Aptos CEO Mo Shaikh Resigns, Will Remain As Advisor

Mo Shaikh, CEO of Aptos, has resigned from his position. He named co-founder Avery Ching as his successor for the role.

However, this will not mark the end of Shaikh’s tenure with Aptos, as he will remain with the firm in an advisory capacity.

Mo Shaikh Steps Down as Aptos CEO

Shaikh took to social media to announce this surprising development. He claimed that, in the three years since he and Ching founded Aptos, Shaikh has seen many of the firm’s original goals come to fruition.

However, in light of his faith in the company’s future, he is limiting his involvement.

“Today I am stepping away from Aptos Labs to start a new chapter.  One of my true passions lies in building companies from the ground up and we have done that at Aptos Labs by building a world-class team. I leave Aptos Labs with the utmost confidence in the team, and strongly believe [they] will bring our collective vision to life in the near future,” he said.

Shaikh claimed that one of his “true passions” is creating new projects like Aptos from the ground up, suggesting that his company is too mature to fulfill this desire. Instead, he plans “to take some much-needed time to reflect on where the world is headed and to think deeply about the ways financial systems can evolve.”

However, this is not the conclusion of his direct involvement with the company. Shaikh added that he “will always remain a champion of Aptos and its mission,” and will continue serving as a strategic advisor for the foreseeable future.

The layer-1 blockchain has been performing well lately, with several new wins in institutional acceptance, both from governments and major corporations.

Most recently, it partnered with Circle and Stripe to boost interoperability across 8 blockchain networks. Aptos integrated USDC stablecoin and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to streamline access across crypto and fiat-related features.

Nonetheless, its APT token has been experiencing a bearish trend recently. It struggled to rise early in the November bull market and suffered an intense setback last week. At the time of this writing, the token is falling again.

Since Shaikh announced his departure, Aptos’s social media account posted Avery’s response and acceptance of the CEO role. These statements suggest that Aptos has an optimistic view of the future. It claimed that “our focus is sharper than ever” and looked forward to future innovations.