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Once one of the standout names in the PerpDEX wave, Aster was previously seen as a potential rival to Hyperliquid thanks to the backing of CZ and Binance. However, in recent periods, as new competitorOnce one of the standout names in the PerpDEX wave, Aster was previously seen as a potential rival to Hyperliquid thanks to the backing of CZ and Binance. However, in recent periods, as new competitor

$ASTER Update : How Aster Is Falling Behind Its Competitors?

#Industry Perspectives

2026/08/25 15:39

Once one of the standout names in the PerpDEX wave, Aster was previously seen as a potential rival to Hyperliquid thanks to the backing of CZ and Binance. However, in recent periods, as new competitors continue to emerge with more attractive incentive models, better-optimized products, and increasingly competitive trading experiences, Aster appears to be gradually losing the advantages that once helped the project stand out.

Key Takeaways:

Aster is weakening after its explosive growth phase, with volume, TVL, and user quality showing clear signs of decline.
Its growth remains heavily dependent on incentives and the BNB ecosystem, meaning its network effect is not yet strong enough.
Tokenomics still faces dilution pressure, while buybacks may struggle to offset this pressure if revenue does not grow.
Aster is caught between Hyperliquid and emerging PerpDEXs, gradually losing its competitive edge.
Aster remains worth watching, but the protocol needs to improve revenue and attract more genuine users.

1. Overview of Aster DEX Activity

If we only look at its current scale, Aster remains one of the largest PerpDEXs in the market. However, onchain data paints a different picture: Aster has declined significantly from its own peak period, while many competitors continue to maintain or expand their activity.

The most important metrics include:

- Perp Volume: Aster experienced explosive growth in late September 2025, with daily trading volume reaching tens of billions of dollars. Daily volume exceeded $10 billion at one point but then declined sharply. In July, Aster recorded approximately $43.49 billion in volume, showing that current trading activity has fallen significantly compared with its peak period.

- Open Interest (OI): OI peaked at around $4 billion in October. Aster's current OI stands at approximately $2.25 billion. Although this is not a dramatic decline, it still does not reflect a growth trajectory proportional to the massive trading volume Aster once achieved.

- TVL: TVL previously reached billions of dollars during the peak period but declined significantly after incentive programs weakened. This suggests that part of the previous capital inflow may have been opportunistic and more sensitive to rewards rather than representing stable, long-term liquidity.

- Fees and Revenue: Over the past 30 days, Aster has generated approximately $4.88 million in fees and $4.21 million in holder revenue. Cumulative fees have surpassed $442 million, but the ability to sustain fee generation as incentives decline is a more important factor. High trading volume does not automatically translate into sustainable value for the protocol or token holders.

Overall, Aster's problem is not that the platform has become small. The real issue is that most of its core metrics have yet to demonstrate a sustainable growth trajectory following the initial explosive phase. Volume has fallen sharply from its peak, OI has not grown proportionally, while TVL and fee-generating activity also reflect a contraction in capital flows.

In addition, much of Aster's activity is supported by the BNB Chain ecosystem and Binance, meaning it cannot be considered entirely organic activity.

2. The Reasons Why Aster DEX Is Losing Momentum Compared With Other PerpDEXs

2.1 Inflationary Tokenomics Design

Aster has a maximum supply of 8 billion ASTER, but only around 2.69-2.70 billion tokens, or approximately 34%, are currently circulating. The remaining supply will continue to unlock over the coming years, mainly from:

- Airdrop: vesting over approximately 80 months.

- Team: a 12-month cliff, followed by linear unlocks of around 10 million ASTER per month for 40 months.

- Ecosystem: additional tokens are still distributed through staking mechanisms.

Although Aster applies a buyback and burn mechanism, in which 99% of daily trading fees are used to buy ASTER and distribute it to veASTER stakers, while an equivalent amount of tokens is burned from the reserve to reduce the total supply toward 3 billion ASTER, the protocol still faces a race between deflationary pressure from buybacks and burns and inflationary pressure from continuously unlocking tokens.

