Aster and Hyperliquid have spent the previous week locked in a duel for perpetual decentralized alternate (perp DEX) dominance. The query: Can the previous lure merchants quicker than the latter loses them?
Final night time introduced Aster’s first main stumble whereas a suspected rug pull deepened the exodus of capital from Hyperliquid’s L1.
Aster’s catastrophe
Yesterday’s launch of Plasma’s mainnet and XPL token kicked off an on-chain frenzy. The brand new chain accrued $2.5 billion of complete worth locked (TVL) on day one, in keeping with DeFiLlama knowledge.
Customers hoping to commerce the volatility of a freshly launched and hotly anticipated token on Aster received barely greater than they bargained for, nonetheless.
We’re conscious of irregular worth actions on the XPL perpetual buying and selling pair. Relaxation assured, all person funds are SAFU. We’re conducting a full evaluation and can compensate any affected customers for losses.
— Aster (@Aster_DEX) September 25, 2025
Screenshots present the worth of XPL wicking to $4, whereas beforehand buying and selling within the vary of $1. A follow-up publish from Aster said that affected customers “will have their liquidation losses calculated and reimbursed directly to their wallets in USDT.”
Compensation was confirmed round two and a half hours later.
One observer questioned on X, “Why we are calling this a DEX?” After making an attempt to confirm what led to the incident, they declare to solely be capable of entry “an API that returns the last 1000 trades.”
Additionally they observe that “on Hyperliquid… [you] can reconstruct the full history of trades and even the addresses,” including that Aster is extra like a “CEX without KYC where you login with your wallet.”
Hypervault pulls the rug?
In addition to being the highest perps DEX in DeFi (a minimum of till not too long ago), Hyperliquid runs its personal chain. It hosts dozens of initiatives, 10 of which have a TVL of over $100 million.
This morning, blockchain safety agency Peckshield flagged suspicious withdrawals from one of many smaller initiatives, a yield farm referred to as Hypervault.
Tokens value $3.6 million had been drained from the mission earlier than being bridged to Ethereum and despatched to Twister Money. Peckshield notes that the mission’s X account has been deleted, the web site can be offline.
Since Aster’s meteoric rise final weekend, complete worth locked on Hyperliquid has dropped virtually 30%, from virtually $2.8 billion to $2 billion.
