Aptos Community Proposes Significant Reduction in Staking Rewards

According to Cointelegraph, a proposal has been submitted by an Aptos community member, known as MoonSheisty, to significantly reduce the staking rewards for Aptos (APT), the network's native token. The proposal, introduced on April 18, suggests cutting the reward yields from 7% to 3.79% over a three-month period. This adjustment aims to align Aptos staking rewards with those of other layer-1 blockchains and enhance capital efficiency. The proposal has generated interest on social media platform X, though initial feedback on GitHub indicates some resistance. A community member identified as ElagabalxNode expressed concerns that reducing staking rewards without implementing compensatory mechanisms, such as a robust delegation program, could potentially drive smaller validators out of the network. This, in turn, could weaken the decentralization and long-term resilience of the Aptos blockchain. The proposal emphasizes the importance of validators in the network and suggests that Aptos should consider establishing a community validator program to provide grants and stakes to smaller validators contributing to the ecosystem. Aptos, founded in 2021 by former Meta engineers, currently has a total value locked (TVL) of $974 million, with $320 million attributed to the lending protocol Aries Markets, as reported by DefiLlama. While high staking rewards can encourage users to lock up tokens on Aptos, MoonSheisty argues that they may also deter participation in higher-risk, higher-reward opportunities within the ecosystem, such as restaking, DePIN infrastructure, MEV, and decentralized finance. Staking rewards vary significantly across different blockchains. CoinLedger reports that the BNB Smart Chain offers some of the highest real returns at 7.43%, while Cardano provides one of the lowest at just 0.55%. Staking incentivizes users to lock their tokens on-chain, supports validators, and helps secure the network. The rewards function similarly to interest earned on a savings account, but instead of cash, stakers earn cryptocurrency, which can fluctuate in fiat value. Proposals to modify staking procedures are not uncommon. In June 2024, Polkadot introduced a proposal to reduce the unstaking period to two days. In September, the Starknet community voted to implement a new staking mechanism, and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed solutions to staking issues shortly thereafter. While staking provides the community with a genuine stake in the network, it also carries risks, including the potential consolidation of smaller pools into larger ones, which can undermine decentralization and weaken the blockchain's overall resilience.