In the fiercely competitive Perp Dex arena, Aster's performance is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable events of 2025. Backed by the powerful resources of the Binance ecosystem, Aster has rapidly rewritten the market landscape in an aggressive manner, achieving record trading volumes and implementing aggressive incentive programs.

However, this rapid rise, built on the future massive token inflation "debt," raises a crucial question: What will happen when the frenzy of incentives comes to an end and the music stops? Is this artificially created prosperity a clever strategy towards sustainable liquidity, or merely a fragile illusion?

This article will delve into Aster's past, present, and future, exploring its evolution from ApolloX's pragmatic exploration to its current status as a market challenger, with a focus on the severe challenges it faces after the "volume-filling" frenzy.

Part One: The Bloodline of a Competitor: From ApolloX's Innovation to Aster's Rise

1.1 The Origin of ApolloX: A Hybrid Model Born for Performance

ApolloX was initially launched in 2021, aiming to bridge the gap between the smooth experience of centralized exchanges (CEX) and the self-custody of assets in decentralized finance (DeFi). Its V1 version adopted a hybrid architecture of "off-chain matching + on-chain settlement." This design prioritized trading performance and response speed, successfully attracting users accustomed to CEX operations while ensuring the non-custodial security of funds through smart contracts.

1.2 Strategic Transformation: Embracing Fully On-Chain and ALP Liquidity Pools

With the maturation of DeFi infrastructure and the rise of GMX, ApolloX V2 shifted to a fully on-chain operating model, centered around the ALP (ApolloX Liquidity Provider) liquidity pool. This pool consists of various mainstream assets (such as stablecoins, BTC, ETH) and serves as a direct counterparty for all traders on the platform. This transformation significantly enhanced capital efficiency and trading transparency, ensuring price accuracy through the integration of Binance oracles and Chainlink's dual oracle system, effectively preventing market manipulation.

1.3 Key Merger: Merging with Astherus, Injecting the "Real Yield" Gene

At the end of 2024, APX Finance (formerly ApolloX) announced a strategic merger with the yield protocol Astherus, marking the most decisive step in Aster's evolution. Astherus focuses on maximizing "real yield," bringing two core innovations (or inspired by Ethena) to the merged entity:

• asBNB: A liquid staking derivative of BNB that allows users to earn BNB staking rewards while using it as trading margin.
• USDF: An interest-bearing stablecoin supported by delta-neutral strategies, designed to generate passive income for holders.

This merger gave birth to Aster's signature "Trade & Earn" model. Traders' margins are no longer idle capital but can continuously generate income as interest-bearing assets, greatly enhancing capital efficiency and building a strong competitive barrier.

Aster's strategy extends beyond the BNB Chain, expanding to multiple mainstream blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum. Its positioning as a liquidity aggregator aims to address the issue of liquidity fragmentation in DeFi, allowing users to trade across different chains without the need for cross-chain bridges. This ultimate brand transformation and multi-chain expansion reflect the current intense competitive landscape, where the battle for liquidity requires exceptional interoperability and the courage to directly challenge leaders on other chains.

Part Two: Deconstructing the Engine: A Technical Deep Dive into Aster's Architecture

2.1 Dual-Mode Architecture: A Binary Approach to Market Segmentation

Aster's architectural design ingeniously reflects a profound understanding of market segmentation, aiming to capture the entire user spectrum from professional traders to high-risk retail investors by offering two distinctly different trading modes. This is a classic CEX strategy applied in the DEX space.

Professional Mode (order book perpetual contracts): This mode employs a centralized limit order book (CLOB) mechanism, providing an environment similar to CEX for experienced traders and institutions. It supports advanced order types and offers deep liquidity provided by "deeply bound" professional market makers, charging highly competitive fees.

Simple Mode (1001x): This mode is based on an AMM-style ALP liquidity pool, offering a simplified one-click trading experience for retail and thrill-seeking "Degen" traders, with leverage up to 1001 times. It features zero slippage and zero opening fees, but to manage the risks of the ALP pool, there is a cap on profits.

