Odaily Interview with Aster: DEX Will Ultimately Devour the Entire Trading World, Optional Privacy is the Key Ladder

Recently, Aster marked its one-year anniversary as a new starting point, initiating a crucial step in building institutional-grade privacy DeFi infrastructure. On March 17th, the Aster Chain mainnet officially launched, dedicated to providing traders with fair sequencing and optional privacy transaction experiences. Following closely, on March 20th, Aster Chain's native staking feature went live, deeply binding network security with ecosystem growth through a dual-reward mechanism.

From repeatedly breaking trading volume records in the second half of 2025, to successfully completing the brand upgrade and TGE, and now the L1 mainnet launch, Aster is rapidly evolving from an innovative Perp DEX into a more complete infrastructure layer.

However, in the current context of L1 oversaturation, cold market sentiment, major macro shifts, and severely fragmented attention, is launching an L1 the optimal timing? What are Aster Chain's differentiated advantages? And what is the roadmap ahead?

To answer these questions, Odaily conducted an exclusive interview with Aster CEO Leonard, delving into its key decisions over the past year, insights into industry challenges, and the long-term vision of building "trustworthy infrastructure."

I found that its core logic lies in: "First acquire users and revenue, then launch the mainnet," rather than a "cold start." This ensures each of Aster's steps is grounded in real demand and market validation. Simultaneously, Aster Chain's unique "optional privacy" value proposition will be the source of its moat.

Aster's story contains many elements worthy of careful consideration by Web3 entrepreneurs. Below, the story will be told in the first person by Aster CEO Leonard, enjoy~

What Did Aster Get Right in the Past Year?

Starting in the second half of 2025, the platform's 24h trading volume continuously broke records, from $1 billion in June to reaching $11 billion in September, making us feel the project's rapid development. Also in September, during Aster's TGE, achievements such as 24h trading volume exceeding $345 million, 330,000 new wallet addresses, and platform TVL surpassing $1 billion solidified Aster's position in the DEX market. When trading volumes broke records, it made us realize that we entered the right track at the right time.

Alongside the TGE, the brand successfully transitioned from APX to Aster.

And when we launched the L1 mainnet with genuine "optional privacy" functionality, it was a unique product not offered by anyone else in the market, and a prerequisite for on-chain trading moving towards mass adoption.

How Did We Navigate the Darkest Times?

When we initially undertook the rebranding, the market was almost monopolized by Hyperliquid, and no one thought anyone could challenge their position. For a long time before our TGE, the general public thought it was impossible. Before Aster's TGE, the projected FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) wasn't high, but we ultimately achieved a valuation far exceeding expectations, which also triggered a market re-evaluation of Perp DEX (Perpetual Decentralized Exchange) projects.

In fact, we once postponed the TGE plan because we felt the product still had room for improvement before the official launch. However, we later decided to prioritize "execution speed" over "pursuit of perfection." Looking back, this was the right decision.

The lesson learned is: in emerging markets like Perp DEX, there is no "standard playbook" for handling the toughest problems. Most consensus advice only applies to normal conditions. There's no magic here, only believing in what you do and putting your head down to work hard.

The core belief that enabled the team to "embrace hardship" is: DEXs will eventually consume the entire trading world, and "optional privacy" is the key to achieving this process.

Behind the High-Speed Growth, Which Team Growth Experiences Are Reusable?

As the project scaled, we proactively moved away from the early decision-making model reliant on intuition, instead deeply relying on data. The current Aster organizational structure is more refined, decision-making is more systematic, and each team's metrics are clearer to achieve quantifiable, trackable growth.

Although the organization is growing, some underlying principles remain constant: everyone's sense of ownership, taking full responsibility for the final outcome; rejecting hesitation, action first; results-oriented, where processes must ultimately translate into tangible value for users and the protocol.

