Aster CEO explains token value; staking and on-chain buybacks are coming.

This article is from the Aster Community AMA.

Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina ); Translated by Ethan ( @ethanzhang_web3)

With privacy once again becoming a focal point, DEXs face not only a battle for traffic but also the ultimate test of their underlying architecture and user experience. Even so, most DEXs still struggle to balance performance, transparency, and privacy protection, failing to meet the needs of professional traders and institutional users. Aster is attempting to provide its own answer to how to build a trading ecosystem that combines the smoothness of a CEX with the trustworthiness of a DEX.

In a community AMA on November 10th, Aster CEO Leonard systematically outlined Aster's complete roadmap for building an institutional-grade DEX, centered around its self-developed privacy-focused L1 blockchain. The discussion covered a wide range of topics of concern to the community, from token economics and market maker programs to global ecosystem expansion.

The following is a summary of the highlights from this AMA by Odaily Planet Daily.

AMA Opening Introduction

Ember: Hi everyone, welcome to Aster's November AMA. I'm Ember, in charge of Aster's partnerships. Today we have Aster CEO Leonard with us. First, Leonard, please say hello to everyone!

Leonard: Hi everyone, I'm Leonard. For those of you who may not know me, I previously worked in traditional finance, where I was responsible for developing a stock trading risk engine . It's great to meet you all. Some of you may have heard me speak at different events, but this is our first time interacting with the community face-to-face in a formal AMA format.

Building a community has always been one of our team's priorities. We realized we had been lacking in this area before, and now we can't do without such a strong group of supporters.

Aster's vision is to create a DEX with CEX-level performance and decentralized transparency. Over the past few months, we have achieved several key milestones: the Aster airdrop program has entered its fourth quarter, we have completed multiple phases of product upgrades, launched a new buyback mechanism, and continuously iterate and optimize system performance. We have also launched product modules such as spot trading, trading competitions, and Trade & Earn.

These updates ultimately benefit the community, as every step of Aster's development is driven and influenced by the community. Traders, developers, and holders are all important components of our ecosystem.

Today's AMA is for everyone to speak freely. We've collected questions from the community, covering various aspects such as token economics, product roadmap, and governance mechanisms. I will answer them as openly as possible and also share our key directions for the next few months.

Vision Planning and L1 Mainnet

Ember: The first question is one that many people are very concerned about: What is Aster's next roadmap? You mentioned some directions at the Binance Campus event before. Could you give the community a systematic explanation of Aster's overall vision and future plans?

Leonard: Thank you, Ember. You mentioned the Campus event, but it's not just that event. We've received a lot of similar feedback in our daily chats and online and offline events.

The most crucial feedback was that users wanted us to further optimize the trading experience. We acknowledge that we still lag behind some leading platforms; for example, we don't yet fully possess some of the features offered by CEXs.

We are doing our best to ensure that all these issues are fixed in a timely manner. After all, we are a trading platform, and this is our core product, which we must make the best of our ability.

Our team has been continuously improving in this area, including UI/UX adjustments, matchmaking efficiency enhancements, and optimizations to regular features. For example, the "daytime mode" feature, which was highly requested by the community, has been launched. Some users can already experience different color schemes in the interface, and we will continue to optimize based on feedback. These seemingly small changes are actually very important for improving the overall user experience.

This part pertains to basic optimization work. Going forward, we will focus on the infrastructure level .

As you may have heard, we are building an L1 chain for Aster. I've been dedicating most of my time to this recently. Aster has always focused on privacy, and recently privacy issues have resurfaced in the spotlight, as evidenced by Zcash's strong performance. In fact, Aster has been working on this for some time now.

Some time ago, James Wynn and CZ discussed the issue of "overly transparent on-chain environments exposing trading strategies." Aster responded very quickly; within 10 days of that discussion, we launched a hidden delegation system. This is because we firmly believe that privacy is a fundamental right . Protecting traders' buying and selling information from being leaked is crucial for strategy security.