This dual-mode architecture allows Aster to serve two distinctly different user groups simultaneously, maximizing its total addressable market (TAM). A trader who gets liquidated in the simple mode due to 1001x leverage has vastly different needs and behavior patterns compared to a trader who meticulously manages risk in the professional mode. By catering to both types of users, Aster avoids alienating either side due to overly narrow product positioning.

2.2 Capital Efficiency and "Real Yield": Technical Implementation of USDF and asBNB

The "Trade & Earn" model is Aster's "money-making magic," driven by the two innovative assets USDF and asBNB. This model transforms the opportunity cost of providing margin (a major friction point in DeFi) into a source of income, creating strong incentives for users to lock capital within the Aster ecosystem.

• USDF Stablecoin: USDF is a fully collateralized stablecoin minted at a 1:1 ratio with assets like USDT. Its core mechanism involves deploying the underlying collateral into delta-neutral trading strategies (e.g., holding long spot and short perpetual contracts simultaneously) to generate yield, which is then distributed to USDF holders.
• Technical Explanation: Delta-neutral strategies aim to create a portfolio with a delta value of zero, meaning its value is insensitive to small changes in the price of the underlying asset. This is typically achieved by holding long spot positions and equivalent short perpetual futures positions. The yield primarily comes from the positive funding rate paid by longs to shorts.
• asBNB Liquid Staking: asBNB is a liquid staking token. Users stake BNB and receive asBNB, which continues to accumulate BNB staking rewards (as well as potential Launchpool/Megadrop rewards) while being used as trading margin on Aster. This allows a single asset to generate multiple income streams simultaneously, greatly enhancing capital efficiency.

In traditional derivatives trading, margin is "dead capital," used solely to secure positions. Astherus's core innovation lies in creating interest-bearing collateral. By integrating this mechanism, Aster allows a unit of capital to simultaneously achieve: a) serving as margin; b) earning staking rewards (asBNB); c) earning delta-neutral strategy yields (USDF); d) earning airdrop points. This creates a highly sticky ecosystem where capital is unlikely to flow out, as leaving means forfeiting multiple income streams. This directly addresses the "mercenary capital" issue that plagued early DeFi protocols.

2.3 Innovations in Privacy and Fairness: Hidden Orders and Anti-MEV Mechanisms

Aster has integrated a class of iceberg order functionality at the protocol level aimed at enhancing trading fairness and privacy, attempting to address two core pain points of on-chain trading: maximum extractable value (MEV) and information leakage.

• Hidden Orders: Hidden orders are limit orders (similar to iceberg orders) that are completely invisible on the public order book until executed. These orders are submitted directly to the core matching engine, sharing liquidity with visible orders while completely concealing the trader's intent.
• Technical Background: This feature acts as an on-chain "dark pool," designed to protect large traders from MEV bots' front-running, sandwich attacks, and malicious liquidation hunting, although it still falls short of "true dark pool trading."
• Anti-MEV Nature of Simple Mode: The simple mode is marketed as anti-MEV. This is likely achieved through various mechanisms, such as frequent oracle price updates from multiple sources (Pyth, Chainlink, Binance Oracle) and possible trade batching or the use of private memory pools, which can prevent MEV bots from exploiting price slippage by inserting trades.

Part Three: Binance Connection: The "Agent" Valuation Theory

3.1 Tracking Capital Flows: Strategic Investment from YZi Labs

Aster's ties to the Binance ecosystem are deep-rooted, with its funding sources and developmental support clearly pointing to Binance's strategic intentions.

• Direct Investment: Records show that Binance Labs participated in ApolloX's seed round financing in June 2022. Subsequently, YZi Labs invested in Astherus in November 2024.
• Strategic Timing: The timing of the investment in Astherus (November 2024) coincided with the rapid rise of Hyperliquid, which posed a significant threat to Binance's dominance in the derivatives market. This indicates that the investment is a strategic and defensive move.
• Ecosystem Support: This investment goes beyond mere funding; it also includes mentorship, technical and marketing resource support, and ecosystem exposure, ultimately establishing Aster as the "top Perp DEX on the BNB Chain."

3.2 The "CZ Effect": Interpreting Public Endorsement as a Strategic Signal

CZ's public support injects unparalleled market credibility and attention into Aster, with his behavior pattern far exceeding that of a typical celebrity effect, resembling a well-considered strategic signal.

