On December 20, Mohammad Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos, announced his departure. In his statement, he mentioned that he enjoys participating in the process of building a company from zero to one, and the CEO position will be handed over to another co-founder, CTO Avery Ching. The next day, Mike Dudas, co-founder of the blockchain media The Block and also an advisor to Aptos, announced his resignation as well. With the rise of Move language public chains like Sui and Movement, Aptos seems less dazzling in comparison, raising concerns in the community about whether there is still hope for Aptos.
Mohammad Shaikh previously served as the Strategic Director at ConsenSys and has work experience at TheBlock and Meta in Web2. His background includes technology and finance in Web2, and he has held executive positions at Web3 giants, making his experience quite comprehensive. In his statement, he expressed gratitude to all Aptos partners and the crypto venture capitalists who initially believed in them. His next step will be to serve as a strategic advisor to Aptos.
But he stated that his true passion lies in building a company from the ground up, which Aptos has already successfully achieved. He believes that the Aptos team can realize the vision in the coming period, after which the CEO position will be taken over by the current CTO Avery Ching. Avery Ching has over ten years of developer experience at Meta and is also the head of the Novi team, Meta's cryptocurrency wallet.
Rushi Manche, founder and CEO of Movement, who previously worked at Aptos, also expressed gratitude in the comments. He mentioned that without Mohammad Shaikh's contributions as a pioneer, the current Move ecosystem would not exist. His words also seem to hint at more collaboration between Movement and Aptos.
As the founder of The Block, Mike Dudas stated that Aptos is the only blockchain project for which he serves as an advisor. He accepted the advisor role back in 2022 at the invitation of his friend Mohammad Shaikh, and now his departure seems to reflect a mutual exit. He will also ask Aptos to donate the tokens he received as an advisor to the nonprofit organization Coin Center, which focuses on cryptocurrency regulation.
He also added that he agreed to serve as an advisor to Aptos after founding The Block and before he took on a full-time role as a venture capitalist, clarifying any potential conflicts of interest. The author adds that Mike Dudas is currently a co-founder and partner at 6th Man Ventures, with investments including Taiwan's Sui lending protocol Scallop, STEPN, MagicEden, io.net, Etherscan, and he has also had sporadic experience as an angel investor.
This article discusses the consecutive departures of the CEO and advisor. What happened to Aptos? Is there still hope? First appeared in Chain News ABMedia.