Therefore, we will continue to advance development in this area, aiming to bring our privacy chain into the final testing phase by the end of this year . At that time, we will release more demo versions, testnets, and prototypes, inviting core users to experience them firsthand and see what possibilities they can bring.

Another crucial direction in our roadmap is the token's utility . Our token, TGE, has been very successful, but we aim to maintain that momentum by introducing more use cases. Currently, we've launched features such as fee discounts, airdrop rewards, and VIP levels. We will introduce a staking mechanism in the future, bringing corresponding rewards and governance rights. Over the next two quarters, we plan to further enrich and solidify the token's real-world use cases.

In addition, we will expand our trading offerings . Besides traditional crypto assets, we are exploring the introduction of derivative assets such as stock indices and RWA . Liquidity remains a weakness in these non-crypto assets, but their potential is enormous. We will continue to innovate and explore these high-potential innovative markets to avoid missing out on opportunities.

At the same time, we hope to provide liquidity support in the early stages of asset formation by collaborating with project teams and issuing platforms, such as IDO platforms, allowing users to participate in new projects earlier. This will make us appear more "Degen," and in the future, we will be more proactive in terms of listing pace and leverage ratios, enabling users to capture early value opportunities .

Finally, there's ecosystem collaboration. Aster doesn't intend to go it alone, but rather hopes to build a growth network with more ecosystem partners. We've already established an integration partnership with Trust Wallet, and will be rolling out API support for more wallets, front-ends, and regional partners in the future.

From the perspective of new features and the ecosystem, while we continue to focus on core trading and privacy chain R&D, we will also collaborate with more ecosystem partners to launch products closely related to trading. For example, I believe Lista is one of our potential partners, providing users with more revenue options on the platform, thereby reducing transaction costs and improving capital efficiency. In more cutting-edge areas, such as AI, we hope to leverage the power of the ecosystem and community to build these capabilities, rather than developing them directly ourselves. We provide trading and liquidity infrastructure, allowing teams skilled in AI to do what they do best. Therefore, you may have noticed that we recently launched an AI trading campaign. This is precisely to attract ecosystem partners to join us and help us improve our AI capabilities, while we focus on providing underlying trading and liquidity support.

These are our key priorities for the next two quarters. We hope you'll soon see more great features and results implemented.

Ember: Many community members were surprised by Aster's announcement of developing its own Layer 1. Could you briefly explain why Aster decided to build its own Layer 1 instead of continuing as a DEX built on an existing chain? What problems can Aster's Layer 1 solve that other chains cannot?

Leonard: First of all, I think this is directly related to our vision and mission, which is to achieve a truly decentralized trading environment on-chain, but still with the CEX experience.

Current public blockchains have many limitations in this regard because they were not originally designed to optimize transaction performance. We need a blockchain that can directly embed matching logic. That is, core logic such as order placement, matching, and order cancellation can be completed at the protocol level, rather than simply treating the blockchain as a place to record data.

This is why we decided to build our own blockchain. In other words, we need an infrastructure that can provide near-centralized matching performance, and existing solutions cannot meet this requirement. Therefore, we must build such a dedicated blockchain ourselves.

However, a completely transparent on-chain transaction environment also brings some problems. This has actually been debated in the industry for a long time, such as whether the practice of Hyperliquid, which completely discloses its order book, is really necessary.

Many people believe that a completely transparent system carries risks. This is because if every position and every order is made public, the strategies of professional traders will be exposed, and many traders do not want others to know how they trade or how they build their trading models.

I agree that this is an issue. When I spoke with some professional traders, they still considered strategy privacy paramount. Therefore, we believe there is indeed a segment of users in the market who need a trading environment that balances performance and privacy.

Our approach is to leverage high-performance blockchain infrastructure while providing users with privacy options. This enables strategies that wouldn't work on a completely transparent blockchain.

