Aster CEO Leonard: DEX Competition Is Becoming Borderless as Aster Bets on On-Chain Financial Infrastructure

In the latest episode of Inside The Blockchain 100 on Binance Square, Aster CEO Leonard discussed the project’s merger and rebranding journey, competition in the decentralized perpetuals market, the rise of tokenized U.S. equities and real-world assets (RWA), as well as Aster’s recent tokenomics upgrade. Aster was formed through the merger and reshaping of two protocols that already had established user bases. Within a relatively short period, the platform has surpassed 21 million cumulative users and recorded more than $4 trillion in cumulative trading volume, becoming one of the frequently discussed players in the decentralized perpetuals sector. From Merger to Product Focus: Users Ultimately Care About the Product Discussing Aster’s relatively low-profile public presence, Leonard said it is partly related to his personality and partly shaped by his previous experience working on high-frequency trading infrastructure and risk systems, roles that are often more behind the scenes. However, as the project has grown, he believes it is important for someone from the team to communicate directly with the community. “Every project needs someone to step forward, communicate with users, give them confidence, and convey the project’s philosophy and product direction,” Leonard said. On the process of merging two protocols into Aster, Leonard noted that technical issues were comparatively manageable, while cultural integration was the more challenging part. One side of the team was more focused on dApps and yield products, emphasizing fairness and openness, while the other side placed greater emphasis on trading efficiency and execution experience. As Aster became more clearly positioned as a trading-driven product, the team adjusted its structure around product, technology, and liquidity capabilities. Leonard emphasized that whether users stay or leave does not depend on whether a brand has been relaunched, but on whether the product has delivered meaningful improvements. DEX Competitors Are Not Just Other DEXs: Capital Efficiency and Liquidity Are Key Reflecting on Aster’s rapid growth after launch, Leonard acknowledged that market expectations were high in the early stages, and mechanisms such as trading mining meant that some data included inflated elements. He also said the team’s delivery speed did not fully meet market expectations at one point. Still, for a team focused on long-term building, high attention is not necessarily a bad thing. “Having pressure is better than having no attention at all,” he said. When discussing the future competitive landscape for DEXs, Leonard said decentralized exchanges have never only competed with other DEXs. Users do not pay for “decentralization” alone; instead, they choose platforms with higher trading efficiency, lower costs, richer asset offerings, and deeper liquidity. “As long as you are in the liquidity business and providing exchange liquidity, you are competing with everyone,” Leonard said. As the boundaries between traditional brokerages, centralized exchanges, and on-chain protocols continue to blur, the long-term growth of DEXs will still depend on capital efficiency, transaction costs, and asset availability. Tokenized U.S. Stocks and RWA: 24/7 Trading Is Only the First Step On the trend of tokenized U.S. equities and RWA, Leonard said the market has gone through several rounds of experimentation, and this cycle appears to be “heading in the right direction, but still only at the beginning.” He pointed out that 24/7 trading is only the first step, while the deeper value of blockchain lies in composability. If stocks, futures, stablecoins, and yield products can eventually be settled on the same chain and combined into different strategies, capital efficiency could be significantly improved, Leonard said. Aster has also been advancing unified cross-asset trading capabilities. For example, it recently began supporting bStocks as spot and margin assets. According to Leonard, this allows users to place a portion of their U.S. stock-related assets on Aster while also using them as margin for crypto trading, enabling cross-asset strategies. He added that crypto-native users are already accustomed to 24/7 capital movement, self-custody, and on-chain composability. These features may, over time, encourage part of traditional asset trading volume to move on-chain. Regarding Aster’s long-term role, Leonard said the project does not aim to be merely a trading entry point. Instead, Aster hopes to become underlying infrastructure for on-chain financial markets. He said Aster will build around a front-end ecosystem, an asset issuance ecosystem through its permissionless listing validator model, and future vault and asset management products. Underlying liquidity and settlement capabilities will remain the core focus. Tokenomics Upgrade: Buybacks Are Not a Growth Strategy, but a Value Transmission Mechanism Aster recently announced a major tokenomics upgrade, with a target to reduce total supply from 8 billion to 3 billion and allocate 99% of daily platform fees to automatic buybacks. Leonard clarified that the reduction to 3 billion is a long-term target, not an immediate change. He said the team believes that as Aster’s market share increases and the broader industry grows, revenue will not remain at current levels, giving the project confidence to pursue the target within a more reasonable timeframe. Responding to market skepticism around buyback narratives, Leonard said he agrees that tokenomics alone cannot fundamentally change a project’s value. “Buybacks can only transmit or amplify value; they cannot create new value. Value still comes from users and business growth,” he said. Leonard stressed that Aster must continue to prove the quality of its revenue, users, and product competitiveness, rather than relying on short-term narratives. When discussing Aster’s moat, Leonard summarized three key areas. First, Aster provides liquidity for certain scarce on-chain assets. Second, its trading privacy features can serve users who want to trade on-chain without fully exposing their trading information. Third, unified cross-asset trading and margin capabilities can help improve capital efficiency. However, Leonard also acknowledged that many on-chain products can be copied. In the long run, he said, competitiveness will depend on team execution and the ability to keep innovating. Finally, when asked whether he would rather prove over the next year that “Aster is the most profitable DEX” or “Aster is the fastest-growing DEX,” Leonard chose the latter. He said that if a team has long-term confidence in the sector, “market share is always more important than profit.” Leonard concluded that the next major opportunity lies in bringing RWA on-chain and making these assets composable, self-custodial, and usable across multiple strategies. Aster, he said, aims to become infrastructure for that future.