Aptos Labs has proposed an encrypted mempool that would hide pending trade instructions until transaction ordering is complete, with its research team reporting 27 milliseconds of added proposal-to-execution latency in tests. Summary Aptos Labs says the proposed feature would protect pending orders while completed transactions remain public. Governance approval is a condition of the company’s claim to become the first L1 offering native protection. Researchers reported 27 milliseconds of added latency, or 14%, compared with their baseline system. Aptos has also committed more than $50 million to products, research, trading infrastructure and AI partners. Aptos Labs outlined the proposal in an Oct. 30, 2025 blog post, describing an optional way to submit encrypted transactions without exposing their contents while validators decide their order. In its May 12, 2026 coverage, crypto.news reported the same encrypted mempool proposal as dependent on governance approval, with transaction details revealed before execution and the normal public record retained after confirmation. Aptos encrypted mempool would protect orders before execution According to the company’s explanation, pending transactions on most blockchains expose information that validators and other participants can use to copy trades, change their order or trade ahead of users. In the May report, Aptos described protocol-level protection as a way to reduce orderflow leakage, censorship and frontrunning for large onchain transactions, rather than relying on a separate service to keep orders confidential. The company’s original announcement made its first-of-its-kind claim conditional: “If approved by governance, Aptos will be the first L1 to offer users the option to send transactions via a native Encrypted Mempool.” Under the design described in the May coverage, users would choose protected submission with one click, while validators would reveal the encrypted instructions after ordering so transactions could execute. For users of exchanges such as Decibel, the original blog presents confidentiality before execution as the intended protection; Aptos Labs says completed transaction information would still be recorded onchain. Batched decryption would limit the processing burden In the blog’s technical account, validators share control of the decryption key during each epoch, a period in which the validator set stays fixed, and a stake-based threshold must cooperate to reveal encrypted payloads. Aptos Labs says processing a batch together reduces the work required compared with decrypting each transaction separately, allowing much of the computation to happen while validators vote. The company puts the remaining online phase at less than 20 milliseconds per batch, a measurement of one stage of the process rather than total transaction time. In a subsequent research paper, Rex Fernando, Guru-Vamsi Policharla, Andrei Tonkikh and Zhuolun Xiang describe TrX, their integration of encrypted mempools with a high-performance Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol. Published as a preprint in November 2025, the research identifies visible transaction contents before ordering as the mechanism behind frontrunning, sandwich trades, and other forms of maximal extractable value, or MEV. According to the authors, their system preserves confidentiality during ordering while adding 27 milliseconds to proposal-to-execution latency, equivalent to 14% over the baseline used in their comparison. The researchers describe the result as performance comparable with leading consensus designs while providing protection against MEV, with their claim resting on the system and comparisons presented in the paper. Decibel sits within Aptos’ funded trading program In May 8 coverage of its ecosystem funding commitment, Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs committed more than $50 million to first-party products, research, protocol infrastructure and a strategic fund for trading and AI partners. According to that report, Decibel went live on Aptos mainnet in February as an onchain order book and perpetual futures exchange; Aptos said cumulative trading volume had exceeded $1 billion by May. In its May 7 announcement, the network said Decibel records orders, matches and cancellations onchain, and described confidentiality and protection against exposed trading intent as requirements for professional trading. The network also reported that its stablecoin market capitalization had reached a peak of $1.93 billion, nearly ten times its level in late 2024, while real-world assets had reached $1.2 billion. For data-intensive applications, the May coverage identified Shelby as another funded product, with Aptos describing storage for datasets that AI agents could license, exchange and trade. According to the funding report, Aptos had separately launched Confidential APT on April 24, introducing concealed transfer data while retaining verifiability. U.S. fund activity adds institutional context In an April 7 announcement published by the outlet, DigiShares disclosed its Aptos tokenization integration, allowing clients to issue and manage digital securities and other tokenized assets on the network. DigiShares said its platform handles investor onboarding, compliance, shareholder records, and dividend distributions, supporting asset management from issuance through potential secondary trading. The announcement identified BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Ondo Finance among firms already using Aptos for tokenization, and described fund managers and real estate owners as customers of DigiShares’ software. More recently, Aug. 13 reporting covered Franklin’s BENJI custody arrangement, following an SEC staff no-action letter permitting specified custody arrangements for Franklin’s U.S.-registered funds investing in its OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund. In the Aug. 12 letter, SEC investment management staff said they would not recommend enforcement action under Section 17(f) and Rule 17f-2 if the funds met the stated conditions. According to the letter, Franklin’s transfer agent would retain official ownership records and wallet keys, with Stellar identified as the primary blockchain and other networks available for certain eligible accounts. Among the letter’s conditions, each investing fund’s board must review the custody arrangements at least annually, and independent accountants must verify investments at least three times per fiscal year, including two checks without prior notice.
