Aster

Aster grew out of APX Finance and rebranded after a merger with Astherus in March 2025. It launched its own Aster Chain on 16 March 2026 and a predictions product on 15 June 2026, so the product pace is fast. But Aster's docs say core Aster Chain contracts and RPC infrastructure will not be open-sourced for now, to protect its matching engine. Published audits cover vault, earn and stablecoin contracts, but none covers the Aster Chain core or the perpetuals engine. The Block described Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao as an Aster advisor in October 2025.

• Aster Chain overview (Aster docs)
• Audit reports (Aster docs)
• Roadmap (Aster docs)
• Aster's token drops 10% after DefiLlama head raises wash trading concerns, delists perpetuals data (The Block)

Aster says it is backed by YZi Labs, formerly Binance Labs, which The Block reported holds a minority stake. ASTER is on the National Bank of Kazakhstan's list of authorised digital assets, and Binance.US listed it in October 2025. Insider allocation is small: the team holds 5% and the treasury 7%, while 53.5% goes to airdrops. Data on ETFs, funds or other regulated holders is insufficient; none appear in the verified facts.

• Aster climbs to first spot for daily fees and volume among perpetual DEXs (The Block)
• List of authorized unsecured digital assets (National Bank of Kazakhstan)
• Binance.US lists ASTER (Binance.US Help Center)
• Tokenomics (Aster docs)

ASTER has a fixed cap of 8 billion, and the token contract has no mint function. About 204 million ASTER sat in the burn address on 27 September 2026, and CoinGecko showed about 2.71 billion circulating. Most of the 53.5% airdrop allocation is released over 80 months, so new supply keeps arriving. Since June 2026, 99% of daily platform fees fund automatic ASTER buybacks paid to stakers, and an equal amount is burned from reserves every two weeks until supply reaches 3 billion. The 400 million team tokens are still locked; a reported extension moves the cliff to September 2027.

• BscScan: ASTER token contract 0x000Ae314…556A
• BscScan: ASTER balance of the burn address 0x…dEaD
• CoinGecko: Aster (ASTER)
• Tokenomics (Aster docs)

DefiLlama recorded about $385 million of Aster perpetuals fees over the year to 27 September 2026, but monthly fees fell from about $136.6 million in September 2025 to about $5.5 million in September 2026 to date. In October 2025 DefiLlama removed Aster's perpetuals volume data after its founder showed Aster volumes closely mirroring Binance's and said Aster did not provide the order data needed to check for wash trading. DefiLlama tracked about $523 million in the Aster bridge on 27 September 2026.

• DefiLlama API: Aster Perps fees
• Aster's token drops 10% after DefiLlama head raises wash trading concerns, delists perpetuals data (The Block)
• DefiLlama: Aster protocols (Astherus parent) TVL