Much-anticipated "speedy" Aptos chain launches, processing 4 transactions per second and with 80% of tokens allocated to insiders

Aptos, a much-anticipated layer 1 blockchain backed by FTX and a16z, and created by a team of former Meta employees, launched to much anticipation on October 17. The team had bragged that the chain would be able to process 160,000 transactions per second, even more than Solana's claimed theoretical 65,000, and far more than Ethereum's ~15 or Bitcoin's ~7. Instead, after launch, Aptos was processing a painful 4 transactions per second.

This was not the only criticism of Aptos upon launch. The Aptos token was quickly put up for sale on exchanges including FTX and Binance, but Aptos had not yet published information about their tokenomics — leaving would-be investors trying to make decisions about whether to purchase a token about which they couldn't find even basic information. Once the tokenomics were published, people expressed concerns about the distribution: 80% were allocated to the team and investors and staked, enabling them to dump the staking rewards on retail investors.