Aptos price has surged over 13% in 24 hours following the announcement of Block-STM v2 upgrade completion on October 15, 2026. The token is currently trading above $0.8777 after hitting this resistance level multiple times in recent sessions. According to AMBCrypto, the upgrade has increased transaction throughput and scalability, with the chain's TPS hitting a peak value of 1,308 while real-time throughput reached 174. The Daily Active Accounts rose from 46,670 to 49,385, representing a 5.82% uptick, while monthly total active accounts hit a peak of 710,712 with 16 days remaining in October. User transactions also increased significantly, with over 1.335 million transactions in a single day, compared to 9.575 million transactions the following day.
Aptos Labs announced the upgrade of Block-STM, which has been running in parallel on Aptos since mainnet launch. As explained by AMBCrypto, this upgrade was completed on October 15th and named Block-STM v2, with other chains building on it. The upgrade has increased transaction throughput and scalability, with the process detailed by Aptos Labs' Head of Research Alexander Spiegelman and Near Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin. The Daily Active Accounts rose from 46,670 to 49,385, while New Accounts Created grew from 4,098 to 4,395. The upgrade has resulted in improved network activity and increased user engagement across the Aptos ecosystem.
On the 4-hour chart, APT's price was rising but facing resistance at $0.8777, which has been a consistent blockade for the token. As reported by AMBCrypto, the token got rejected and even had a fake breakout five days ago at this level. However, at press time, APT was trading above $0.8777, with the same faintly flipping the SuperTrend indicator to bullish. The RSI Divergence has been bearish, but it broke above the neutral level with a reading of 62.41. The sustained APT uptrend could face rejection at $0.9653, a level that triggered a sharp drop to $0.7620 in previous sessions. If buyers maintain momentum, the altcoin may reclaim $1 now that the network upgrade is in place and boosting activity.
The upgrade announcement has driven APT's daily trading volume to $100 million, primarily driven by the hype around the ecosystem upgrade. According to AMBCrypto, the total market cap of all cryptos surpassed $2.77 trillion, up by more than 2.21%, with altcoins taking the lead on this recovery. Despite the mainnet launch, APT token declined 11.5% over 24 hours to trade at $0.7995, with trading volume standing near $98.91 million and market capitalization approximately $697.14 million. The current price recovery contrasts with earlier readings showing a 4.47% gain at $0.8290, though technical indicators from that earlier chart placed the 20-day simple moving average at $0.8166 with Bollinger Band resistance near $0.8970.
The launch addresses growing concerns about automated transaction manipulation, with Bitquery identifying approximately 6.9 million sandwich attacks on Solana between October 30, 2025, and October 7, 2026. According to Bitquery's research, 2,545 bot wallets targeted approximately 2.2 million wallets during the 11-month period, extracting $29.7 million before trading costs. The research found that roughly 96% of identified attacks involved memecoins traded through Pump.fun-related markets, with daily recorded attacks increasing from approximately 3,400 in late 2025 to 51,900 in September 2026. Aptos's Encrypted Mempool mechanism provides protection at the moment it matters most: until transaction ordering is fixed, withholding transaction contents preventing bots from reading pending orders and inserting trades ahead of them to profit at users' expense. The network joins other blockchain initiatives offering MEV protection, with Gnosis Chain launching an encrypted mempool using Shutter in July 2024, while Ethereum's Flashbots Protect routes transactions privately to block builders.