• Public Promotion: CZ has repeatedly posted on Twitter, congratulating Aster on its token generation event (TGE) and promoting the project. As analysts have pointed out, "CZ rarely shares charts," making his promotion of ASTER an important market signal.
• Narrative Building: CZ's statements, such as emphasizing that Aster's hidden order feature is a solution to the liquidation manipulation issues present in "other on-chain DEXs," directly position Aster as a superior choice compared to competitors like Hyperliquid. He claimed that Aster became the second-largest holder of BSC-USDT, further opening up the "imagination space" for the project.
• Market Impact: The "CZ effect" was immediate; shortly after his first post, the price of ASTER tokens soared over 400%, fueling the narrative that "Aster is Binance's weapon against Hyperliquid."

3.3 Comparative Analysis of API Design

Aster's API structure design reveals its strategic intent, which is closely aligned with Binance CEX.

• Structural Similarity: In the official GitHub repository (asterdex/api-docs), the structure and naming conventions of the API documentation are highly indicative. The documentation is divided into aster-finance-futures-api.md and aster-finance-spot-api.md, mirroring the API structure of CEXs like Binance, which is also divided into modules such as spot, futures, and leverage.
• Implications for Market Makers: This standardized, CEX-like API structure is not a coincidence. It aims to significantly reduce the onboarding friction for professional market makers and algorithmic trading firms that are already integrated with Binance. By providing a familiar API, Aster encourages these key liquidity providers to access its ecosystem with minimal development overhead. This indicates a strategy to channel liquidity from Binance's existing network of professional traders.

3.4 A New Valuation Framework: Viewing Aster as a Function of Binance's Market Value

The cumulative evidence—direct investment, strategic timing, the founder's ongoing public promotion, deep ecosystem integration, and familiar API structure—supports the notion that Aster is a strategic proxy for Binance.

Valuing Aster on par with Hyperliquid is a categorization error. Hyperliquid's value derives from its independent L1 technology and protocol revenue, while Aster's value consists of its protocol revenue plus the significant strategic premium it gains as a native extension of Binance DeFi. Its valuation should be viewed as a parameter of Binance's market value, reflecting its importance in defending Binance's market share and expanding the Binance ecosystem into the on-chain world.

Aster is a key component of Binance's defensive strategy in the post-compliance era. It allows the Binance ecosystem to engage in aggressive competition in the on-chain derivatives space while establishing a crucial regulatory buffer between the heavily scrutinized CEX and "decentralized" protocols. Following a settlement with U.S. authorities in 2024, Binance faces stringent regulatory oversight, and CZ himself has been barred from holding executive positions at CEXs. Meanwhile, the rise of on-chain perpetual contracts led by Hyperliquid poses a survival threat as it attracts the most mature and DeFi-native traders. Binance cannot directly launch its own "Binance Perpetual Contract DEX" without incurring immediate and overwhelming regulatory action.

The solution is to operate through a proxy. YZi Labs, acting as CZ's family office, provides the perfect tools for investment and guidance while maintaining reasonable deniability. Aster is built on the BNB Chain, directly benefiting Binance's core L1. Its design aims to make users feel and operate as if they are using Binance (API, UI), providing a frictionless outlet for Binance's existing user base and market makers. Thus, Aster strategically plays the role of "regulatory arbitrage." It projects Binance's power and liquidity into the DeFi space without extending Binance's formal regulatory boundaries.

Part Four: Manufactured Prosperity: The Game Theory and Consequences of Incentivized Trading Volume

4.1 On-Chain Data Analysis: Quantifying Wash Trading

The most telling metric is the ratio of trading volume to total locked value (TVL) and open interest (OI). At its peak, Aster's 24-hour trading volume reached an astonishing $36 billion to $70 billion, while its OI was only $1.25 billion, resulting in a trading volume to TVL ratio of about 19, indicating "extremely aggressive wash trading."

The surge in trading volume is clearly related to Aster's aggressive airdrop points program ("Rh points"), which rewards trading volume, holding time, and profit and loss.