Recently, many may have noticed Zcash's performance, which has garnered renewed attention precisely because of its privacy features. Aster, in designing Layer 1, shared a similar philosophy. We aim to allow more users and more strategies to run on-chain through optional privacy mechanisms. This way, professional strategies, institutional strategies, and even automated strategies can enter the blockchain trading environment while maintaining privacy. This is the fundamental difference between us and other solutions currently on the market.

I believe that once we launch this blockchain, users will immediately feel its value. Similar products may emerge later, but we have been laying the groundwork for this for quite some time. We are now fully committed and hope to deliver results as soon as possible. I am also confident that once launched, it will prove its value and fill the gap in the current market that has not yet been met.

Ember: Could you elaborate on its underlying design? What is the architecture and module structure of Aster's Layer 1? How does it deliver real improvements in performance metrics (such as latency, depth, and cost efficiency)?

Leonard: I might answer this question from a different angle. If we only look at performance metrics, such as TPS and latency, no blockchain can currently outperform a centralized database in terms of high-frequency transactions. In other words, at this stage, the purpose of building a blockchain is not to achieve "higher TPS"—because truly high-performance systems are still centralized matching engines.

Therefore, our core goal in designing Aster Layer 1 is not to blindly pursue extreme performance, but to create a chain that is fast enough, but more importantly, offers privacy and flexibility , allowing professional traders to migrate their strategies directly to the chain for execution without altering their original strategies . This is the key. Assuming a quantitative strategy runs well on a centralized system today, when it migrates to the Aster chain, it doesn't need to be redesigned; it can be executed simply by connecting to the on-chain interface. In terms of performance, we will maintain a TPS level comparable to mainstream public chains, which is sufficient to support our trading needs. The real challenge is not "how fast we can run," but "whether we can create enough real trading demand to fill the chain's throughput." The key is not just performance, but how to provide additional value while maintaining CEX-level speeds.

In short, we don't pursue superficial performance parameters, but rather aim to create a chain that is functional, more valuable, and can truly support real on-chain transactions .

Ember: In your previous Binance Campus event, you mentioned that Aster's L1 would achieve a near-zero gas experience. In that case, how will the system's economic cycle remain consistent? How will the incentives for validators and the protocol layer be balanced?

Leonard: That's an excellent question. Aster considered two sources of incentives when designing its economic model:

One is the allocation of ecological incentives from the protocol layer, where we will use a portion of the ecological funds to reward validators;

Secondly, there is a transaction fee sharing mechanism , where the agreement will return a portion of the platform's actual revenue to validators and nodes.

The combination of these two factors can form a stable and sustainable incentive mechanism.

Unlike many projects that are still operating at a loss, Aster has achieved a consistent positive cash flow, which allows us to continue to provide financial support for the network's operation.

Therefore, even with extremely low gas costs, validators can still obtain reasonable returns through transaction revenue sharing and ecosystem subsidies, thus maintaining system stability.

Token Economics and the Aster Ecosystem

Ember: I have a follow-up question on this. Many users have also asked about staking and token utility. You mentioned before that there will be more practical use cases in the future. Specifically: When will the staking feature be launched? What roles do stakers and validators play in the system? Besides speculation, what practical value does Aster's token bring to long-term holders and active traders?

Leonard: The staking feature is expected to launch alongside our L1 mainnet. Because enabling the staking mechanism requires validator nodes, these two components will be rolled out concurrently.

Our current goal is to complete internal testing and testnet launch by the end of this year ; if all goes well, we plan to officially launch the mainnet in the first quarter of next year .

You've already seen some of these applications, such as fee discounts, VIP tier systems, and entry requirements for airdrops and events. For example, in our Rocket Launch event, we required users to hold ASTER tokens to participate.

In addition, we are in talks with several lending protocols to explore more use cases for the ASTER token. These will be rolled out gradually in the near future, and are unrelated to the L1 mainnet launch.

