Written by: Sam, Schubert, Blockworks

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Today we focus on a core question: How did Aptos transform from a blockchain that "continuously made holders lose money" into a mainstream general-purpose L1 where the net revenue of most holders exceeds the operational costs?

The core indicator is Token Holder Net Income (THNI). At the same time, quickly scanning the current market: the crypto stock group is leading the way thanks to the surge in Circle, while BTC and most token sectors are under pressure ahead of the July CPI announcement.

Market Overview: Circle's One-Man Show

Yesterday, the overall market was relatively quiet. Crypto stocks (+2.9%) were the only highlight, BTC slipped 0.4%, and the S&P 500 declined 0.2%.

There was a clear sector divide: Oracle (+5.8%) led the gains, followed closely by Meme coins (+3.0%), Exchange tokens (+2.5%), and RWA (+2.4%); however, DEX (-4.1%), the privacy sector (-3.7%), and the Solana ecosystem (-3.1%) performed significantly worse.

Looking at the weekly performance, the pattern becomes clearer. The crypto stock group surged by +12.0%, outperforming Oracle (+7.6%) and gold (+7.1%). BTC declined 0.7% for the week, the S&P 500 fell 0.4%, and most token sectors saw losses. The Solana ecosystem (-10.0%) and crypto miners (-11.2%) were at the bottom.

The rise in gold was driven by macro factors: the actual decline of 23,000 in non-farm payrolls in July was far below the expected increase of 80,000, directly weakening the probability of a Federal Reserve rate hike in September.

Crypto Stocks, Essentially Circle's Solo Performance

CRCL surged by 16.0% this week, while BLSH (+4.4%) and GLXY (+2.3%) contributed a small gain, and FIGR (-4.0%) and GEMI (-3.2%) lagged significantly. The broader crypto stock index only saw a slight increase of 0.1%.

Circle released its Q2 2026 financial report on August 5: total revenue and reserve income amounted to $701 million (up 7% year-on-year), adjusted EBITDA was $143 million, the circulating supply of USDC was $73.3 billion (up 19% year-on-year), and the total on-chain transaction volume was $14.8 trillion (a staggering increase of 151% year-on-year).

Interestingly, the market reaction was not a spike on the day of the earnings report, but rather a slow warming. On the day of the CRCL earnings release, it only rose by 3.2%, but by last Friday, the cumulative increase had expanded to 8.7%, closing yesterday at about $71, a total increase of 16.0% since prior to the earnings report.

Two forward-looking catalysts are continuously fermenting behind the scenes:

• Arc Mainnet: officially launched on September 16, major institutions like BlackRock, Visa, and DTCC will participate as founding validators.
• Federal Bank License: Circle National Trust has been approved by federal regulatory authorities, becoming one of the first stablecoin issuers to obtain a federal bank license.

Once these two matters are realized, Circle's narrative space and business ceiling will significantly open up.

Aptos Value Capture: A Complete Turnaround from Major Losses to Net Gains

Aptos is now one of the few mainstream general-purpose L1s where holders as a whole earn more than they pay to operators.

Core Indicator: THNI

Token Holder Net Income (THNI) measures the actual net income of "holders as a whole" — total network revenues minus the fees paid to validators. Staking rewards are considered an internal redistribution among holders and are not included in expenditures.

By this measure, Aptos officially turned positive in May 2026 and has continued to maintain positive values. During the same period, Ethereum, Solana, and Sui were still in the negative range.

The real turning point occurred after the protocol-level reforms from February to March this year.

Rankings Completely Reversed

Data from January 2025 (annual contribution per $10,000 FDV):

July 2026:

Aptos went from the bottom to the top, with a turnaround of over $110.

Scope of comparison: limited to true general-purpose platform blockchains. Hyperliquid is essentially an application chain, BNB is deeply tied to Binance, TRON resembles a stablecoin-specific chain, and Avalanche is a multi-subnet architecture rather than a single execution environment—excluding these allows for a clean comparison between Aptos and similar projects like Ethereum, Solana, and Sui.

Four Reforms, One Turning Point

From February 19 to March 19, Aptos implemented four core changes:

• Gas prices were directly raised tenfold.
• Staking rewards were halved, fixed at 2.6%.
• Total supply capped at 2.1 billion coins.
• 2.1 million tokens were permanently locked.

The results were very direct:

• Network income surged about 16 times.
• Operator commissions were halved simultaneously.
• Both revenue and expense sides improved simultaneously.

More importantly, demand did not shrink due to the price increase—on the contrary, it continued to grow. Daily transaction volume climbed from about 4.5 million trades to over 12 million, and transaction fees are now ten times what they used to be.

The Real Burning Engine: Decibel

Decibel—a fully on-chain perpetual contract order book—contributes to the vast majority of transaction numbers on the Aptos chain.

Key mechanism: executing a $1 transaction through the full on-chain order book results in an average burning of APT that is about 50 times greater than redeeming $1 through a regular liquidity pool. The reason is simple—each quote, cancellation, and transaction is an independent transaction requiring gas fees.

As a result, Decibel, while only contributing over half of the transaction amount on Aptos, accounts for 97% of the transaction volume. The full-chain CLOB (central limit order book) is only economically viable under the current fee levels and throughput of Aptos.

The Next Indicator: Burn / Issue Ratio

In addition to THNI turning positive, it's also worth tracking the "burning ratio to issuance" for the long term.

• In January this year: 0.2%
• Now: close to 10%

This number is crucial because token issuance itself generates continuous selling pressure—validators may sell rewards to cover operational costs, and the foundation may also sell rewards to realize gains.

Now that the reward rate is fixed, the massive unlocking pressure after October will significantly decrease, while Decibel's product roadmap continues to expand. On-chain activity is expected to amplify further, and value capture will strengthen.