Most crypto projects take a year to prove they can survive; Aster has changed faces three times in one year.

A year ago, this name did not exist. Its predecessor, Astherus, was doing well on the BNB Chain at that time, with YZi Labs investing money, and the staking product running steadily, generating users and income. Growing TVL, issuing tokens, and listing on exchanges, a ready-made path laid out before them.

CEO Leonard and his team chose another path. They actively bid farewell to Astherus, renewing both the product line and strategic direction, merging with APX Finance, and starting anew.

Three pivots, each faster than the last. Looking back over the past twelve months, "speed" itself is the most distinctive mark of Aster.

Three Pivots

On the day they decided to say goodbye to Astherus, Leonard said it required immense determination.

At that time, Astherus was already the largest yield platform on the BNB Chain, with its token issuance plan firmly established. Letting go of a model that was already successful to explore a completely new direction made the team hesitate internally.

But a set of data helped Leonard make up his mind: the trading volume of perpetual contracts on-chain began to systematically exceed that of mainstream centralized exchanges. Perp DEX transformed from a niche experiment into an infrastructure chosen by real capital. Staking protocols earn management fees, with limited space; trading platforms earn based on trading volume, with space dependent on how much capital is willing to remain on-chain. The potential of the two businesses differs by an order of magnitude.

The team was not starting from scratch either. One of Aster's predecessors, ApolloX, had accumulated years of technology and risk control experience in the perpetual contract trading field, waiting for the right moment to release this accumulation.

Astherus merged with APX Finance, completing the transition from judgment to execution within weeks, with the new brand Aster officially debuting. This was the first pivot.

The second pivot came even faster. In June 2025, CZ tweeted, "It's time to do a dark pool DEX."

The industry buzzed with discussions; some wrote analytical articles, some released research reports, and some began crafting PPTs. Twenty days later, Aster directly launched the Hidden Order feature: the size, price, and direction of orders were all encrypted, with matching done invisibly beforehand. Users could trade real capital on the same day.

Outsiders marveled at this speed. However, private trading was already not a new topic within Aster.

Leonard said that one core issue of Perp DEX had remained unresolved: all transactions were transparent and visible on-chain, easily exposing trading signals and enabling strategies to be tracked and copied. To put it bluntly, if you opened a large position on-chain, everyone could find out your holdings and liquidation price, effectively posting your strategy on a wall. The team communicated repeatedly with several institutions and experienced traders, with consistent feedback: large funds were waiting for a sufficiently secure on-chain environment. The complete transparency of positions held back a lot of capital that should have come on-chain.

The hidden order was a solution the team had long been advancing, and CZ's tweet validated the timing of the market. Leonard said, "When CZ tweeted about the related demand, we realized that market education was mature and the timing had come." The team immediately accelerated the launch and continued to iterate.

The logic behind the third pivot was also clear. After the hidden order went live, the team discovered a bigger opportunity: if privacy could be integrated into the chain's foundation, the value it could unleash far exceeded that of improvements on the application layer. But on someone else's chain, the consensus mechanism and execution logic could not be deeply customized. For example, working in a standard office building is sufficient, but to create a truly customized headquarters, one needs to design the blueprint themselves.

Aster aims for default encryption: your position is encrypted by default; if you wish to make it public, you need to take the initiative. This logic must be written at the base layer of the chain, which cannot be achieved on someone else's generic chain. In March 2026, the Aster Chain mainnet went live. It has a 50-millisecond block time, over 100,000 TPS, and zero gas fees. The ZK proof combined with stealth address architecture ensures every transaction is automatically private, while also allowing every private transaction to be verified.

Performance and privacy usually require careful balancing, as running zero-knowledge proofs demands considerable computational power. Aster's solution customizes the entire chain from the consensus mechanism to the execution layer specifically for trading scenarios, exclusively for derivative trading, instead of serving as a generic chain. They leave the generality to others, thereby achieving excellence in their chosen field.

In just a year, Aster has taken on three identities: a staking protocol, a perpetual contract exchange, and a public chain, with each identity representing a broader vision than the last.

