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Protocols Executive HiresBrief · Layer 1s & Infrastructure · 2025

July 10, 2025 · Aptos Labs promotes Solomon Tesfaye from head of capital markets to chief business officer

Aptos Labs Names Solomon Tesfaye Chief Business Officer

Solomon Tesfaye moved up from Aptos Labs' head of capital markets to chief business officer on July 10, 2025, as the network said its tokenized real-world assets had passed $540 million.

Ryan Elliott DennisUpdated on Oct. 3, 20262 min read · 3 sources

The move at a glance

W0173

Who: Solomon Tesfaye
Role: Chief Business OfficerTop manager
Organization: Aptos Labs
In or out: InAppointed Chief Business Officer
Became public: July 10, 2025The first dated public source, UTC
Source: Aptos Labs names Solomon Tesfaye chief business officerChainwire (Aptos Labs)

An up-close image of two people shaking hands in a professional setting against a white background. Photo · Pexels

“Aptos Labs promoted Solomon Tesfaye to chief business officer on July 10, 2025, in the release that said tokenized real-world assets on its network had passed 540 million dollars. Does a title change inside a company tell a reader more than the number next to it?”

Aptos Labs named Solomon Tesfaye its chief business officer on July 10, 2025. He moved up from the head of capital markets role he had held at the company¹. Crypto Briefing reported on July 10, 2025, that the move came as "tokenized real-world assets surpass $540M in value" on the Aptos network².

Three leadership moves at Aptos Labs on the record since 2024

Every move CryptoLately has verified there, by the day it became public

Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.

Read the chart as a table

Date	Event
Dec. 19, 2024	Shaikh left as CEO. Mo Shaikh left as CEO of Aptos Labs
Dec. 19, 2024	Ching became CEO. Avery Ching was named CEO of Aptos Labs
July 10, 2025	Tesfaye became Chief Business Officer. Solomon Tesfaye was named Chief Business Officer of Aptos Labs

59 executive hires on the record in 2025, the most of any year

Executive hires CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026

2025: 59
2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026

Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.

Read the chart as a table

Item	Value
2019	11
2020	12
2021	27
2022	37
2023	20
2024	39
2025	59
2026	45

The move

Aptos Labs' own release tied the promotion to the relationships Tesfaye had built, over any new assignment. “Solomon brings a strong track record in capital markets, led Aptos' real world asset strategy and has played a key role in building relationships with major financial and technology firms, like Blackrock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo,” the company wrote¹. Avery Ching, Aptos Labs' co-founder and chief executive, credited Tesfaye for a specific project. “Solomon has been critical in shaping our Global Trading Engine vision, and forging the partnerships that will help make it a reality,” Ching said. “As CBO, he'll be key to scaling that work, bringing more institutions, markets, and real-world use cases onto Aptos as global web3 adoption continues to accelerate.”

Tesfaye tied his own mandate to the regulatory calendar. “With the U.S. nearing the completion of frameworks for next-generation financial services, Aptos Labs is well-positioned to lead the shift to on-chain assets and help shape the infrastructure of tomorrow's global markets,” he said. “I'm excited to forge the partnerships and integrations that institutions and other market participants need to fully harness Aptos' tokenization capabilities at scale.”¹

Before and after the promotion

The release called Tesfaye's prior decade one spent “at the intersection of investment banking, venture capital, and the tokenization of real-world assets”¹. Crypto Briefing's report added a market he had opened for Aptos. His work had helped position the network “for deployment in crypto ETPs and ETFs in both the US and Europe,” the outlet wrote². Aptos Labs' release listed his new duties plainly: partnerships across fintech, payments and asset management, plus the regulatory landscape the network operates under.

What came next

Eleven months later, on June 23, 2026, CryptoPotato published an interview with Tesfaye, still Aptos Labs' chief business officer. In it, he said assets tied to the tokenization platform Securitize had grown 632 percent in June 2026, to $276 million on Aptos³. He told the outlet that BlackRock's BUIDL fund, tokenized by Securitize, had expanded onto Aptos alongside other networks. Aptos's processing record, in his telling, ran to more than 5 billion transactions and 99.99 percent uptime since its mainnet launch. "Institutions are not selecting chains for visibility," Tesfaye said. “It is evaluating whether infrastructure can support regulated financial products operating at scale with predictable settlement and performance.”