ASTER continues turning heads, parlaying the momentum of a wild weekend right into a recent all-time-high.
A Binance itemizing and help from Changpeng “CZ” Zhao despatched the token hovering, and had the crypto group questioning if Aster may take Hyperliquid’s crown.
However what precisely are the hyperlinks between the upstart decentralized perps change, its centralized counterpart Binance, and CZ himself?
Aster’s origins
Aster was shaped in December final 12 months, following the merger of decentralized finance (DeFi) initiatives APX (previously Apollo X) and yield farm Astherus.
APX was a longtime perps DEX, whereas Astherus referred to as itself a “multi-asset liquidity hub.”
Each initiatives had been based mostly on Binance’s BNB Chain (previously Binance Sensible Chain), and previous to the merger, Astherus had obtained VC funding from Binance Labs, now YZi Labs.
The funding got here as a normal push to again initiatives “building meaningful technology and driving growth of the ecosystem,” and was destined to “accelerate product development, introduce innovative yield-generating products, and further enhance the user experience.”
Astherus’ yield merchandise included stablecoin USDF — to not be confused with DWF Labs’ Falcon USD.
Persevering with underneath Aster, yield-bearing asUSDF acts as an Ethena-style “CeDeFi” play, with belongings custodied by Ceffu (previously Binance Custody).
The rebrand to Aster was introduced in March, laying out the options of the brand new DEX. Foreshadowing latest occasions, it additionally claimed that Aster was “strategically positioned to challenge industry leaders like Hyperliquid.”
The APX token, which survived a $1.5 million hack in June 2022, was migrated to ASTER on the latter’s launch earlier this month.
CZ’s cheerleading
ASTER’s launch was adopted two days later by a list on Binance. After initially drawing consideration to the post-launch worth motion, CZ has each lent into and shied away from affiliation with the venture.
Off the again of the weekend’s Aster pump, Zhao responded to a non-contextualized viral video clip, captioned “$ASTER CODED,” saying, “When one door closes, another one opens.”
Within the video, Zhao says it’s “kinda good” being “forced not to spend time on [Binance],” persevering with, “I actually have more time to contribute to the decentralized ecosystem.”
Zhao is presumably referring to the situations of his plea deal which required him to step down as CEO after “failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program.”
He might have much less to concern in future ventures.
In a June 1 X put up, Zhao advised it “might be a good time for someone to launch a dark pool perp DEX.”
The put up refers back to the pitfall of merchants having the ability to see one another’s trades on clear blockchain-based exchanges (resembling Hyperliquid).
“Hidden orders” is without doubt one of the options Aster presents over rivals.
Regardless of his insinuations, Zhao has denied being straight concerned, saying, “I don’t even run a perp dex project. I just sh!t post,” and debunking doctored screenshots of enterprise information.
He additionally claimed yesterday, responding to reporting from the Monetary Instances, that YZi (once more, previously Binance Labs) is just not a spin-off of Binance and operates independently.
Whether or not concerned or not, Zhao has taken to X to advertise the concept “growing the industry is easier than taking market share from existing players.”
Nonetheless, the messages are slightly blended, on the one hand saying {that a} “rising tide lifts all boats” while additionally egging on Aster’s provocative addition of 300x leverage on HYPE (whereas max leverage on different belongings was capped at 100x).
Battle of the DEXs: Aster vs Hyperliquid
Current worth strikes have thrust Aster into the highlight and the elevated consideration, in addition to airdrop farming efforts, have led it to eclipse Hyperliquid in key metrics.
In line with knowledge from DeFiLlama, Aster has achieved increased DEX quantity than Hyperliquid on three of the final 5 days.
A pointy uptick in every day perps quantity reveals Aster taking the lead there, too, with quantity double that of Hyperliquid during the last two days.
In line with CoinMarketCap knowledge, ASTER is up over 2,500% within the final seven days, whereas HYPE is down 17% over the identical interval.
Whereas Aster stays a great distance off “flipping” Hyperliquid’s complete worth locked or market cap, one DeFi commentator identified that, in crypto, “rotations are quick and brutal but perp dex traders are even more aggressive.”
