Aptos Rallies 10% as Token Burns Tighten Supply, but an 11.31M Token Unlock Looms

Aptos ($APT) surged by more than 10% over the past 24 hours at press time, with daily trading volume surpassing $109 million. Beyond the technical breakout, the altcoin's gains have been fueled by a persistent supply crunch that began after its fee switch. Aptos, a Layer 1 blockchain built on the Move programming language originally developed at Meta, is one of several chains that have adopted fee-burning as a deflationary mechanism, an approach popularized by Ethereum's EIP-1559 upgrade in 2021.

Token Burns After the 10x Fee Increase

Network activity on Aptos over the past seven days has been driven by real-world asset (RWA) net flows. Aptos ranked second with $145 million in RWA net flows, just behind Ethereum (ETH) at $149 million. RWA tokenization, which brings instruments like funds and treasuries on-chain, has become one of the most competitive growth areas across Layer 1 networks.

Transaction counts and active addresses also indicate that participants are returning to the chain. On September 3, active addresses stood at 57,047, while transactions surged beyond 16 million.

Based on this activity, the chain continues to generate revenue, with average transaction fees standing at $0.0005 since the 10x fee increase. These fees are used to buy back $APT and burn it, reducing the circulating supply. Roughly 152.3K $APT were permanently burned in the last 30 days, bringing the total to 1.7 million tokens burned since mainnet. According to Aptos's post on X, this implies an annualized burn rate of 1.8 million tokens.

Can $APT Hold Its Gains?

On the charts, $APT broke out for the second time from a descending trend channel. The altcoin had traded back into the pattern on August 25 after losing support at $0.576, then reversed at the mid-level of the channel, forming a double bottom at $0.523.

$APT is currently pushing toward August's peak above $0.71. RSI divergence supports this move, indicating that bulls are still buying.

However, Net Volume shows that approximately 340K $APT were sold in the most recent session, suggesting weakening buyer momentum even as the RSI sits in overbought territory. As a result, $0.65 stands as a short-term resistance level below the $0.71 peak.

Upcoming Token Unlocks

Routine unlocks could introduce additional mid-term selling pressure. According to Tokenomist, roughly 11.31 million $APT, worth $6.88 million, will be added to the circulating supply within a week. This amount equals 0.65% of the released supply. Such scheduled unlocks are a recurring feature of Aptos's vesting schedule, through which allocations to early backers, the foundation, and community programs gradually enter circulation.

The looming unlock therefore poses downside risk for Aptos, as the large release dwarfs the relatively small volume of tokens burned over the past month.

Final Summary

Aptos surged by more than 10% as the market priced in the burning of over 152.9K $APT tokens. $APT broke out of its channel for the second time, but bulls face selling pressure from the unlock scheduled within a week.

Source: AMBCrypto