Aptos History: From Diem to an Independent Blockchain
Diem's Legacy: A Second Life for Meta's Shuttered Project
Like Sui, Aptos was born from the wreckage of Diem (formerly Libra) — Facebook's (Meta's) ambitious cryptocurrency, shut down in 2022 under regulatory pressure. Aptos's founders, Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, both previously worked at Meta specifically on Diem. After the project was shut down, they took part of its technical legacy, including the Move programming language, to build an independent public blockchain.
October 2022: A Controversial Mainnet Launch
Aptos's genesis block was created on October 12, 2022, with the public mainnet announced on October 18. The token began trading on major exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, and FTX on October 19, 2022, at around $8.50–10 — the launch was accompanied by controversy over the opaque early-stage token distribution among investors.
January 2023: An All-Time High
Despite the controversy surrounding its launch, APT climbed to an all-time high of roughly $20.39 on January 26, 2023 — less than four months after the network launched.
Aptos and Sui: Competing "Heirs" to the Same Project
Aptos and Sui are frequently compared precisely because both projects grew out of the same team and Diem/Libra technology and both use the Move language for smart contracts — though technically they've developed as fully independent, competing Layer 1 blockchains.