4.2 A Necessary "Evil"?: The Strategic Logic of Guiding Liquidity

This artificially created trading volume is a necessary but temporary measure. The logic follows a classic guiding flywheel:

1. Without trading volume, there is no attention: A new DEX without trading volume is like a ghost town, unable to attract liquidity.
2. Incentives generate trading volume: Airdrops create strong incentives for users to generate significant but artificial trading volume.
3. Attracting market makers: This high trading volume, even if fictitious, makes the platform appear very active. This is crucial for attracting professional market makers seeking high-traffic venues to deploy strategies.
4. Real liquidity enters: As market makers come on board, they provide deep, real liquidity and tighten spreads.
5. Attracting real traders: The combination of deep liquidity, low fees, and a good user experience ultimately attracts organic, non-incentive-driven traders.

By dominating the trading volume leaderboard on data platforms, Aster forcibly entered the market's view, accelerating its process of gaining market recognition.

This calculation is quite clever, using 320 million $aster (4% supply) as stage 2 incentives, approximately $600 million in forward token incentives to maintain a market cap of $3 billion (with a $15 billion FDV).

4.3 Future Debt: Assessing Long-Term Consequences

The main consequence of this strategy is the "future debt" generated by the massive airdrop allocation (53.5% of total supply). This results in a large number of tokens being suspended, which will be distributed to mining users who have a high tendency to sell, thus creating ongoing selling pressure.

To mitigate this "debt," the protocol has designed an extremely long vesting schedule. The TGE unlocked 8.8% (704 million ASTER), and the remaining airdrop allocation will be released linearly over 80 months. This long vesting period is a key mechanism aimed at alleviating its impact by spreading selling pressure over a long time.

Although strategically effective, the public wash trading has led to it being labeled as the "Temu version of Hyperliquid," raising concerns about market manipulation. The key challenge lies in whether it can successfully transition from artificially incentivized trading volume to sustainable organic activity before the rewards deplete and mining users depart.

The massive airdrop and the resulting wash trading represent a carefully orchestrated high-risk gamble that utilizes game theory to address the cold start problem of DEX liquidity. Aster's incentive approach is similar to that of Dydx, targeting not only liquidity providers but also traders and market makers. By rewarding original trading volume, it creates a seemingly highly active and liquid market. This public signal (dominating the DeFiLlama charts) aims to attract the true liquidity dominators: professional market-making firms.

The "future debt" from the airdrop is the cost of this marketing campaign. The bet is that by the time the debt matures (i.e., when the tokens are fully "distributed"), the platform will have attracted enough real liquidity and organic trading flow ("externality") to absorb the selling pressure.

This is a race against time, hence the high stakes, driven by both the situation and the model.

Part Five: Challenges to Aster's Financial Stability

5.1 Challenge One: User Retention in the "Post-Incentive Era"

The current trading volume driven by airdrop expectations is unsustainable. Once the rewards diminish or end, Aster's biggest challenge will be whether it can retain users, market makers, and liquidity. The history of DeFi is replete with cases of rapid decline due to incentive exhaustion.

Aster's breakthrough point lies in whether it can successfully convert incentive-driven "airdrop hunters" into loyal users who genuinely recognize the product's value, leveraging its unique product advantages—such as high capital efficiency from interest-bearing asset collateral, hidden order functionality that protects large holders, and a dual-mode design that serves both professional and retail users. This is a race against time; the protocol must establish a healthy ecosystem driven by real income and organic demand before the "future debt" (i.e., the selling pressure from airdrops) matures. This raises the philosophical question of whether trading comes first or liquidity.

Token incentives are bidirectional; when prices are high, high incentives > costs incurred, attracting many market makers, studios, traders, etc., to contribute trading volume and achieve "discounted token purchases."

However, as the number of incentive tokens increases, the market's circulating supply will grow, raising the question of whether fee income can sustain or even increase token prices. When incentives decrease, fee income drops, trading volume declines, and token prices further decrease, leading to reduced incentives, creating a negative feedback loop that could soon trap the platform.

The core of an exchange is liquidity (especially when replicating CEX algorithms in Clob mode)—which means attracting deep participation from multiple market makers. However, from Aster's current incentive mechanism, it seems there are no means or objectives to bind their interests. Hyperliquid understands this principle well, binding the interests of various market makers through API, yield, and even validator nodes, achieving a sustainable revenue scenario that goes beyond mere profits, which is the pursuit of a DEX.

