Guest: Avery Ching, Co-founder and CEO of Aptos
Interview & Written by: Anderson Sima, Executive Editor-in-Chief of Foresight News
By 2025, stablecoins have risen to become a global strategic stronghold. Whether it’s the political center of Washington, the financial core of Wall Street, or international hubs like Dubai and Hong Kong, all are vying for dominance in this new track.
However, the seeds of this transformation were sown as early as six years ago. Mark Zuckerberg from Silicon Valley was the first to propose reshaping the payment system with stablecoins. In his blueprint, the stablecoin Libra would be used by Facebook’s more than 3 billion users across over 190 countries—meaning more than one-third of the world’s population would directly step into the crypto world.
But Zuckerberg’s idea was too far ahead of its time, and regulatory crackdowns led to Libra’s demise before it was born. Nevertheless, Libra’s legacy brought two important players to the Web3 world—Aptos and Sui.
During Token 2049 in Singapore, Foresight News interviewed Avery Ching, founder and CEO of Aptos. Avery was born in Hawaii and earned his PhD in Computer Science from Northwestern University in the US. He worked at Meta for over 10 years, where he was responsible for technical work on projects such as Libra and Novi.
After the Libra project could no longer move forward, Avery Ching and a group of engineers and colleagues from Meta founded the Aptos public chain around 2022, and at the end of 2024, he took over as CEO, continuing to lead Aptos forward.
Avery is warm and courteous, embodying the “Aloha” spirit of his native Hawaii—a way of life that treats others, nature, and oneself with kindness, respect, and compassion. The following is the edited interview content.
Foresight News: 2025 is already halfway through. Can you summarize Aptos’s progress in the first half of the year with one word?
Avery Ching: If I had to choose one word, I would choose “radical.” In the past, many blockchain networks were general-purpose L1 or L2 networks, but we tried for the first time to take a goal-oriented approach. We have taken a very radical approach in two areas: first, building a global trading engine through the Decibel project, and second, advancing decentralized cloud computing through the Shelby protocol. We believe these are the two core technologies in crypto for the next three to five years, and we are going all out to accelerate progress.
Unlike other projects in the market, traditional projects usually start with L1 and L2, and then build an ecosystem on top. We want to tightly integrate L1 and the ecosystem, allowing the two to work synergistically. This approach is very unique and can be called radical.
Foresight News: Besides Decibel and Shelby, what other important progress has the Aptos team made in the past few months?
Avery Ching: I represent Aptos Labs, not the entire Aptos ecosystem. The Aptos ecosystem has also performed strongly in project growth, with projects like Hyperion driving significant growth in DeFi trading volume. Currently, Aptos is one of the top public chains in terms of trading volume, TVL (Total Value Locked), and other capital flow indicators. We offer transaction confirmation times as low as 100 milliseconds and transaction fees of less than one cent, making us one of the cheapest and fastest networks. This has driven widespread adoption of stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, USDE, PYUSD, and more stablecoins will join in the future. (Editor’s note: The day after the interview, WLFI’s stablecoin USD1 announced its launch on Aptos.)
In addition, RWA is also very active in the Aptos ecosystem. According to market statistics, we rank among the top three in the RWA field, with financial institutions such as Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, and Apollo issuing money market funds and other products on Aptos. All these indicate that Aptos is becoming a global trading engine, with user adoption, capital flow, and asset on-chain growing rapidly.
Foresight News: Recently, DAT has been very popular globally, and companies like MicroStrategy are continuously pushing the bitcoin strategic reserve. Do you think institutions will adopt similar strategies to accumulate Aptos tokens? How does Aptos view this trend?
Avery Ching: We are working closely with multiple partners to prepare for the launch of ETPs and ETFs, exploring Aptos’s role in traditional finance (TradFi). Aptos has unique advantages in brand, product, and background, which gives traditional financial institutions great confidence in us. We have already launched an ETP in cooperation with Bitwise, and progress is being made on ETFs as well. If Aptos can launch a DAT, we believe that, given our close ties on Wall Street and in the crypto space, we will succeed.
Foresight News: Do you think the US SEC will approve Aptos-related ETPs or ETFs? Other tokens like Solana or Ripple are also seeking similar opportunities.
Avery Ching: I think this will take time, but we are optimistic. As regulation gradually becomes clearer, such as with the advancement of the “Genius Act,” we are actively participating in the regulatory process, discussing the definitions of mature and immature networks. Aptos is very well positioned in connecting TradFi and DeFi, which gives us an advantageous position in the regulatory environment.
Foresight News: In August this year, you gave a speech on cryptocurrency in the US Congress. This was a very special experience. What did you gain from it?
Avery Ching: It was an honor to be invited to testify at the House Agriculture Committee hearing. We were one of only four representatives, sharing insights as builders. We believe that clear market structure definitions are very important. Many terms are still unclear at present, and clear rules allow people to know how to launch projects in compliance. The progress of the “Genius Act” will bring more innovation to the US and the world. We are very excited about the rapid action of the executive branch and Congress (both the House and the Senate) in promoting legislation.
Foresight News: Speaking of policy, the Trump administration has significantly promoted the crypto industry. What is your evaluation of Trump?
Avery Ching: There is no doubt that the Trump administration has played an important role in advancing the US crypto agenda. The progress of the “Stablecoin Transparency Act,” the “Genius Act,” and the “Digital Asset Clarity Act” would not have been possible without the government’s push, including the appointment of David Sacks (White House Advisor on AI and Cryptocurrency Affairs) and the White House’s position paper on the development of US DeFi. These policies not only affect Congress but also have a profound impact on state governments and even the global industry.