Four Winning Cards and the Next Phase

The core design philosophy of Aster Chain is default encryption: your position is encrypted by default; if you want to make it public, you need to actively decide to do so. This logic is written at the base layer of the chain, which cannot be achieved on someone else's generic chain.

The chain's parameters are deeply customized for trading scenarios: 50-millisecond block times, over 100,000 TPS, and zero gas fees. The ZK proof combined with stealth address architecture ensures automatic privacy for each transaction, while each private transaction is verifiable. Balancing performance and privacy is typically challenging, as running zero-knowledge proofs is computationally intensive. Aster's solution customizes the entire chain from the consensus mechanism to the execution layer specifically for derivative trading, not serving as a generic chain. They leave the generality to others in exchange for achieving peak performance in their own field.

The first card is default privacy. Many projects in the industry offer privacy features, but they typically provide users with a switch. Aster, conversely, defaults to encryption and uses a Viewer Pass mechanism to let users decide who can see their data. This difference in thinking is deeper than a mere functional distinction.

The second card is comprehensive trading. In the Perp DEX arena, Aster is the first to offer perpetual contracts for stocks. Apple, NVIDIA, Tesla, with leverage up to 20 times, settled in USDT, with 24/7 trading. Additionally, it supports recently popular trading pairs like precious metals and oil, covering mainstream cryptocurrencies, meme coins, stocks, and commodities on a single platform.

The third card is trading as wealth management. The foundation established during the Astherus period has played a unique role in the transformation. The USDF interest-bearing stablecoin can be used as contract collateral while also generating returns, with a portion of the transaction fees automatically reinvested in USDF. While others start their transformations from scratch, Aster begins with the accumulation of the previous generation.

The fourth card is ecological niche. Fully invested by YZi Labs, CZ has interacted publicly multiple times, and Aster was part of the inaugural project of CMC Launch. By deeply engaging with the BNB ecosystem, every wave of ecological growth naturally benefits Aster.

Leonard believes that the Perp DEX field will ultimately see concentration at the top: "In the future, it is likely that a pattern dominated by the top three players will form, and for DEXs, this concentration may even be higher."

Liquidity businesses naturally gravitate towards the top; DEXs face no geographical restrictions, and global users confront the same liquidity pool. Those who can maintain long-term leadership are the ones who embed deeply in specific core values.

Aster has chosen to focus on privacy.

"The scale of on-chain trading will eventually surpass that of centralized exchanges," Leonard said, "and the privacy of transactions is the key driving force behind this shift." One of the central concerns keeping institutional funds on CEXs is the public transparency of position information. Once on-chain trading can offer reliable privacy guarantees, the massive capital waiting to enter will have a justification for doing so.

Currently, Aster is advancing its deployment with partners on both Web2 and Web3 fronts. In the Web3 domain, stablecoin projects and prediction markets are in discussions, with a significant overlap in users between prediction market users and Perp DEX traders, providing substantial room for collaborative growth. On the Web2 side, financial companies are most interested in establishing markets on Aster or listing assets, which is their most natural entry point.

In terms of cross-chain efforts, Aster is not in a hurry to expand to more native chains but is focusing on cross-chain solutions. Leonard's assessment is: "This cycle has proven that we do not need so many L1s and L2s; in the future, liquidity and users will concentrate on a few chains."

Aster's Speed: The Next Chapter

The first anniversary of most crypto projects features a commemorative tweet.

Aster's first anniversary comes with the results of three transformations behind it: its own chain, its own privacy architecture, and its own comprehensive trading system.

The discussions around the Perp DEX track cannot avoid mentioning Aster, as its every appearance is accompanied by a product that has already been delivered.

Leonard has set only one goal for the next year: to continue enhancing the trading experience, optimizing depth, and improving the capability for large order execution, so that traders feel for the first time on-chain, "This is better than a centralized exchange."

Looking back at what this team has accomplished over the past twelve months, one can probably guess that what they refer to as "one thing" will ultimately yield more than just one outcome.

Aster's first anniversary. The speed of Aster has just turned the first chapter.

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