After three years in Mainnet, the aptos still occupy an unusual position in the blockchain ecosystem. Born from the abandoned Libra Meta’s Libra project with backing from top-tier VCs, it entered the market with high expectations and even higher values.
Aptos is known as a high-throughput, relatively inexpensive chain, developed in the transfer language program for improved security. But while its technical capabilities are undeniable, the project’s path to widespread adoption remains less specific to an industry where the gap between technical and actual use is often seemingly irrevocable.
Ash Pamati is a speaker at Consensus 2025, taking place in Toronto May 14-16.
I sat with Ash Pamati, the head of the ecosystem in Aptos, to discuss how the project navigates these challenges, what it sets up to competitors, and whether the institutional DNA is a help or barrier to the market today.
Prior to joining APTOS as the head of the ecosystem, Ash Pamati led the business at Metaplex Studios in Solana and spent seven years on YouTube leading the music industry partnership. The YouTube-to-Blockchain experience informs his approach to Aptos’ adoption.
“Our overarching thesis is that all the properties in the world will come to the chain,” he said.
This interview is reserved and lightly edited for clarity.
CoinDesk: I noticed the aptos emerging towards a more indigenous builder culture. What pushed this shift?
Police: The most resources on the web3, besides the time, are developers’ talents. All ecosystems compete for those who have developed great ideas that are motivated to be sent against all the odds.
Community building approach begins with a key question: How can we convince a developer not only to choose aptos on other chains but choose web3 on web2?
Your developer outreach in Southeast Asia is noticeable. Is this a strategic focus because those markets are more attractive -or because the established developers are already focused on other chains?
We have built amazing -amazing relationships with indigenous peoples with great students around the world -California, UK, Singapore, India, Hong Kong. We show them the value of the web3 and how a consumer-oriented, high-performance chain like aptos will help them launch DAPPs in a week when ideas and infrastructure are ready.
When you do that properly, you should be willing to invest in talented and talented people right away. We have an opinionated but effective grant program where we coach people through accelerators, invested directly from the foundation, or connect them to investors sharing aids.
Solana faces similar technical commitments but has seen the ecosystem led by pump.fun and $ fuck -ot and $ dawg, and, well, it’s your name. In your institutional approach, are the aptos risk the opposite problem -wonderful technology but not many speculation?
For the aptos, we didn’t have that baggage, for better or worse, a meme coin frenzy adding assumptions about our identity. We believe that tokens and tokenized assets provide businesses that appear that otherwise cannot be in any other market, and they allow users to enter businesses that they will not have.
Do I believe that 60,000 tokens should appear daily in the aptos? Not required. But do I want a stream of quality projects using tokens to align their communities or develop products? Completely. Those are the kind of builders we want to attract.
What strategic areas are focused on the aptos today?
We have three main areas of focus that will help us overcome adoption challenges. First, asset tokenization. Our overarching thesis is that all the property in the world will come to the chain. We see that the combination is now with RWW, institutional interest in contact with native Defi, tokenized cryptocurrencies, and stablecoins. We want to build a network that provides the global trade engine of these properties.
The second place is payments, which use technical benefits of technical aptos. We have included the top three stablecoins in Aptos in just three months, reaching nearly a billion dollars in the total market cap. Aptos are magnitude orders cheaper from a transaction cost basis-by a factor of a thousand-compared to the next high-throughput blockchain. We also have the fastest end of the end at the sub-set speed.
Our third focus involves decentralized infrastructure that supports emerging technologies. With a few improvements above and below, you can unlock the capabilities around storage and compute that has never been seen in previous blockchains. It allows the operation of the AI and ML infrastructure on fully decentralized networks, helps with the ability to discover data for banks, and changes content delivery frameworks.
Your examples are often focused on institutional use cases. Is there a connectivity between the vision of the aptos and where is the market today?
Our PACT PROTOCOL Showing what we want in the next five years to look like. It uses on-chain railroads in a high-throughput blockchain with a stablecoin integration to expand credit networks in people in markets who have never had credit access.
For example, a Rickshaw driver in India who needs a loan to fix their vehicle can now get one. Accessing access to financial markets gives me goosebumps, and I want to speed it up.
In addition, within the DeFI, which has had the appropriate product-mancande for many cycles and advised within the Ethereum and EVM L2 communities, we explored what a healthy defi ecosystem looked at a high-throughput blockchain that abstract most of the web 3 friction.
Can my dad, a Kentucky doctor who saves all his passwords on notepads, park some stablecoins in a reliable place to earn harvest and participate in the on-chain economy with limited disputes? It is not necessary to save a passkey while still benefiting from decentralization and self -crop? What is easier for people to ride and make money on the on-chain economy is exciting for us.
We are at a time when many crypto projects have fallen into their promises. What keeps you confident that aptos can succeed where others struggle?
Extensive speaking in the founders of the founders: the macroeconomic environment is unsure, and there is always volatility in this market. But foundations like ours and others remain focused on the goal and are willing to invest in people to continue the mission. My biggest fear is that there is a talent that leaves a web3 for a more stable environment. Anything we can do to keep people with talent to continue the mission of decentralized networks, self-custody, and proven, we need to do this-not just from our side, but from any foundation or ecosystem.
We need to keep people building or, otherwise we will not see the revolution in the world we want to see in a timescale that is important. We should not do the development for the granted. It takes a job to keep people building for the future.
