Aster
ASTER#47ASTER is the token of Aster, a decentralized exchange mainly for leveraged perpetual futures trading.
Fails our Shariah screening. Needs caution: interest (riba), gambling (maysir), excessive uncertainty (gharar), and benefit and harm (maslahah). Fails: business model and usage.
- 2 pass
- 4 caution
- 2 fail
Verdict history
- Not halalCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Aster?8 Shariah criteria
2 pass · 4 caution · 2 failHolding ASTER pays nothing and staking is not a loan, but most staking rewards now come from buybacks funded by derivatives fees, which include funding payments.
Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. Simply holding ASTER earns nothing. Staked ASTER earns from two weekly pools. The Base pool (150,000 ASTER) is shared by Aster Chain validators in proportion to the transactions they process, which is a reward for network work. The Loyalty pool (300,000 ASTER plus every fee buyback since 17 June 2026) is shared by how long holders lock their tokens and is boosted by their own trading volume. It is not a fixed or guaranteed return on a loan, so it is not plain riba.
But it is a share of platform fees, almost all from perpetual futures, and DefiLlama counts funding payments in those fees. ShariaQuant calls the funding-rate mechanism interest-based, and CryptoUmmah calls the rewards riba-adjacent. Aster's USDF also earns funding fees and interest-rate differentials, though that return goes to USDF holders, not to ASTER. Because the source of the reward is disputed rather than clearly interest, this is caution.
ASTER has real uses in staking, listing votes and fee discounts on a working exchange chain, though it gives no claim on the business.
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. ASTER has real uses: it is staked with Aster Chain validators, validators with at least 20 million ASTER vote on which markets are listed, and it pays trading fees at a 5% discount. The exchange behind it is heavily used. The score is lowered within pass because ASTER gives no legal claim on Aster's revenue or assets, although fee buybacks send value to stakers; what those functions serve, a derivatives exchange, is weighed under usage and business model.
The general disagreement among tier-1 bodies about cryptocurrency (Malaysia's SC versus Egypt's Dar al-Ifta and Indonesia's MUI; none names Aster) is reflected in confidence, not in this score.
ASTER is not itself a betting token, but its value comes from a platform built around very high leverage and a prediction market, and most ASTER trading is in futures.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir. ASTER has no chance-based payout of its own and has governance and staking functions. The platform it supports, however, is built around speculation: Aster offers up to 1001x leverage on Bitcoin, 500x on forex in Shield Mode, and since 15 June 2026 a prediction market where shares pay 1 USDT if an outcome happens and 0 if not. CryptoUmmah describes 1001x leverage as structurally close to gambling.
In a one-day CoinGecko snapshot on 27 September 2026, about 73% of ASTER's own trading volume was perpetual futures. Because the token has a real function but its use is dominated by speculation, this is caution at the bottom of the range.
Aster earns almost all of its fees from leveraged perpetual futures, far above the 5% limit, and 99% of those fees buy ASTER for stakers.
Aster calls itself a 'perp DEX': a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures. Perpetual futures are deferred exchanges without delivery, usually with leverage, which are impermissible (AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard 20). DefiLlama recorded about $385 million of perpetuals fees over the 12 months to 27 September 2026 and none for Aster Spot; The Block reported that Aster led all perpetual DEXs with over $25 million of daily fees in September 2025.
Aster also runs a prediction market (0% trading fees at launch, 0.05% settlement fee) and USDF, whose yield comes from futures funding and interest-rate differentials. Since 17 June 2026, 99% of daily platform fees buy ASTER that is paid to stakers, so the token is directly funded by this revenue. ShariaQuant puts non-compliant revenue above 33%. This is far above the 5% limit for impermissible revenue. Sharlife, the authoritative source that names Aster, marks it Grey (conditional) without published reasons; this analysis departs from it here because Aster's own docs and DefiLlama show that perpetual futures are its core revenue.
The token contract has a fixed supply and buybacks are on-chain, but the core chain is closed source, the CEO is pseudonymous, volume data was questioned and most supply is still to be released.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty in a contract. Some things are clear: the ASTER contract on BNB Chain has no mint or owner function and a fixed supply of 8 billion, the allocation is published, and buybacks and burns go through public wallets (about 204 million ASTER sat in the burn address on 27 September 2026). Other things are opaque. Aster says the core Aster Chain contracts and RPC infrastructure are not open source, and its published audits cover only earn and stablecoin products, not the perpetuals engine. CryptoUmmah reports that the CEO is pseudonymous.
In October 2025 DefiLlama delisted Aster's futures volume because it mirrored Binance's and Aster did not provide order-level data. Only about 2.7 billion of 8 billion ASTER circulate, the airdrop pool is released over about seven years, and a secondary news report that the team cliff was moved to September 2027 is not reflected in Aster’s docs, which still show the original schedule.
ASTER's main job is to secure and govern Aster Chain, a blockchain that Aster's own docs say is built specifically for derivatives trading.
Usage asks what the asset is actually used for. ASTER is staked with Aster Chain validators, and those validators vote on new listings such as perpetual pairs. Aster describes the chain as 'designed specifically for derivatives trading' and the exchange as a perp DEX. So the token's main role is to run and govern infrastructure for leveraged futures, which is impermissible (AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard 20), alongside a prediction market.
ASTER also pays spot trading fees at a discount and trades spot on many exchanges, and permissionless listings on Aster Spot cost a 50,000 USDT fee used for buybacks. These permissible uses are minor next to futures.
