DEX Wars: Hyperliquid Rival Aster Fights Back

On September 18, 2025, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) did something he rarely does: He posted a price chart that wasn't Bitcoin or BNB. The chart showed ASTER, the native token of the decentralized perpetual exchange (DEX), which had just launched the day before. "Well done! Great start. Keep up the good work!" he said. Within hours, ASTER's price soared 400% from its launch price. The market clearly understood: the former Binance CEO wasn't just offering congratulations; he was declaring war on Hyperliquid. As HYPE token holders watched the value of their Hyperliquid accounts soar to an all-time high of around $60, CZ's carefully orchestrated tweet struck home like a pinpoint strike. Crypto's most influential figure, despite being banned from running Binance, clearly still has market sway. He's throwing his weight behind Hyperliquid's fiercest competitor. Behind the scenes, the war machine had already begun. YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) had been quietly funding Aster's development. BNB Chain's partner network is launching. The world's largest cryptocurrency empire is mobilizing to fight against a decentralized upstart that dares to seize market share in derivatives.

These are the opening salvos in the never-ending decentralized exchange (DEX) war, and Binance doesn't intend to lose.

What is Aster?

Aster was born in December 2024 from the merger of two major DeFi protocols: Astherus, a multi-asset liquidity hub focused on yield-generating products, and APX Finance, a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform. This merger created a unified trading infrastructure designed to directly compete with Hyperliquid's growing market share. The platform is a multi-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) spanning BNB Chain, Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum, aggregating liquidity from multiple blockchains for seamless trading without the need for manual asset bridging. Since its launch in March 2025, Aster has processed over $514 billion in trading volume for 2 million users. Following the token launch, the platform's total value locked (TVL) briefly exceeded $2 billion, but had fallen back to $655 million by September 2025. Unlike many DEX platforms that focus on spot trading, Aster positions itself as a comprehensive trading platform offering both spot and perpetual contract markets. While perpetual derivatives remain its core business, the platform also offers spot trading capabilities, with the first trading pair listed being its native token, ASTER/USDT. For perpetual swaps, the platform offers both cryptocurrency and traditional US stock contracts, with leverage of up to 100x for most assets and up to 1001x for some trading pairs in the so-called "degen mode." Aster's architecture aims to address the liquidity fragmentation that plagues multi-chain DeFi. Rather than forcing users to bridge assets across networks, the platform aggregates order book depth across chains, creating what it calls "unified liquidity." The platform offers two distinct trading interfaces, designed for different user types. The Easy Mode offers one-click trading with built-in MEV protection, allowing users to execute leveraged trades without navigating complex order books. The Professional Mode provides an advanced trading environment with full order book access, real-time charts, and complex order types. Aster's "Hidden Order" system is a key feature, concealing the size and direction of orders until they are executed. This dark pool-like functionality addresses key issues in on-chain trading: front-running and liquidation manipulation. Commenting on this feature, Changpeng Zhao previously noted that it solves “the common problem of liquidation manipulation seen on other on-chain DEXs.”

The platform’s margin system supports both independent and cross-collateralized trading, allowing users to use liquid staking tokens such as BNB or yield-generating stablecoins as margin.

This capital efficiency innovation enables traders to earn passive income on their collateral while maintaining active trading positions.

At the core of the Aster ecosystem is USDF, a yield-generating stablecoin based on a delta-neutral position. Users can mint USDF by depositing supported assets and then use it as trading margin to earn interest. This creates a self-reinforcing liquidity system, where stablecoin holders naturally become liquidity providers.

Looking ahead, Aster's roadmap includes integrating zero-knowledge proofs for enhanced privacy and developing Aster Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain optimized for trading. Zero-knowledge proofs will allow traders to prove they have sufficient margin or meet trading requirements without revealing their actual wallet balance, trading positions, or trading history to other users or even validators. This technology enables truly private transactions, keeping position sizes, profits and losses, and trading strategies confidential while maintaining the transparency required for risk management and liquidation. The Aster platform launched a beta version for a select number of traders in June 2025, laying the foundation for eventual competition with Hyperliquid's custom Layer 1 architecture. Aster vs. Hyperliquid: A comparison of Aster and Hyperliquid reveals two distinct approaches to decentralized perpetual swap trading. Hyperliquid built its own Layer 1 blockchain from scratch, achieving sub-second finality and fully on-chain order book trading, rivaling the performance of centralized exchanges. This vertical integration gives Hyperliquid unparalleled speed and a seamless user experience, but also limits it to a single ecosystem. Aster takes the opposite approach, operating across multiple established blockchains to maximize reach and liquidity. While this introduces some technical complexity, it enables Aster to leverage the existing DeFi ecosystem and serve users with a preference for specific blockchains. Hyperliquid dominates the DeFi perpetual contracts market, holding approximately 70% of the market share, with $15 billion in open interest and consistently exceeding $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 unmatched by Hyperliquid's isolated Layer 1 platform. Aster users can simultaneously earn BNB staking rewards, USDT deposit yield, and trading fees—a composability that is difficult to achieve with single-chain solutions. Leveraged products also differ significantly. While Hyperliquid's leverage is capped at 40x, Aster offers up to 100x leverage on most trading pairs, with leverage reaching as high as 1001x for select assets. More importantly, Aster's perpetual stock contracts provide 24/7 exposure to the traditional stock market, expanding the addressable market beyond crypto-native traders. ASTER's token economics reflect its proactive community allocation and long-term sustainability. The project's total token supply is 8 billion, allocated across various categories: 53.5% for airdrops and community rewards, 30% for ecosystem development, 7% for financial operations, 5% for team building, and 4.5% for liquidity and exchange listings. This community allocation is one of the highest in DeFi, exceeding 50% of the total supply. This initial distribution airdropped 704 million tokens (8.8% of the total supply) to participants in the pre-launch event. The unlocking schedule begins with 25% immediately unlocked at the token generation event, followed by a three-month lockup period, with the remainder vesting linearly over nine months. The token serves multiple functions within the ecosystem: governance rights, fee discounts, staking rewards, and access to premium features. Revenue sharing is achieved through fee buybacks, with a portion of trading fees used to purchase and potentially burn ASTER tokens, creating deflationary pressure as trading volume grows. Users can stake ASTER tokens and use the yield-generating derivatives of these tokens as trading collateral. This allows a single token position to generate multiple streams of value appreciation. ASTER vs. HYPE: A Comparison of Token Economics A comparison of the ASTER and HYPE token economics reveals different philosophies on value capture and distribution. Hyperliquid's HYPE token follows a more traditional cryptoeconomic model, with active buybacks funded by protocol revenue. The platform generates over $1 billion in annual revenue, the majority of which is used to buy back HYPE tokens, creating strong deflationary pressure. HYPE's core advantage lies in its sophisticated yield-repurchase mechanism. Currently, the token's stake ratio has reached 43.4% of the total supply, and the protocol's significant returns keep liquidity supply strictly constrained. This creates a powerful price support mechanism that ASTER cannot yet match. HYPE faces a significant challenge: starting in November 2025, core contributors will unlock tokens on a large scale. These token 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 creates uncertainty. ASTER's philosophy prioritizes community ownership over immediate value capture. While this means smaller buybacks in the short term, it creates stronger network effects and decentralized governance. The 53.5% community allocation ensures that value ultimately accrues to actual users, rather than early investors or team members. Revenue models also differ. Hyperliquid generates value through transaction fees and liquidation revenue on its proprietary Layer 1. Aster, on the other hand, collects fees across multiple chains while leveraging its capital efficiency features to generate returns. This diversified revenue model may be more resilient during market downturns.