To put it another way, Hyperliquid essentially operates as a "liquidity hub" disguised as a Perp DEX—one could say, with this liquidity structure, what can't be done?

Starting with trading data and transcending it is essential to understand that DEX and tokens primarily serve as infrastructure for liquidity, followed by trading. In this construction process, tokens initially serve as a badge of honor, and only later as rewards.

5.2 Challenge Two: Systemic Risks from Algorithms and Markets

High leverage and high open interest hang like the sword of Damocles over all derivatives exchanges, and certain design mechanisms in Aster may exacerbate these risks.

Inherent Vulnerability of the ALP Model: In the simple mode, the ALP pool acts as the counterparty for all traders, meaning that if traders as a whole continue to profit, LPs will face significant losses. Additionally, this model relies entirely on external oracle pricing; any delay or manipulation of an oracle could have catastrophic consequences for the liquidity pool.

Chain Liquidation and the Ghost of Automatic Liquidation: When the market experiences large-scale, one-sided "crowded trades" (especially against low market cap, highly controlled altcoins), a severe price fluctuation can trigger chain liquidations. Due to the lack of a public and sufficient insurance fund mechanism, Aster relies on Automatic Liquidation (ADL) as a last line of defense in extreme situations. The ADL mechanism forces the liquidation of profitable users' opposing positions to cover system losses, which, while maintaining the protocol's solvency, is extremely unfair to profitable users. Once triggered, it may lead to a large-scale trust crisis and capital flight, forming a "bank run."

Manipulation Aftermath of Low Market Cap Altcoins: Due to the transparency of positions combined with insufficient liquidity, incidents similar to Jelly are likely to occur again, especially in a platform that heavily relies on exclusive market makers (with insufficient depth outside of Aster). When the price breaks through the depth of the order book, a liquidity vacuum will occur, leading users to experience free fall.

CEX Algorithms Cannot Reach the Other Side of DEX: The algorithms for contracts in CEXs (especially regarding funding rates, margin ratios, leverage multiples corresponding to opening quantities, liquidation processes, etc.) are designed based on the conditions of their own exchanges (such as market makers, liquidity base, and even insurance funds). Currently, Aster's mechanisms and liquidity conditions clearly do not possess these "prerequisites." (Example: https://x.com/agintender/status/1969992819734724632)

5.3 Challenge Three: Trust Deficit Under Decentralized Narrative

Sword of Damocles: Extreme Concentration of 96% Token Supply: On-chain data shows that about six wallets control up to 96% of the total supply of $ASTER. This extreme centralized ownership structure renders its "community-first" narrative weak and brings significant systemic risks, including potential threats of price manipulation and governance capture.

Terrifying Boomerang: When the token price cannot be maintained, the community's backlash may fall on the founders and spokespersons. Even a slight negative sentiment can be magnified infinitely.

Conclusion: The Giant Proxy at a Crossroads

The story of Aster is a complex microcosm of the current stage of DeFi development: it is both an innovative protocol in terms of capital efficiency and product design, and a strategic pawn driven by centralized giants behind the scenes, aiming to reshape the market landscape.

In its past life, it was a clear evolution from pragmatism to innovation; in its current life, it is a grand carnival driven by capital and incentives. However, its future is filled with uncertainty. After the false prosperity brought by wash trading fades, Aster must prove to the market that it can retain users based on genuine product value and effectively manage its inherent systemic risks and trust deficit. The ability to successfully transition from an incentive-dependent ecosystem to a platform driven by real income and organic demand will be key to its ultimate success or failure.

Aster's future trajectory depends on whether it can convert the artificially created momentum into sustainable organic growth before its "future debt" matures. However, as a derivative of the Binance ecosystem, many of Aster's subsequent strategies have yet to unfold, such as binding market makers through mechanisms (Aster chain) or becoming an alpha outpost for Binance futures, which would be very interesting.

In development, there are no perfect solutions, only the courage and resilience to learn to coexist with problems. Looking forward to Aster's subsequent moves.

Beneath human nature, above interests, lies the mechanism.

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