Fully paid spot ASTER is available on major exchanges and can be held in a self-custody BNB Chain wallet.
This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way at all. ASTER is an ordinary BEP-20 token that can be withdrawn to a wallet the owner controls. It trades spot on Binance, KuCoin, Bybit, WhiteBIT and Aster Spot, among others, and Binance.US listed ASTER/USDT on 16 October 2025. Perpetual futures on ASTER are also widely traded (about 73% of volume in a one-day snapshot), but they are optional, and fully paid spot ownership is available.
Aster offers self-custody trading, but it markets extreme leverage and all-or-nothing outcome trading to retail users, and its volume data has been questioned.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. Aster gives traders self-custody, low fees and a spot market, and its privacy features stop others from hunting traders' visible positions. On the other side, it markets leverage of up to 1001x, where a price move of about 0.1% against a position can wipe it out, and a prediction market where shares pay all or nothing. In October 2025 DefiLlama stopped showing Aster's futures volume over wash-trading concerns.
Aster's terms bar users in the US, UK, Russia and several other countries, and its privacy mode hides balances and positions from public view. The benefit is real, but the harm is significant.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesASTER can be bought spot with full payment and held in a self-custody wallet, but spot counts as acceptable only for an asset rated HALAL or DOUBTFUL. ASTER is rated HARAM because the platform behind it earns almost all its fees from perpetual futures and passes them to stakers, so a spot purchase is not rated acceptable here.
Not available: no exchange-traded fund holding ASTER was found. A fund holding it would be judged like spot, which fails for this asset.
ASTER is not used as a payment coin; it can pay Aster trading fees at a discount. Paying with it would mean using an asset that did not pass screening, and tier-1 bodies such as Indonesia's MUI hold that using cryptocurrency as currency is not permissible. The planned Aster Card was scheduled for Q3 2026 and its launch was not confirmed.
ASTER staking pays a Base reward for validator work, but most rewards now come from buybacks funded by perpetual-futures fees, shared by lock time and boosted by the staker's own trading volume; early exit costs a penalty (up to 60% in the docs' example). With the asset rated HARAM and the reward funded by derivatives revenue, staking is not rated acceptable.
Margin trading in ASTER is never acceptable: it is a deferred exchange with borrowed money and leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
ASTER perpetual futures made up about 73% of its trading volume in a one-day snapshot, and perpetual futures are Aster's own core business. Futures, perpetuals and options always fail under AAOIFI SS 20: deferred exchange without delivery, usually with leverage.
Lending ASTER for a fixed or interest-based return is riba and fails. No ASTER lending market run by Aster itself was found.
Aster's yield products fail: USDF and asUSDF earn from futures funding fees and interest-rate differentials on Binance, and staked ASTER rewards are funded by derivatives fees. asBNB passes on BNB ecosystem rewards but is a BNB product, not an ASTER one.
Scholars quotes
Penggunaan cryptocurrency sebagai mata uang hukumnya haram, karena mengandung gharar (ketidakjelasan), dharar (bahaya) dan bertentangan dengan Undang-Undang nomor 7 tahun 2011 tentang Mata Uang dan Peraturan Bank Indonesia nomor 17 tahun 2015 tentang Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah di Wilayah Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia.Bitcoin is a digital currency that does not meet the legal and Sharia criteria that make it a currency subject to the rulings of dealing with official legal currencies recognized internationally.بناءً على ذلك: فلا يجوز شرعًا تداول عملة "البتكوين" والتعامل من خلالها بالبيعِ والشراءِ والإجارةِ وغيرها، بل يُمنع من الاشتراكِ فيها؛ لعدمِ اعتبارِها كوسيطٍ مقبولٍ للتبادلِ من الجهاتِ المخُتصَّةِ، ولِمَا تشتمل عليه من الضررِ الناشئ عن الغررِ والجهالةِ والغشِّ في مَصْرِفها ومِعْيارها وقِيمتها، فضلًا عما تؤدي إليه ممارستُها من مخاطرَ عاليةٍ على الأفراد والدول.Holding ASTER is rated as Haram because the protocol's core business is heavily reliant on perpetual futures trading, which utilizes an interest-based funding rate mechanism (Riba).According to research and opinion of experts so far, cryptocurrency is not considered ‘ maal ’ (wealth) in Sharia.Sebagaimana mata wang yang lain, mata wang digital hendaklah tidak digunakan sebagai bayaran kepada barangan, perkhidmatan dan aktiviti tidak patuh Syariah seperti pembelian dadah, pelacuran, perjudian dan pendanaan aktiviti keganasan serta penggubahan wang haram.The SAC has also resolved that investment and trading of Digital Assets that fulfil the above requirements and which are traded on Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) registered with SC are permissible.Third: In light of the above and given the significant risks associated with this type of currencies and the instability of their transactions, the Council of the Academy recommends pursuing research and studies on issues affecting its ruling.Muhammadiyah memandang transaksi dan investasi kripto pada dasarnya mubah (boleh) tetapi dengan syarat tertentu.The opinion on this is the same as doing the same with any halal assets such as shares – 1) is permissible, 2) is more debatable and there are differing opinions on short-term trading.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itAs I mentioned at the beginning of this article it is not necessary to substantiate the permissibility of something as long as there are no prohibited factors involved in it or surrounding it.AI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
Section in preparation
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