The highly anticipated Layer 1 blockchain, Aptos, launched its Mainnet yesterday. Although the Mainnet runs smoothly without major hiccups, the Aptos Foundation received community criticism over its controversial tokenomics and incentive plans. Besides, there aren’t many dApps available in the network, as a lot of developers have yet to launch their projects, Aptos’s ecosystem is still far from complete. Check out this article to know more about Aptos tokenomics: https://www.coinlive.com/news/detail/?id=16221
Anyway, we are not talking about the bad things today, in fact, the community is surprised by the sudden airdrop announcement from the Aptos Foundation. Many received emails this morning, including me, notifying us that we are eligible to claim airdrops from the website. It smells very fishy at first but turns out it is the real deal! The maximum amount of airdropped Aptos Coin (APT) that one could claim is up to 450. For those who only minted the NFT and submitted their email, the claimable tokens are 150. As of the time of writing, APT is worth $8 per coin, so it would be an easy $1,200 free money just by completing the two simple tasks above. It’s up to you to sell all the coins or not, but I would suggest leaving a portion of it and playing around with the ecosystem. A lot of dApps are still in their development and are only available in Testnet, below are some that you can really use at the current stage of Mainnet.
Aptos Foundation's invitation email and the NFT that granted the airdrop
Wallet
Pontem Wallet
Website: https://pontem.network/
Verdict: Might be the best wallet in Aptos so far. You can check out various dApps through the wallet extension as well.
Petra Wallet
Website: https://petra.app/
Verdict: Very clean UI and simple to use.
P/S: Even though the Martian Wallet is one of the most popular wallets in Aptos, I wouldn’t recommend it as it is quite buggy to use in my opinion.
Swap
Liquidswap
Website: https://liquidswap.com/
Verdict: Currently there is only one APT/USDC pair available. Pooling is not available at the moment.
Staking
Ditto
Website: https://stake.dittofinance.io/
Verdict: Similar to Ethereum’s Lido, staking your APT will grant you staked APT (stAPT) token. While the current APY is 7%, bear in mind the fluctuation of APT token price.
Borrowing & Lending
Argo
Website: https://argo.fi/
Verdict: A basic DeFi lending protocol. What makes it different is you are borrowing the Argo dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDA. You may also deposit the stAPT as collateral and borrow crypto, exactly the same way how people did it in the Ethereum network.
NFT Marketplace
Souffl3
Website: https://souffl3.com/
Verdict: A pretty neat NFT marketplace for Aptos. Besides the basic function of a marketplace, the homepage showcases upcoming new NFT projects and their Twitter handlers, users may do their own research before minting.
Topaz
Website: https://www.topaz.so/
Verdict: Another simply and neat NFT marketplace. It has the homepage showcase features just like Souffl3.
Domain Name
Aptos Names
Website: https://www.aptosnames.com/
Verdict: Unlike Ethereum’s ENS, the mint price of Aptos Names is determined by the total letter and digit of the domain name. Also, you can add “-“ hyphen in the Aptos domain name. Mint price as per below:
3 digit/letter: 80 APT
4 digit/letter: 40 APT
5 digit/letter: 20 APT
6 digit/letter and above: 5 APT