In the long run, holding ASTER tokens will bring more value. Once the L1 mainnet and staking system are launched, we will also add a governance mechanism. At that time, stakers will also participate in on-chain governance voting and ecosystem parameter decisions , allowing the token to assume a more core governance role in the ecosystem.

Ember: Okay, let's move on to a topic more relevant to traders and institutions: What are Aster's structural advantages in perpetual contracts at this stage? Compared to products like Hyperliquid, what are Aster's core competitive advantages for professional traders or institutional users? Will we launch more market maker programs or rebate mechanisms in the future to improve order book depth?

Leonard: Currently, our biggest competitor in the institutional space is not other decentralized perpetual contract platforms, but still centralized exchanges (CEXs). This is because most institutional trading still takes place on centralized platforms. The main reason is that they are still not familiar enough with DeFi products, or rather, they do not have enough trust in them.

For them, the safety of funds remains the most important consideration. They have stricter risk control systems and compliance requirements, so their transition to DeFi will be slower.

However, this situation is changing. While DeFi perpetual contract platforms do have an advantage over CEXs in some aspects (such as transaction fees), CEXs are also rapidly lowering barriers to entry and increasing their competitiveness.

For institutional investors in particular, self-custody is a critical issue. After the FTX incident, they are acutely aware that no matter how reputable a centralized exchange (CEX) is, counterparty risk always exists. On-chain transactions allow them to verify assets and transactions themselves, eliminating the need to completely trust third parties, which represents a significant security improvement for institutional users.

From a product perspective, Aster's perpetual contracts excel in both return efficiency and risk control . While this might only represent a few percentage points of difference in returns for ordinary users, for large institutions or highly leveraged traders, this efficiency improvement translates directly into a significant profit gap.

In addition, we are also advancing the stable yield module to provide institutional users with more efficient capital utilization. Through a combination of lending, perpetual, and yield pool mechanisms, Aster enables institutional users to improve their return on capital while maintaining manageable risk.

Of course, there are also institutional users willing to take higher risks who value privacy. They don't want all their strategies and positions publicly disclosed on the blockchain. A completely transparent system would expose their strategies and make it difficult to remain competitive.

Therefore, we are designing a "layered transparency mechanism" that preserves on-chain verifiability while protecting policy privacy. Institutional users can deploy policies more securely without worrying about their strategies being copied. We hope this will help attract more institutional funding and provide their research departments with a new option.

Regarding the market maker program you just mentioned, users who have followed us for a long time will have noticed that since CGBR, our liquidity on major trading pairs has improved significantly, such as BTC, ETH, SOL, and BNB, where the depth is very good.

The market maker program is designed to incentivize limited partners (LPs) to fill gaps in market depth. Currently, we are focusing on smaller-cap cryptocurrency pairs—such as long-tail assets or niche tokens. Therefore, we are adjusting our existing incentive mechanisms, planning to offer higher rebate rewards to market makers for these smaller tokens to improve market depth and trading quality.

I believe that in the long run, this will become one of our platform’s key competitive advantages: the decentralized architecture allows us to list tokens faster and expand trading categories more flexibly, while good liquidity is the key to user experience.

From a broader perspective, we hope Aster can function as a more open ecosystem, enabling the listing of a wider variety of assets "without permission." Once these assets are listed, the next focus will be on liquidity.

Therefore, we are also advancing a new market maker incentive program to encourage market participants to provide depth on these assets, so that users can enjoy a smooth, low-slippage experience regardless of which asset they are trading.

Market makers or quantitative trading teams interested in participating in these new initiatives are welcome to contact us – we look forward to collaborating with more professional liquidity providers to create a more vibrant trading market.

Ember: Besides liquidity, the expansion of the entire ecosystem is also accelerating. Next, we'd like to discuss Aster's plans for supporting assets, blockchain ecosystem coverage, and DeFi integration. In particular, how will our own stablecoin, USDF, be integrated into the ecosystem after the Aster mainnet officially launches?