Binance Strategy

Understanding Aster's liquidity providers 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 supports yield tokenization, ListaDAO provides liquidity staking for BNB (generating asBNB), Venus offers lending services, and PancakeSwap directs arbitrage traffic from the largest DEX on the BNB chain. These partnerships establish Aster as a hub where users can simultaneously participate in multiple DeFi strategies and trade derivatives. The yield-backed staking system addresses the opportunity cost issue, allowing users to earn yield on their trading margin. Instead of holding idle USDT, users can mint USDF (Aster's yield-generating stablecoin), which can be used as collateral while earning a delta-neutral yield. Similarly, asBNB can earn staking rewards (approximately 5-7% annualized yield) while also serving as margin for leveraged positions. This allows a single deposit to generate multiple income streams—staking yield, trading profits, and token rewards—incentivizing users to hold more funds on the platform, naturally expanding the liquidity pool. YZi Labs' investment timeline provides key context for Binance's strategic thinking. The investment firm completed its investment in Aster's predecessor, Astherus, in November 2024, at a time when Hyperliquid was posing a serious competitive threat to Binance's derivatives dominance. According to a BNB Chain representative, as part of YZi Labs' incubation program, Aster received mentorship, ecosystem exposure, and technical and marketing resources, enabling it to become the top-ranked perpetual contract DEX on BNB Chain. Hyperliquid's trading volume grew steadily between 2024 and 2025. While Binance's absolute trading volume is significantly higher than Hyperliquid's, Hyperliquid's growth trajectory from near-zero to significant scale suggests that the platform has successfully established its own market rather than directly poaching Binance's traders. When viewed alongside other investments such as MYX Finance, YZi Labs' portfolio strategy becomes even clearer. MYX Finance is another perpetual contract DEX on BNB Chain that has experienced explosive growth. These investments demonstrate that YZi Labs is coordinating efforts to build BNB Chain's DeFi infrastructure and create alternatives to successful protocols on other chains. Binance's overall strategy appears focused on ecosystem maintenance rather than direct competition. Rather than attempting to replicate Hyperliquid's custom Layer 1 approach, Binance leverages its existing ecosystem strengths: regulatory relationships, fiat on-ramps, institutional partnerships, and deep liquidity pools. Aster benefits from these network effects while providing a decentralized trading experience to a growing and sophisticated user base. Rather than viewing decentralized protocols as a threat to be ignored or marginalized, Binance actively invests in and promotes DeFi alternatives that remain within its ecosystem's reach. So what are the results? Aster's emergence either marks a pivotal moment for decentralized derivatives trading or represents Changpeng Zhao's most expensive "can-do" strategy to keep up with competitors. The jury is still out on which. In theory, the platform ticks all the right boxes—multi-chain liquidity, yield-generating collateral, perpetual equity swaps, and ample margin. Earning a profit while trading derivatives sounds great, but remember that most cryptocurrency innovations that sound too good to be true usually are. The $2 billion total value locked (TVL) surge followed by a plunge to $655 million should serve as a reminder that initial hype and sustainable adoption are two very different things. When your TVL plummets 67% in a single day, you might want to question whether those numbers represent real users or yield farmers eager to cash out at the slightest sign of trouble. Token economics prioritize long-term community building over short-term value capture, which can be considered visionary or naive, depending on your perspective. Unlike Hyperliquid's tried-and-true "yield buyback" mechanism, Aster's value proposition requires users to believe that earning a 3% margin yield while trading 100x leveraged positions is somehow a sustainable business model. The test will be whether the platform can convince traders to abandon Hyperliquid's proven infrastructure for multi-chain experiments supported by the same ecosystem, which led to the FTX debacle in 2022. The pressure is immense. When the world's largest exchange feels the need to support a DeFi competitor, it suggests that the centralized model isn't as unbreakable as once believed. Whether this will make Aster a winner or just an expensive hedge remains to be seen.