30s Summary

Mohammad Shaikh, co-founder of Aptos Labs, has stepped down as CEO to pursue a new venture. His co-founder Avery Ching will take over as CEO. Aptos Labs, which was founded in 2022 and launched its mainnet in October the same year, successfully raised $400 million, partnering with firms like BlackRock, Google, and Microsoft. While Shaikh’s departure was positively received, he will remain as a strategic advisor. His departure had a minimal effect on the value of Aptos’ token. Aptos, a layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain, plans to expand its builder community to several nations under Ching’s leadership.

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Mohammad Shaikh, the top dog at Aptos Labs and a big player in the blockchain world, has stepped down from his role as CEO to kick off a new venture. His co-founder Avery Ching is taking up the mantle and stepping into the CEO position. Shaikh started Aptos Labs with Ching just last year and they got their mainnet up and running in October 2022. They pulled in a whopping $400 million and created some important alliances along the way.

Shaikh announced his departure on a December 19 post on X platform, saying, “I’m walking away from Aptos Labs to start on a new adventure.” He reassured everyone that he has full faith in the team and is confident that their drive and talent will make their shared dream a reality soon. He also revealed that Avery will lead Aptos Lab’s next growth phase as the new CEO.

On the same day, Aptos Labs also commented about the change in leadership, stating, “The future is looking brighter and sharper.” There are big plans for the year 2025 where they plan to bring amazing tech innovations under the new leadership of Ching.

Ching also announced in an X thread that they plan to broaden their builder community and take it to other nations such as India, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and China.

Before we dive further, here’s a bit about Aptos blockchain for those who aren’t familiar. It’s a superb layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain that outdoes its competitors in terms of data protection, speed, and scaling. Developed using a blockchain programming language called Move, it was originally created for Meta’s now discontinued Diem project.

Before establishing Aptos, Shaikh hustled at other big names like Meta, BlackRock, Boston Consulting Group, and Ethereum infrastructure firm Consensys. Thanks to him, Aptos got to partner with major players like BlackRock, Google, Microsoft, Mastercard, and Franklin Templeton. Shaikh’s hard work also attracted investors like Andreessen ‘a16z’ Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, who together invested over $400 million in the project.

A16z took the lead by investing a cool $200 million in a funding round in March 2022.

Most of the people in the industry received Shaikh’s resignation positively. Crypto research firm Token Relations expressed their gratitude for his hard work of building Aptos from scratch.

Shaikh isn’t leaving Aptos fully, though. He’ll stick around as a strategic adviser. His plan now is to take some well-deserved rest and ponder on where things are headed, especially in the finance world and how Aptos can win the layer 1 race.

In the crypto market, the news of Shaikh’s departure didn’t make a big impact on Aptos’ token value, as it dropped by only 4% in the last 24 hours while other currencies were also dropping. Despite the slight drop, Aptos still has a massive market cap of $6.4 billion, making it the 31st largest coin in the crypto market, according to CoinGecko data.