Aster Chain mainnet launch set for March

Aster, the decentralized exchange backed by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, is gearing up for the launch of its Aster Chain mainnet this March. The rollout promises to take its decentralized exchange beyond cryptocurrency trading with a dedicated blockchain, community-driven governance, and more access to physical assets.

The team announced on X on Thursday, stating, “Aster Chain mainnet in March. Privacy is good. Aster is good.”

The rollout of the Aster Chain mainnet is part of the company’s 2026 roadmap, which aims to strengthen Aster’s infrastructure by integrating fiat on- and off-ramps. Aster Chain will create a dedicated network for Aster’s on-chain products and builders’ tools.

Aster Chain testnet growth fuels trading activity surge

The Aster Chain layer 1 testnet went online in early February 2026, following initial testing in late 2025, and now has more than 50,000 members. The project will transition from testing to full production following the completion of multiple testnet phases, leading up to the mainnet launch.

Aster plans to focus on community-driven upgrades to its decentralized exchange in 2026.

Key objectives include staking and on-chain participation, along with governance features backed by the native token. The platform also aims to increase access to real-world assets, such as stock perpetual markets, enhancing its synthetic trading offerings beyond cryptocurrency.

The improvements signify a shift toward greater user involvement in platform development, with the community having a greater say in how Aster’s decentralized exchange functionalities and governance structure are developed.

The Aster DEX token (ASTER) is expected to increase in value soon as the decentralized exchange launches its Layer-1 (L1) testnet. The announcement came as the market was down 20.3% year-to-date. At the time of writing, ASTER is trading at $0.7001, ranking 43, with gains of 0.7% in the 1-hour timeframe, 9.2% (24h), and 30.3% (7d) despite the strong market trending downward.

CoinGlass data revealed that Aster recorded $3.61K in total liquidations over the last hour, of which $525.24K came from longs and $3.08K from shorts. Aster recorded $33.29K in liquidations, including $24.67K in long positions and $8.62K in short positions over the course of four hours.

On-chain data also revealed that Aster posted $2.39M in liquidations over 24 hours, with $317.15K from long holdings and $2.08M from short positions. Aster reported $365.80K in liquidations over 12 hours, with longs hitting $100.60K and shorts reaching $265.19K.

The data disclosed that Aster’s 24-hour futures trading volume was $775.64M, while its 24-hour spot trading volume was $96.03M. The asset has a market capitalization of $1.73B and $325.91M in open interest. The token has a total supply of 7.82B and a circulating supply of 2.47B. The project specifies that its maximum supply is 8.00B tokens.

Perp DEX boom drives demand for custom chains

Aster changed its name to become a perpetual futures DEX in March of last year, putting it in direct competition with the Hyperliquid perpetual futures exchange, which also runs on an application-specific layer-1 blockchain network.

The move to launch its own layer-1 chain is consistent with a larger trend in Web3 where projects are increasingly using specialized blockchains designed for high-throughput transactions. These platforms are choosing infrastructure tailored to their specific needs instead of relying solely on general-purpose networks like Ethereum or Solana, 

Perpetual futures decentralized exchange Hyperliquid’s impressive performance contributed to increased interest in Aster and other perp DEX systems. This momentum coincided with a significant change in how traders access cryptocurrency futures on decentralized platforms.

The cumulative trade volume of the Perp DEX had almost tripled by the end of last year, rising from about $4 trillion to over $12 trillion. DeFiLlama data shows that around $7.9 trillion of this total activity was created in 2025.

DeFiLlama data also shows that monthly trading activity on perpetual exchanges hit $1 trillion in October, November, and December of 2025.