Original Title: The Aster CounterstrikeAuthor: Token DispatchCompiled & Translated by: LenaXin, ChainCatcher
Background
On September 18, 2025, Zhao Changpeng 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! Great start. Keep up the good work!" he said.
Within hours, the ASTER token soared 400% from its issue price. The market clearly received the signal: 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 banned from operating Binance, Changpeng Zhao clearly wasn't barred from shaking up the market; he was fully supporting Hyperliquid's strongest competitor. However, the war machine had already begun. YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) had been quietly funding the development of ASTER. The BNB Chain partnership network was activating. The world's largest crypto empire was launching an all-out campaign against this decentralized upstart that dared to seize market share in the derivatives market. This was the opening salvo in the war for decentralized exchanges in perpetual contracts, and Binance had no intention of conceding. (1) What is ASTER? ASTER was born from the December 2024 merger of two major DeFi protocols, Astherus and APX Finance. This integration created a unified trading infrastructure designed to directly compete with Hyperliquid's growing market share. (Note: Astherus focuses on multi-asset liquidity for yield-generating products, while APX Finance is a decentralized perpetual trading platform.) The platform is a multi-chain decentralized exchange that supports the BNB chain, Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum networks. By aggregating multi-chain liquidity, it enables seamless trading without manual cross-chain transactions. Since its launch in March 2025, ASTER has processed over US$514 billion in trading volume for 2 million users. After the token issuance, the platform's total locked-in value briefly peaked at $2 billion, but by September 2025, it had fallen back to $655 million. 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 to be 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 problem plaguing 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, concealing 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 seen 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 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. The ASTER 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 was released 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 Ultimate 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 Hyperliquiquis an industry benchmark for transaction execution efficiency and user experience, 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 the existing DeFi ecosystem and serve user groups with a preference for specific chains. Hyperliquid dominates the DeFi perpetual swap market with approximately 70% of the market share, with open interest reaching $15 billion and an average daily trading volume consistently exceeding $800 million. 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 rewards, USDT deposit interest, and trading fees. Leverage configurations also vary significantly. Hyperliquid caps leverage at 40x, while ASTER supports 100x leverage for most trading pairs, with specific assets reaching up to 1001x. 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 a specific ratio: 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 space, exceeding 50% of the total supply. The unlocking mechanism involves releasing 25% of tokens immediately upon generation, with the remaining tokens 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 income, 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 economic models of the ASTER and HYPE tokens demonstrate different philosophies of value capture and distribution mechanisms. Hyperliquid's HYPE token adopts 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. Currently, 43.4% of the total supply is staked, and this, combined with substantial protocol revenue, maintains a strict circulating supply limit. This powerful price support mechanism is currently unmatched by ASTER. In November 2025, Hyperliquid will initiate a large-scale token unlock for core contributors. These unlocks will generate significant selling pressure, potentially overwhelming even aggressive buyback plans. 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 may result in 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 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. (Note: USDF is ASTER's ecosystem stablecoin.) 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. (Note: MYXFinance is a perpetual contract on the BNB chain, and its DEX has also experienced explosive growth.) Binance's overall strategy focuses more on ecosystem defense than direct competition. Rather than simply copying Hyperliquid's customized L1 solution, it leverages the advantages of its existing ecosystem: regulatory relationships, fiat currency access, institutional partnerships, and deep liquidity pools. 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 that remain within its ecosystem's sphere of influence. (VII) Conclusion? The rise of ASTER either marks a turning point for decentralized derivatives trading or becomes Changpeng Zhao's most expensive "I can do this" statement to his competitors. On the surface, the platform possesses all the elements of success: multi-chain liquidity, ecosystem collateral, perpetual US stock contracts, and strong backing. The idea of trading derivatives while earning returns 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 enthusiasm 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 either visionary or naive, depending on 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 yield on 100x leveraged positions. The true test will be whether the platform can convince traders to abandon Hyperliquid's proven infrastructure for multi-chain experiments supported by the ecosystem that nurtured 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 just an expensive risk hedge remains to be seen.
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