Zekun Li

It’s been >15 years since the launch of Bitcoin, and the market is more focused than ever on real products solving real problems for real people. Real-world adoption has early signs of success and will grow exponentially in the coming years. In the past years since Aptos mainnet launch in 2022, we’ve built best-in-class infrastructure - the most scalable, fastest, and cost-effective blockchain ever created. We created products like Aptos Keyless to enable smooth Internet adoption and Geomi to accelerate builders. We made powerful strategic partnerships with builders to drive scale and adoption. During these same years, we also rushed and messed up the airdrop. We focused on the wrong metrics, like TVL. Alongside many incredibly valuable strategic partnerships, we also made some bad business arrangements that didn’t deliver value to the ecosystem we were expecting. We have learned much from these mistakes, made significant leadership changes and have done a lot of clean up this year. Difficult, out of the spotlight hard work, but necessary. These necessary changes laid the groundwork and strengthened our ability to execute much more in the future. My passion has always been the mission: unlocking financial freedom and financial equality. Historically, we’ve been conditioned to think of global equality in terms of the legal system and human rights. It’s not enough. Perhaps, the 1776 Declaration of Independence says it best that we are all “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” True global equality requires inclusive access to the world’s financial systems, from capital markets and money movement to wealth-management tools and stable stores of value. More powerful financial tools for everyone. It can be odd to think of fair and equitable global trading as a societal accomplishment, but the opportunities are not equal today. IPOs and private funding have limited access. Many other investment strategies have limited access, especially globally. A global trading engine can be built on a highly-customized and decentralized technology stack. It can be accessible to all with all the rules and operations codified. It can offer fair features not found in any centralized market today - such as protection against front-running, sandwich attacks, and hidden costs. Trading tools like delta-neutral strategies can be available for anyone to deploy and understand. No more hidden agendas and a level playing field. Ultimately, everyone having the same access to financial markets, global currencies, investment opportunities, and more is going to change this world for the better. We’ll look back at this time as the path to how we unlocked financial freedom. Our thesis-driven bets toward our mission are as follows: * Equitable and advanced global markets: Decibel, incubated by Aptos Labs, is the first fully decentralized exchange that will match the Binance/Coinbase speed and ease of use. At the same time, Decibel is innovating with new trading primitives, user protections, assets, and markets. With a successful Testnet underway, Decibel is accelerating toward a Q1 Mainnet and will iterate on the product quickly. * Next-gen cloud, data & AI: Shelby is the first hot decentralized storage protocol. It solves the data lifecycle challenge (i.e., hot, warm, cold) for AI use cases, creator use cases, and enterprise cloud infrastructure. Not only cheaper due to reduced egress fees when compared to traditional cloud infra, Shelby is cloud failure resistant, programmable, yet with full creator control. * Aptos Internet expansion with Namespaces: Namespaces offers turnkey, tailor-made blockchain infrastructure built on Aptos’ proven tech stack for any bring any enterprise or institution to bring its users into crypto and expand the Aptos ecosystem, similar to the way the Internet was built. The new Archon architecture fully enables fast and reliable connectivity for namespaces internally and across them. While it is still early for these products and protocols, the response from investors, partners, and the community has been strong and validating. Building the product vision, not just a tech narrative, is what sets Aptos apart. Our strategy is to deliver utility that drives organic revenue in every product and sustains the mission. This is a significant change to the previous years in how we have operated and we’ve been realigning and rebuilding for nearly a year now. The Aptos Foundation is working with us on how to best allocate resources to support these changes. The market continues to evolve rapidly and APT isn’t reflecting the fundamentals, ecosystem growth or progress in the mission. I continue to hold every token that was granted to me as a co-founder because I believe it's the right thing to do to serve this mission. Not many founders can say that more than 3 years post token launch. Mission not yet accomplished. And while we’ve done a lot of learning from and cleaning up past mistakes, we will look at every option to ensure our mission will be sustainable and successful. Looking back, we’ve learned from our mistakes, rebuilt, aligned, and are now executing on thesis-driven bets toward the mission. Our world-class team has never been as focused and effective as it is today. The world needs financial freedom and equality more than ever, especially in a world where AI is creating more information asymmetry and inequality. Let’s level the playing field for the future generations of humanity.