investment in these projects show the strength and ingenuity of the community of builders that have come together on Aptos this past year.

Most incredibly, we closed out the year with an all-time high: the network hit a new highest TVL in December 2022 with ~$54M! Only 10 weeks out from Mainnet launch, this is an amazing milestone that the entire Aptos ecosystem can be proud of!

Network Integrations

In 2022, we proudly partnered with some amazing industry leaders to help drive the network forward. In just a few short weeks of Mainnet launch, we announced integrations with leading Web2 and Web3 projects.

For infrastructure, Google Cloud has been running a validator node on the Aptos network since day one of mainnet, helping ensure a stronger, safer, faster ecosystem. Together, GCP and the Aptos Foundation also launched a community ecosystem fund to support Web3 entrepreneurs looking to build consumer-ready applications on Aptos.

For gaming, AAA Korean gaming company NPIXEL partnered with Aptos to build their immersive METAPIXEL web3 gaming universe. We’re proud that NPIXEL recognizes Aptos’ “groundbreaking performance and reliability provides a perfect network for METAPIXEL to build [their] web3 gaming ecosystem.” Aptos is excited to support the fastest, most seamless gaming experience for their millions of users.

For payments, Moonpay integrated Petra Wallet for fiat-to-APT on-ramp. This was a huge win for mainstream user adoption, offering frictionless Web3 onboarding for hundreds of thousands of users.

For creatives, Livepeer’s integration onto Aptos amplified the reach and quality of Web3 creativity through decentralized streaming services - more power to the creators!

Partnerships across industry verticals, with leaders and builders we trust, helped define Aptos and set us up for even more success in 2023.

What’s Next?

Aptos community, get ready for big Moves this year! Look out for our ‘2023 Look Ahead’ blog post, coming soon 👀

Until then, stay tuned by joining us on Twitter, Discord, GitHub, and YouTube. We can’t wait to share more details about what’s in store for 2023.