Original Title: The Aster Counterstrike Author: Token Dispatch Compiled & Translated by: LenaXin, ChainCatcher Background On September 18, 2025, Changpeng Zhao published a price chart that wasn't Bitcoin or BNB. The chart represented the native token of ASTER, a decentralized perpetual exchange that had just launched the previous day. "Great job! A great start. Keep up the good work!" he declared. Within hours, the ASTER token skyrocketed 400% from its IPO price. The market clearly understood the message: the former Binance CEO wasn't just offering congratulations; he was declaring war on Hyperliquid. As HYPE token holders watched their Hyperliquid assets soar to an all-time high of nearly $60, Changpeng Zhao's carefully calculated tweet landed like a pinpoint strike. While Zhao Changpeng has been banned from operating Binance, he's clearly not banned from shaking up the market; he's fully supporting Hyperliquid's strongest competitor. However, the war machine has already begun. YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) has been quietly funding the development of ASTER. The BNB Chain partnership network is activating. The world's largest crypto empire is launching a full-scale crackdown on this decentralized upstart that dared to seize market share in derivatives. This is the opening salvo in the war for decentralized exchanges in perpetual contracts, and Binance has no intention of conceding. (I) What is ASTER?
ASTER was born from the merger of two major DeFi protocols, Astherus and APX Finance, in December 2024. The integration built a unified trading infrastructure, aiming to directly compete with Hyperliquid's growing market share.
The platform is a multi-chain decentralized exchange that supports BNB chain, Ethereum, Solana and Arbitrum networks, and enables seamless trading without manual cross-chain by aggregating multi-chain liquidity. Since its launch in March 2025, ASTER has processed more than US$514 billion in trading volume for 2 million users. After the token issuance, the platform's total locked value briefly peaked at US$2 billion, but had fallen back to US$655 million as of September 2025. Unlike decentralized exchanges that focus solely on spot trading, ASTER is positioned as a comprehensive trading platform offering both spot and perpetual futures markets. While perpetual derivatives are its core business, the platform also offers spot trading, with the first trading pair launched being its native token, ASTER/USDT. (II) How does ASTER address front-running and liquidation manipulation? ASTER's core architecture is dedicated to addressing the liquidity fragmentation that plagues multi-chain DeFi. The platform builds "unified liquidity" by aggregating cross-chain order books, rather than forcing users to transfer assets across chains. Its "hidden order" system is particularly notable, as it conceals the order size and direction until execution. This dark pool-like design effectively addresses key pain points of on-chain trading: front-running and liquidation manipulation. Zhao Changpeng previously commented on this feature, stating that it addresses "the liquidation manipulation issues that exist in other on-chain DEXes." The platform's margin system supports both segregated and cross-collateralized trading, allowing users to use liquid collateral tokens like BNB or ecosystem stablecoins as collateral. This capital-efficient innovation allows traders to maintain active positions while earning passive income on their collateralized assets. The core of the ASTER ecosystem is USDF, an ecosystem-based stablecoin backed by a delta-neutral position. Users can mint USDF by depositing supported assets and use the stablecoin as collateral to earn returns. This creates a self-circulating liquidity system in which stablecoin holders naturally become liquidity providers. ASTER's roadmap includes the integration of zero-knowledge proofs for enhanced privacy and the development of Aster Chain, a customized Layer 1 blockchain optimized for trading. This feature will be available in beta to a limited number of traders in June 2025, enabling the platform to eventually compete with Hyperliquid's customized Layer 1 architecture. (III) The Final Showdown between ASTER and Hyperliquid ASTER and Hyperliquid represent two distinct approaches to decentralized perpetual contract trading. Hyperliquid built its own dedicated Layer 1 blockchain from the ground up, utilizing a fully on-chain order book, achieving performance comparable to that of centralized exchanges. This vertical integration has made Hyperliquiqui's trading execution efficiency and user experience industry-leading, but it also limits it to a single ecosystem. ASTER takes the opposite approach, maximizing coverage and liquidity access through a multi-chain deployment. While this increases technical complexity, it allows it to leverage existing DeFi ecosystem resources and serve user groups with a preference for specific chains. Hyperliquid dominates the DeFi perpetual contract market with approximately 70% market share, with $15 billion in open interest and consistently above $800 million in daily trading volume. However, ASTER's multi-chain strategy offers advantages that Hyperliquid struggles to replicate. The platform's integration with yield protocols like Pendle and Venus creates capital efficiency opportunities that Hyperliquid's isolated L1 architecture cannot achieve. ASTER users can simultaneously earn BNB staking returns, USDT deposit interest, and trading fees. Leverage configurations also differ significantly. Hyperliquid caps leverage at 40x, while ASTER supports 100x leverage for most trading pairs, with up to 1001x for certain assets. ASTER's US stock perpetual contracts provide 24/7 exposure to traditional stock market risks, expanding its service reach beyond crypto-native traders. (IV) Token Flows Reveal the Competitive Landscape ASTER's token economics model prioritizes community incentives and long-term sustainability. The total supply of 8 billion tokens is allocated according to specific proportions: 53.5% for airdrops and community rewards, 30% for ecosystem development, 7% for the treasury, 5% for the team, and 4.5% for liquidity and exchange listings. The community allocation ratio is among the highest in the DeFi sector, exceeding 50% of the total supply. The unlocking mechanism involves releasing 25% of tokens immediately upon a generation event, with the remaining portion released linearly over nine months after a three-month lock-up period. This token has multiple functions within the ecosystem, including governance rights, fee discounts, staking rewards, and access to premium features. Revenue sharing