Holder revenue currently stands at around $35 million per year. If fees and revenue do not increase significantly, buyback pressure may struggle to absorb the dilution, especially once team tokens begin vesting.

Compared with HYPE, which has a total supply of around 1 billion tokens, ASTER's 8 billion supply makes its buyback and burn mechanism relatively weaker.

2.2 Too Much Focus on Privacy

Aster has dedicated significant resources to developing privacy features such as hidden orders, one-time stealth addresses for each transaction, ZK-encrypted orders, and Shield Mode for high-leverage positions.

However, privacy is arguably not the most important need for PerpDEX users. What traders actually demand is deep liquidity, fast execution, and transparent data.

Meanwhile, institutional capital is currently flowing heavily into markets such as RWA, oil, gold, and equities, where the primary demand is market expansion and deeper liquidity.

Hyperliquid is moving in this direction through fast execution, deep liquidity, and market expansion through HIP-3. Aster, on the other hand, has placed a significant bet on privacy.

In addition, focusing too heavily on privacy causes Aster to lose an important source of free marketing. News accounts on X and crypto KOLs can easily spread headlines such as "billions of dollars in positions opened on Hyperliquid," while Aster's activity receives far less visibility because users cannot see each other's positions.

2.3 Weak Network Effects and Losing the Liquidity Flywheel Race

A sustainable PerpDEX needs a liquidity flywheel: deep liquidity attracts market makers, market makers improve spreads, better spreads attract more traders, and more traders ultimately generate additional liquidity.

Hyperliquid has built this flywheel relatively well through the HLP Vault and a long-term network of market makers. As a result, its OI has remained at a high level of around $9-12 billion even when the broader market cools down.

Aster has yet to build an equivalent flywheel. Although it has the ALP pool, much of its early liquidity and volume still depended heavily on incentives and the BNB Chain ecosystem, as well as Binance. When incentives declined, liquidity and trading volume also weakened quickly, followed by declines in OI and market share.

Aster has liquidity, but it has not yet built a liquidity network strong enough to sustain itself once incentives disappear. This remains one of its largest gaps compared with Hyperliquid.

2.4 User Acquisition and Distribution

Aster has a referral system and Aster Code, allowing builders to create their own frontends and earn fees. However, most user growth still comes from the BNB Chain ecosystem through KOLs, Binance Wallet, Trust Wallet, SafePal, and related campaigns.

This makes Aster significantly dependent on the BNB/Binance ecosystem. If support from this ecosystem cools down, the platform may lack a strong enough distribution channel to compensate.

Meanwhile, Hyperliquid has expanded its distribution through builder codes, with multiple third-party frontends integrated through platforms such as Phantom and MetaMask, helping partners generate additional revenue.

Aster still relies heavily on the BNB ecosystem for user distribution, while Hyperliquid has built more diverse traffic sources and stronger network effects.

2.5 Wash Trading Concerns

It is not possible to conclude that Aster is engaging in wash trading. However, its close relationship with the Binance/BNB ecosystem has caused the quality of the platform's trading volume to be repeatedly questioned.

In October 2025, DeFiLlama temporarily removed Aster's perp data after identifying that the trading volume of certain pairs, particularly XRP, showed almost perfect similarity with Binance. This raised concerns about potential wash trading or artificially aggregated volume. Because Aster did not provide sufficient order-level data for verification, DeFiLlama temporarily delisted the data to protect its integrity.

Independent research later estimated that only around 2% of transactions showed suspicious characteristics, but the concerns have not completely disappeared because Aster still lacks sufficiently detailed data for the market to independently verify its activity.

Notably, many of Aster's strongest volume spikes have also been associated with campaigns across the BNB ecosystem, suggesting that the platform still relies heavily on incentives and traffic from Binance and BNB.