Leonard: It can be divided into several parts: blockchain ecosystem coverage, DeFi integration, and the stablecoin USDF.

Firstly, regarding chain support, we have essentially covered most mainstream EVM ecosystems, and these chains can already meet the needs of the vast majority of trading users. For support of non-EVM chains, the integration cost is actually quite high, so we will be more cautious and will not expand blindly.

Going forward, we prefer to collaborate with bridge projects to ensure a smoother cross-chain experience for assets across different chains. Simply put, we will address the issues of long-tail chain assets through bridging, rather than attempting native adaptation for each chain individually.

In the short term, regarding DeFi integration, we will focus on collaborating with asset issuance and launch platforms, such as fair launch platforms or crowdfunding platforms (like IDO/IEO platforms), to ensure Aster can get involved in the initial stages of assets as early as possible. This will help users discover "new assets" with potential and rapid growth, rather than just established mainstream coins.

This is actually part of our strategy to integrate spot listings with DeFi. On the lending front, we also plan to expand the range of collateral assets for trading through partnerships, strengthening the "Trade & Earn" narrative. Our stablecoin USDF will play a key role in this system. Most users still use stablecoins as trading collateral, but our self-developed USDF can better control risk and reduce reliance on external stablecoins. Especially given the recent frequent exposure of counterparty risk in the stablecoin market, having our own stablecoin is a strategic choice for us.

The existence of USDF allows us greater autonomy in internal risk management and reduces leverage and exposure issues arising from reliance on third-party platforms. Compared to external stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, we have complete control over USDF's asset composition and risk exposure, which is crucial for platform security.

Therefore, USDF will be a very core part of the Aster ecosystem. It not only fits our "Trade & Earn" narrative, but also strengthens the sustainability of our overall ecosystem.

Ember: One last question, regarding the Rocket Launch project, could you talk about how Aster selects and incentivizes early-stage projects? Also, how will the team expand into English-speaking markets, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and other global regions while maintaining Aster's "product-first" culture?

Leonard: I think this isn't limited to the Rocket Launch project. Overall, Aster actually has different strategies for spot and futures trading when it comes to launching projects.

For contracts, the key is to provide users with a tool that allows them to trade freely according to their own views. Users can go long or short; the crucial factors are whether the market has sufficient liquidity and whether there is sufficient demand for the asset.

Therefore, we will more quickly assess which tokens have greater trading potential based on user feedback and prioritize listing those high-profile assets.

For spot listings, we need to be more cautious. Buying spot means actually holding a portion of the project's equity, which requires us to conduct fundamental due diligence. We typically prioritize projects with high-quality products, strong team execution capabilities, and reliable integrity.

However, our greatest value within the Aster ecosystem lies in providing liquidity support to projects . We are most interested in projects that have already completed product and community building but still require liquidity to propel them forward. Through Aster's liquidity support, they can enter the next stage of development, such as securing a CEX listing opportunity or gaining greater trading exposure.

Simultaneously, when the project's token price rises, this benefits users who trade on Aster or participate in airdrops. This "win-win" situation is precisely the initial intention behind our Rocket Launch program. If a project meets the criteria and is in the TGE stage, we will include it in the Rocket Launch program , providing customized liquidity and marketing support. If a project has already passed the TGE stage, we will also design independent trading activities or liquidity programs to help them expand their influence. Regardless of the type, our goal is to help high-potential projects gain the momentum for the next stage of growth .

In terms of global expansion , Aster has historically focused more on the Asian market. Going forward, we will further expand into English-speaking markets, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, hoping to replicate our success in Asia globally. This means we will increasingly seek partners who are deeply rooted in their local communities, understand their cultures, and share Aster's vision.