To maintain the execution power and judgment of the early team, we adopted three major strategies: Extreme flatness, rejecting internal friction, minimizing management layers as much as possible, reducing ineffective communication links, ensuring transparent and symmetrical information; Decision decentralization, full empowerment: giving teams clear KPIs and Ownership, delegating decision-making power to those closest to the action; Launch first, perfect later, emphasizing "rapid delivery, small steps, quick iteration," letting the market provide first-hand corrective feedback, completing iterative optimization in real environments.

The Toughest Era for New L1s? How Does Aster Chain Define Itself?

First, regarding technical differentiation, Aster Chain adopts a ZK + Stealth Address architecture: Stealth Addresses make every transaction automatically private, ZKproofs make every private transaction verifiable. (Friends interested in the technical details of how Aster Chain balances on-chain fund transparency and transaction privacy, please refer to the Gitbook.)

For developers, we launched Aster Code, which is essentially an ecosystem for fee-sharing. The core benefit is enabling developers to build their own trading interfaces and directly, automatically earn revenue from them.

Furthermore, Aster Code also improves developer integration efficiency, providing a transparent and controlled authorization mechanism, supporting data monitoring and instant settlement.

The Real Challenge for L1s: After Mainnet Launch, How to Keep Developers and Users?

The L1 battle is a competition for liquidity.

Technical solutions are basic requirements; users shouldn't feel the difference between centralized and decentralized architectures when trading. Aster Perp DEX users are inherently Aster Chain users. We had users, even revenue, before launching the mainnet. This is the model for successful projects in this cycle, not launching a chain first and then finding a business model.

Regarding ecosystem growth, I believe privacy options will drive substantial adoption of decentralized trading by institutions, which has always been a past obstacle. Now that we provide privacy functionality, institutions will at least start experimenting with moving some trading flow on-chain. The rationale is sound: they want diversification, and many institutions already believe the future of trading lies with DEXs. They just needed a viable solution. And now, that solution has emerged: Aster Chain.

What Will the Future Industry Landscape Be? And What Is Aster's Moat?

Privacy and core trading experience are our core. In the liquidity competition track, network effects mean capital will inevitably concentrate towards the top players. I believe it's highly likely that a future "oligopoly" dominated by the top three players will form; for DEXs, this concentration could be even higher.

Because for DEXs, geographical or market segment limitations are almost non-existent. Competitive differentiation mainly stems from different design principles and philosophies. Just as Aster remains focused on privacy and is willing to make necessary trade-offs for this core value, this actually constitutes our moat, allowing us to survive in long-term competition.

When Engaging with B2B, What Point Most Impresses Potential Partners?

Aster Chain is actively promoting collaborations in both Web2 and Web3 fields.

Web3 companies have huge potential for product collaboration with us. For example, we are in talks with other stablecoin projects, exploring cooperation models similar to the World Liberty Financial architecture. Additionally, we are also focusing on prediction markets because there is high overlap between prediction market users and perp DEX traders, making cross-selling opportunities obvious.

On the Web2 side, most conversations focus on financial companies. The most common points of interest are: building markets on Aster or listing assets. For them, this type of cooperation is the easiest achievable phased goal. Although establishing partnerships with large companies, especially regulated financial institutions, has long cycles, once confirmed, we will announce them publicly.

What Should Be Done Now, Based on Backward Planning from Future Judgments

After the mainnet launch, Aster's Q2 priorities include:

• Attracting users with privacy needs, professional traders, and institutional traders;
• Increasing asset types and liquidity;
• Expanding the ecosystem through Aster Code and Aster Chain;
• Strengthening token utility and governance;
• Optimizing the trading interface (UI/UX)...

Crypto Market Downturn, External AI Boom, Any Adjustments or Countermeasures from Aster?

Aster cannot predict the market, we can only focus on building, surviving the winter and continuously creating value. This is the only certain path to the next ATH.

Regarding the AI trend, Aster has already provided relevant skill interfaces for AI Agents. While not AI experts, we can empower AI developers and Agents, enabling them to build tools on Aster and provide feedback on how to optimize our products, making Aster not only human-friendly but also attractive to AI Agents.

Years from now, I hope the industry's evaluation of Aster is: infrastructure that users can trust long-term, capable of carrying funds and strategies.