In February 2026, KOL Stacy Murr also pointed out an unusual discrepancy: Aster reported $2.4 billion in trading volume on a single day, while one of its major yield-bearing stablecoin contracts had only six active wallets, around 51 users per week, and 346 users per month.

This does not prove that Aster is wash trading, but the large gap between reported volume and actual user activity remains a major question regarding the quality and organic nature of its trading flows.

2.6 User Numbers and Trading Volume Are Not Proportional

Aster currently reports around 43 million total users, based on figures updated by the community and ambassadors in mid-August 2026. However, Daily Active Users are only around 7,000-10,000.

Meanwhile, Hyperliquid maintains approximately 70,000-100,000+ Daily Active Users, despite having a much lower cumulative user count than Aster.

The large gap between Aster's registered users and active users suggests that a significant number of accounts may have been created primarily to farm airdrops, participate in campaigns, or capture incentives rather than become long-term traders using the platform.

A PerpDEX with tens of millions of accounts but a low retention rate can hardly be considered to possess a genuine network effect. This suggests that Aster's growth may depend more heavily on incentives than on a long-term and committed trading community.

2.7 Caught Between Hyperliquid and Emerging PerpDEXs

Aster is currently in a difficult position, caught between two groups of competitors.

At the top, Hyperliquid has built significant advantages in network effects, deep liquidity, real revenue, L1 infrastructure, and its broader ecosystem. This makes it difficult for Aster to compete directly in the institutional trader and high-volume trading segment.

At the other end, challengers such as Lighter, edgeX, GRVT, and ApeX Protocol continue to introduce lower-fee models, new technologies, and attractive incentives, competing directly for the retail traders and airdrop farmers that Aster once attracted strongly.

As a result, Aster is gradually losing its position as the "number one challenger." The platform does not yet have sufficient liquidity and network effects to compete with Hyperliquid, but it is also no longer new enough to retain users who are constantly searching for the next opportunity.

3. Is $ASTER Still Worth Holding?

Looking at the Market Cap/Revenue ratio, ASTER currently appears relatively highly valued compared with its actual level of activity. With a circulating market capitalization of around $1.78 billion and holder revenue of approximately $12 million per year, ASTER is trading at nearly 150 times revenue. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid, despite having a much larger market capitalization, generates around $765 million in revenue, giving it a significantly healthier valuation ratio.

A market capitalization of nearly $2 billion is relatively large for a platform whose actual user activity and revenue have yet to match its valuation. This is especially important in a market that increasingly prioritizes real revenue, transparent on-chain cash flows, and sustainable business models. ASTER could become one of the tokens facing significant pressure if it fails to improve its fundamental metrics.

However, there are still reasons to keep watching ASTER rather than completely dismissing it. Aster benefits from significant support from CZ and the broader Binance ecosystem, including Binance Wallet, Trust Wallet, and YZi Labs. This represents a distribution and liquidity advantage that very few PerpDEXs can match.

In addition, $ASTER has recently avoided a deeper decline despite the continued weaknesses in its fundamentals. This may suggest that the current price range is being actively supported by the team. However, from a market valuation perspective, a market capitalization of around $2 billion may still be too high for a long-term buy-and-hold position.

Therefore, rather than rushing to conclude that ASTER has no remaining opportunities, this may be a more suitable time to place the token on a watchlist and observe whether Aster can improve user quality, revenue, and liquidity in the coming months.

Conclusion

Aster DEX has gone from being positioned as Hyperliquid's challenger to becoming a secondary but still notable competitor in less than a year. The reasons are the combined impact of several issues: trading volume that depends heavily on incentives, weak conversion of activity into revenue, slow progress on Aster Chain, and dilution pressure from the token supply. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid continues to strengthen its position through stronger fundamentals and real revenue.

Disclaimer: This content does not constitute investment, tax, legal, financial, or accounting advice. MEXC Blog provides this information for educational purposes only. Always do your own research, understand the risks, and invest responsibly.

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