TL;DR:
- The Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs have committed an investment exceeding $50 million for in-house products, protocol infrastructure, and research.
- The on-chain perpetuals exchange Decibel, launched in February 2026, has recorded a cumulative volume exceeding $1 billion.
- The market capitalization of stablecoins on the network reached an all-time high of $1.93 billion in February 2026.
The Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs announced a financial commitment of more than $50 million to accelerate the development of their Layer 1 ecosystem. What they seek with this initiative is to strengthen the infrastructure necessary to support institutional-grade markets and autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems within the Aptos network.
— Aptos (@Aptos) May 7, 2026
The firm reported that the capital deployment will cover multiple strategic areas, including the development of first-party products and a specific fund for trading partners and AI technology. Aptos indicated that the project’s vision centers on a phase where machines become the primary participants in digital markets. This flow of funds is a direct response to the growing demand for machine-speed transactions, eliminating the latency barriers presented by other systems.
Boost to AI infrastructure and on-chain markets
Decibel is one of the pillars of this announcement; it is an on-chain perpetuals exchange that was directly incubated by Aptos Labs. The platform, which began operations on the mainnet during February 2026, managed to consolidate significant activity in its first months of life. Decibel’s cumulative volume has already surpassed the $1 billion threshold, which stands as a validation of the network’s capacity to manage complex financial derivatives.
Parallelly, the team highlighted the role of Shelby, a storage protocol designed specifically for AI agents operating on-chain. Shelby’s infrastructure allows datasets to be licensed for model training and bought or sold in decentralized markets. Aptos maintains that trading was the first agent workload to scale, and it is projected that data exchange will be the next critical phase of this technological trend.
During the first months of 2026, the growth of digital assets on the network showed significant figures. The capitalization of stablecoins on Aptos has multiplied nearly tenfold since the end of 2024. Figures from DefiLlama reveal that this indicator reached $1.93 billion in February of this year, although it experienced an adjustment to $1.66 billion toward early May 2026.
Strategic collaboration and network metrics
Aptos x NETSTARS šÆšµ
Aptos Foundation and NETSTARS, one of Japan's leading QR code payment providers, are exploring multi-chain payment enablement.
NETSTARS aims to bring instant, cost-efficient, and compliance-embedded stablecoin transactions to its merchant network via Aptos. pic.twitter.com/ko4teOeE6w
— Aptos (@Aptos) May 8, 2026
The funding announcement is complemented by a strategic agreement with NETSTARS, a leading provider of QR code payment services in Japan. According to the details of the alliance, both organizations will collaborate on the development of stablecoin-based payment applications for the Japanese market. This integration is projected to allow the network to penetrate traditional payment sectors through regulated Web3 solutions, leveraging the cashless payment infrastructure already established in the region.
Despite the expansion in stablecoins, other metrics present a stabilization scenario. The Total Value Locked (TVL) on the network currently stands at $270.8 million. This figure is below the all-time highs recorded in December 2024 and May 2025, when the TVL reached approximately $1.3 billion. However, the network has recorded an increase in fee burning, with 47,000 APT removed from circulation in a single week during May, according to data from PANews.
