Aptos User Activity Plunges as Growth Proves Short-Lived

Aptos, once looked upon as a rising star in the Layer 1 blockchain race, is now wrestling with an on-chain user activity that is rapidly collapsing.

After months of ecosystem expansion and a surge in wallet creation, the network is now experiencing a fast reversal of fortunes. Recent analytical reports show that both active and new wallet addresses have plummeted—leaving many to wonder whether Aptos’ earlier momentum was ever really sustainable.

Active addresses on the network have dropped over 40% since February 2023, while new wallet creation has been hit even harder, with an over 80% drop. What was once seen as healthy user growth is now being looked at more skeptically, with the term ‘growth’ even used in ironic quotes by some analysts.

The latest data suggest that the network’s ‘users’ were not really organic, with much of the community participation enthusiasm seemingly driven by the kind of people who join in on a Ponzi scheme—hopeful, naive, or desperate for something free (and posting about it on social media).

This abrupt downturn is not merely a technical misfire. It shows something troubling at a much deeper level: the “stickiness” of the Aptos ecosystem—or, more accurately, its unsatisfactory lack of stickiness. Aptos flooded with new users during an impressive seven-month growth spurt. Now, many of those users are not coming back, revealing a user base that is not solidly behind the project. And that raises some pretty serious doubts about Aptos’s near-term prospects.

User activity has slumped, and the market has noticed. The price of Aptos’ native token, $APT, has gone down in tandem with user activity metrics. In fact, the price and the user activity metrics both seem to be in a free fall. This is probably not what investors had in mind when they pumped $APT to a Gazillion-dollar market cap (from 400M in November 2021 and 680M in October 2022, to 1.5B in March 2023). Since then, the price has gone down significantly, to a current market cap of $55M.

Reducing staking yields and an ambivalent regulatory environment for U.S. participants make the situation even more uncertain. These aspects have contributed to the indecision we see among retail and institutional players; there’s now a real reluctance to participate that’s hard to overlook.

Even so, the Aptos team and its supporters have been working hard to ensure their positive narratives continue to be told. New partnership announcements, efforts to move into real-world assets (RWAs), and work on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been presented as signs that ecosystem development is very much alive. But as with all narratives, the reality tends to seep through. In this case, that reality is the serious and seemingly irreversible decline in Aptos’s already low core metric numbers.

Growth improvement from Aptos demands more than just adding new features or pushing the sort of flashy headlines that have too often graced our industry. It takes real user trust. It takes reliable on-chain experiences. It takes an actual product-market fit that extends beyond a handful of seemingly “sticky” partnerships. At this moment, I’m not sure Aptos is hitting any of those needs.

Also, the social sentiment and community perception in crypto has turned bearish. The ongoing conversation across various social platforms seems to reflect a newfound skepticism, with many in the community pointing out that the decline in network activity seems to be an alarming indicator. What was once a “baby” among L1 speculators seems to be viewed with a lot more caution and wariness among even its former biggest supporters.

We are especially worried about the fast slowdown of address growth. More than 80% fewer new wallets are being made. This suggests that the network’s funnel has effectively dried up. Without a steady stream of new participants, and with the current user base becoming less active, the protocol faces a base of engagement that is shriveling up. That’s not just bad for appearances; it’s a critical and probably fatal weakness when it comes to trying to scale applications or attract serious developers and liquidity providers.

The larger crypto market may be transitioning back to a risk-on state, indicated by the rising prices of assets and the increasing capital flows into the DeFi and NFT spaces. Still, Aptos seems to be marching in the opposite direction. If the number of users continues to dwindle while its direct competitors—Solana, the Ethereum L2s, and even some newer players—seem to be attracting more and more people, Aptos might as well be lumped in with so many other crypto projects in the state of plan B.

To restore itself, the network must unearth means to drive authentic, long-term use—not merely transiently inflated metrics from airdrop chasers or from scripted bots doing the network’s bidding. With that as preamble, maybe here’s a not-so-small ask: Either through more exciting use cases, way beefier developer incentives, or some other act of electrifying showmanship that will blow users’ minds, Aptos has got to do the opposite of what a lot of Web3 projects do these days and stop with the partnership/expansion announcements.

The data speaks for itself until now. Aptos’s recent growth seems like it was not built to last. If serious steps are not taken sometime soon, Aptos may be remembered more as a speculative flash-in-the-pan than a lasting Layer 1 contender.

Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.

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