is achieved through fee buybacks. A portion of transaction fees will be used to purchase and potentially burn ASTER tokens, creating deflationary pressure as trading volume grows. Users can stake their ASTER tokens and use their ecosystem derivatives as trading collateral. This allows a single position to generate multiple value streams. (V) Token Showdown: A Comprehensive Analysis of ASTER and HYPE The token economic models of ASTER and HYPE demonstrate different philosophies on value capture and distribution mechanisms. Hyperliquid's HYPE token utilizes a more traditional cryptoeconomic model, with aggressive buybacks using protocol revenue. The platform has annualized revenue exceeding $1 billion, and uses the majority of its revenue for HYPE buybacks, creating strong deflationary pressure. HYPE's core advantage lies in its proven "revenue-buyback" flywheel effect. Currently, 43.4% of the total supply is staked, and this, combined with significant protocol revenue, maintains a strict circulating supply limit. This powerful price support mechanism is something ASTER currently lacks. Hyperliquid will initiate a large-scale token unlock for core contributors in November 2025. These unlocks will generate significant selling pressure, potentially overwhelming even aggressive buyback programs. Hyperliquid is preparing to launch the USDH stablecoin to generate additional buyback pressure, but the timing introduces uncertainty. ASTER's strategy prioritizes community ownership over immediate value capture. While this translates to weaker short-term buybacks, it creates stronger network effects and decentralized governance. The 53.5% community allocation ensures that value truly flows to actual users, not early investors or team members. (VI) Binance's Strategy An analysis of ASTER's liquidity provision system reveals the strategic depth behind its launch. Professional market makers provide core order book depth, while the platform's cross-chain architecture aggregates liquidity from multiple blockchains. Strategic partnerships with protocols such as Pendle, ListaDAO, Kernel, Venus, YieldNest, and PancakeSwap create additional sources of liquidity and user incentives. Pendle tokenizes yield, ListaDAO provides BNB staking liquidity (generating asBNB), Venus offers lending services, and PancakeSwap directs arbitrage trading from the largest DEX on the BNB chain. These partnerships make ASTER a core hub where users can participate in multiple DeFi strategies while trading derivatives. The ecosystem's collateral system addresses the opportunity cost issue by allowing users to earn returns from their trading margin. Users no longer need to hold idle USDT; instead, they can mint USDF as collateral while earning a delta-neutral return. Similarly, asBNB can still earn staking returns (approximately 5-7% annualized) when used as collateral for leveraged positions. This allows a single deposit to generate multiple income streams: staking income, trading profits, and token rewards. This incentivizes users to retain more funds on the platform long-term, naturally deepening the liquidity pool. YZi Lab's investment timeline provides a key footnote to Binance's strategic layout. The investment firm completed its investment in Astherus (the predecessor of ASTER) in November 2024, just as Hyperliquid posed a substantial competitive threat to Binance's dominant derivatives market. According to a BNB Chain representative, ASTER, as a key project in the YZi Lab incubation program, received mentorship, ecosystem exposure, and technical and marketing resources, solidifying its position as the leading perpetual contract DEX on the BNB Chain. Hyperliquid's trading volume continued to grow steadily between 2024 and 2025. While Binance maintains a significant advantage in absolute trading volume, Hyperliquid's growth trajectory from near-zero to significant market share demonstrates its success in carving out an independent market rather than directly competing with Binance traders. Combined with its investments in other projects like MYXFinance, YZi Labs' investment strategy is becoming increasingly clear. These investments demonstrate a coordinated effort to build DeFi infrastructure on the BNB chain and create alternatives to successful protocols on other chains. Binance's overall strategy focuses more on ecosystem defense than direct competition. Rather than simply copying Hyperliquid's customized L1 solution, it leverages the strengths of its existing ecosystem: regulatory relationships, fiat currency access, institutional partnerships, and a deep liquidity pool. ASTER, while capitalizing on these network effects, is providing a decentralized trading experience increasingly favored by sophisticated traders. Rather than viewing decentralized protocols as a threat to be ignored or marginalized, Binance actively invests in and promotes DeFi alternatives within its ecosystem's sphere of influence. (VII) Conclusions ASTER's rise either marks a turning point for decentralized derivatives trading or becomes Changpeng Zhao's most expensive "I can do this" to his competitors. On the surface, the platform possesses all the key elements for success: multi-chain liquidity, ecosystem collateral, perpetual US stock contracts, and strong backing. The idea of trading derivatives while earning income sounds appealing, but it's important to note that innovations in the cryptocurrency world that seem "too good to be true" often are. The fact that total locked value has plummeted from a peak of $2 billion to $655 million may serve as a warning: there's a fundamental difference between initial hype and sustained adoption. When TVL plummets 67% in a single day, we might question whether these figures represent real users or just those driven by quick-fix yield farmers. Its token economics prioritize long-term community building over short-term value capture, a strategy that can be considered both visionary and naive. It depends on your perspective. Unlike Hyperliquid's proven "revenue-buyback" machine, ASTER's value proposition requires users to believe in the sustainability of a business model that earns a 3% margin return on 100x leveraged positions. The true test will be whether the platform can convince traders to abandon Hyperliquid's proven infrastructure for a multi-chain experiment supported by the ecosystem that gave rise to the 2022 FTX crash. When the world's largest exchange feels compelled to support a DeFi competitor, it suggests that the centralized model isn't as unshakable as once believed. Whether this move will make ASTER a winner or simply an expensive risk hedge remains to be seen.
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