We hope they will join us in building the next generation of decentralized trading experiences. In South Korea, we've already seen great success; for example, through localized collaboration, we incubated a local brand project that generated extremely high trading volume. This model proves that the combination of a local team and Aster infrastructure is very effective, and we plan to replicate this success in Europe and the Americas.

Going forward, we will focus on expanding our presence in the English-speaking community . For example, we will collaborate with BNB Chain and Endowment to host joint AMAs and offline trading competitions; we are also exploring more social media activities in Europe and America, such as community events on Facebook.

In addition, we are actively recruiting local talent. We require them not only to speak the local language, but more importantly, to understand the culture and trading habits of local users. Only in this way can we truly build a decentralized trading network that is both global and deeply rooted in local communities.

Community Q&A

Ember: First question: Regarding the multi-asset model, does the team plan to adjust the multi-asset model to a form similar to inverse altcoin-margin contracts?

Leonard: We won't be imitating that kind of contract format for the time being. Our focus is on refining the current system to its fullest potential—that is, the core logic of "multi-asset generation".

We aim to better serve the "Trade & Earn" narrative and make the tradable asset pool more scalable. Along this main line, we will continue to focus on the existing USDT margin contract model, and while we will consider further expansion in the future, we will continue to focus on what we do best at this stage.

Ember: My second question: Could you confirm the launch date of the Aster L1 mainnet? Some members in the community mentioned that the testnet might launch next month, with the mainnet target being the first quarter of 2026. Could you please confirm this?

Leonard: Our goals are actually more ambitious than that. We hope to complete internal testing by the end of this year and be technically ready for external testing. If all goes well, the L1 mainnet will launch between the end of this year and the beginning of next year.

Of course, even with a slight delay, the first quarter of 2026 is still a reasonable window of opportunity. The first quarter comprises three months, during which we will open the test network to the public for testing, ensuring that all functions are stable before officially launching the mainnet.

Ember: One last question, which many community members have been asking: Could you explain Aster's buyback and burn mechanism in detail?

Leonard: I've actually seen a lot of people asking this question too. First of all, many people are curious why we don't publicly execute buybacks on the blockchain.

In fact, we are indeed conducting open market buybacks , but the execution is not yet visible on-chain. This is one of the reasons why we are accelerating the launch of L1: once the Aster L1 mainnet is launched, all buyback activities will be automatically recorded as on-chain transactions , and everyone will be able to clearly see the execution details of each buyback and burn.

Currently, we will still use a portion of the transaction fees generated by the platform for buybacks. However, I would like to emphasize that we will not make unrealistic promises such as "100% buyback." Aster is still in its early stages, and we will continuously adjust the buyback ratio and cycle based on ecosystem development, revenue structure, and market conditions.

In the future, as the ecosystem becomes more stable, the buyback mechanism will also tend to be more long-term and stable , gradually evolving into a continuous and transparent "buyback + destruction" system.

Message

Ember: Leonard, before you close, is there anything you'd like to say to the community as a final message?

Leonard: Of course. First and foremost, the community has always been at the heart of Aster. The reason we've gotten to where we are today is because we consistently listen to user feedback. Many recent product updates and feature optimizations actually stem directly from community suggestions.

In the future, we will hold similar AMAs more frequently to maintain communication with everyone and work together to create truly valuable products that you will want to use.

Secondly, in terms of product roadmap, the next key focuses will include: privacy features; L1 mainnet launch; expanding token utility; and further optimizing the trading experience.

Please stay tuned and actively participate in the test, and tell us your feelings, including what you like, what you dislike, and what you hope we can improve. We will listen carefully.

Finally, I'd like to give a special introduction to our CTO, Oliver. He couldn't speak today due to technical reasons, but he will be more active in the community in the future, interacting directly with everyone. If you are a developer or a tech enthusiast, you are welcome to join our Discord Builders channel to discuss technical ideas, infrastructure improvements, or any innovative points regarding the Aster ecosystem with Oliver.

We look forward to working with more builders to propel Aster forward.