Foresight News: Next, let’s talk about Aptos’s plans and growth strategies for the second half of 2025.
Avery Ching: In the first half of the year, we focused on the core use cases of crypto and established key partnerships, such as Decibel and Shelby. Now we are going all out to develop code and support products, creating the next generation of trading and cloud computing experiences. For Shelby, we see huge interest in the AI, creator, and enterprise fields, with dozens of partners wanting to leverage our products. These products are unprecedented in the crypto space, and we are working with partners to develop the best applications.
Foresight News: How does Aptos attract developers and users? Super projects like Polymarket and Pump.fun are very popular. How does Aptos create star projects?
Avery Ching: There are not many successful cases of Web3 projects. Polymarket, SushiSwap, Hyperliquid, and Pump.fun are among the few successful examples. Aptos adopts a vertically integrated strategy. We believe that building products only on L1 is not enough; we must span the entire technology stack. This approach provides a better product experience and also drives innovation in other parts of the ecosystem. For example, we will shorten block time from the industry-leading 100 milliseconds to 65 milliseconds next month, and possibly even 20 milliseconds. This not only increases trading speed and reduces slippage but also supports new scenarios such as micropayments. This full-stack optimization brings greater opportunities for success to the Aptos ecosystem.
Foresight News: Decentralized exchanges (DEX) have been very hot in recent years. How do you see the future of DEX?
Avery Ching: DEX is an amazing product. For example, Perp allows users to gain leveraged exposure without having to bring underlying assets on-chain or onto exchanges. The advantage of DEX is that it can list assets faster and cover a wider international audience, while centralized exchanges are limited by regulation. We believe that the global trading engine is the future trend, and traffic will gradually shift on-chain. Hyperliquid is a great starting point, but there will not be a single DEX dominating the market in the future. We see that Binance, Bybit, OKX, and other centralized exchanges are very successful, and there will also be 10 to 20 successful exchanges in the DEX field. Decibel will strive to be among the top.
Foresight News: How does Aptos stand out among the many L1 networks?
Avery Ching: We do not position ourselves as a general-purpose L1, but as the home for global traders, focusing on the global trading engine. We optimize the underlying technology, chain, and code to provide the best trading and decentralized cloud computing experience. This is our core differentiator.
Foresight News: In emerging fields such as AI, RWA, and on-chain trading, which direction does Aptos value the most?
Avery Ching: The global trading engine covers many fields. In RWA, we hope to see assets not only on-chain but also tradable on exchanges, such as packaging loans into products and trading them. In AI, Shelby focuses on data licensing and trading markets, for example, data generated by the internet or autonomous vehicles can be traded on-chain for AI training or inference. This creates an innovative flywheel of value creation (Shelby) and value exchange (Decibel).
Foresight News: Will AI become the entry point for mass adoption in crypto, or is it just a bubble?
Avery Ching: AI needs targeted applications. Shelby focuses on infrastructure and data markets for AI training, while in trading, AI can be used to build intelligent portfolios, such as dynamic rebalancing through Decibel. In the future, AI agents may represent users in trading, payments, and other operations, connecting the crypto world and the traditional internet. As long as the use cases are clear, AI has huge potential in crypto.
Foresight News: Stablecoins are an important part of the crypto space. How do you see their future?
Avery Ching: Stablecoins are on-chain assets that tokenize fiat currencies, sometimes with yield. They are the primary use case for exchanges and have been widely adopted on Aptos due to low costs and fast confirmation. We are exploring payment scenarios in emerging markets with partners such as Bitso and Yellow Card, and improving user experience through privacy technologies (such as confidential transactions that hide balances) and Web2 authorization (such as Google or Apple account login). Aptos’s low fees and high throughput make it an ideal platform for stablecoin trading.
For example, today, it is very difficult for me to convert my US dollars to euros. I have to go somewhere, follow the exchange rate, and go to a specific institution during working hours. But in crypto, I can press a button and trade right now to get any stablecoin I want.
Foresight News: How will Aptos leverage APT as the core token of the ecosystem?
Avery Ching: APT is the core foundation of the token economy within the Aptos ecosystem. First, it serves as the gas fee payment token for the Aptos network, and after transactions are completed, this gas is completely burned. At the same time, it also protects the network through staking. Therefore, stakers receive APT rewards because they protect the network from attacks. In addition, it is also used for governance and other functions; so it is a very core functional and utility token for the Aptos network. That said, we do expect APT to be like a country’s infrastructure, with roads, services, and taxes, and ultimately provide economic growth opportunities for companies like Meta, Amazon, and Tesla.
Similarly, we hope to build amazing businesses on top of Aptos, and we want to see very successful projects or enterprises built on Aptos. We are very excited about the prospects of our own projects through Decibel and Shelby, but we will also see many new projects that will leverage Aptos’s unique capabilities. What we are also hearing is that enterprises want to deploy at scale. They have 100,000 or 5 million real users, but in the blockchain world, only a very few networks can truly support this, whether it’s a matter of scale, latency, or cost. Aptos is the only network that can meet all three conditions, and we are very excited to work with those traditional large companies, and that is where our confidence lies.
Foresight News: If you could have dinner with any historical or modern figure, who would you choose?
Avery Ching: I would choose Elon Musk. He is an outstanding innovator, and the technological achievements of Tesla, X, and SpaceX are breathtaking. It would be very exciting to discuss with him how to use Aptos’s scalable technology to develop the next generation of AI or blockchain products.
