Compiled by: Jae, PANews

"If a transaction is exposed to the public eye from the moment it is initiated, how much 'value' does that strategy retain?"

In the crypto world, transparency has always been regarded as a sacred and inviolable belief. Every block, every transaction, and every liquidation is like a performance taking place in a transparent glass room.

However, this belief began to crack when exposed on-chain positions became the Achilles' heel of whales. The ubiquitous "copycat hunting" and the real-time public liquidation lines made Perp DEX (a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform) more like a dark forest full of traps.

On March 17th, the protocol-exclusive L1 Aster Chain mainnet was launched as a gift to celebrate its first anniversary. While most Perp DEXs are still engaged in homogeneous competition for market depth, rushing to launch new products, and competing on transaction fees, Aster has taken a different approach, choosing to incorporate "privacy" into its underlying protocol as a default option.

"Why are professional traders and institutions hesitant to adopt blockchain technology on a large scale?" Aster CEO Leonard replied in an interview with PANews, "The answer is simple: they don't want their strategies to be scrutinized by the entire market."

Through in-depth dialogue, PANews attempts to reconstruct the complete journey of this dark horse project from its cold start to its self-built public chain, and to dissect how it uses "privacy first" to reshape the game rules of on-chain derivatives trading.

By catching the right opportunity in the industry cycle, they achieved a comeback despite the shadow of monopoly.

Looking back on the past year, when Aster announced its rebranding, the response was not all applause, but rather a lot of skepticism.

“At the time, the market was almost monopolized by Hyperliquid, and no one thought any project could challenge that position,” Leonard admitted. Back then, competition in the Perp DEX sector had become fierce, with liquidity concentrating on leading protocols, leaving newcomers with only a small share of the long tail market.

However, Leonard saw things differently. The Aster team had traditional finance in their blood, and they believed more in the power of structure than intuition.

Aster has three nodes to establish a firm footing:

First, trading volume broke records. In the second half of 2025, Aster happened to ride the wave of explosive growth in the Perp DEX sector. Aster accurately positioned itself in this trend, and its trading volume soared, completing its early Product-Market Fit (PMF).

Secondly, the successful TGE and brand transition. The official rebranding from APX Finance to Aster signifies a comprehensive upgrade in the project's positioning. "The valuation expectations for the protocol were not high, but the final result far exceeded expectations," Leonard recalled. "This not only reversed the market's evaluation of Aster, but also triggered a revaluation of the entire Perp DEX sector."

The launch of Aster Chain's mainnet is what truly establishes its long-term competitive advantage. Aster Chain is the only L1 blockchain on the market that truly offers "privacy options," and it will be key to the widespread adoption of on-chain transactions.

Professional traders need extremely fast execution speeds, and even more importantly, they need their strategies to remain hidden. Every order and every position on the blockchain is like running naked under a spotlight. Aster Chain was created to fill this gap.

These three steps also addressed the issues of market recognition, brand value, and technological foundation, transforming Aster from a conventional Perp DEX into a leading player with differentiated advantages.

This "counterattack" was not just a gamble based on luck. Leonard's career began in traditional finance. This "classical" background influenced the organizational culture of the Aster team.

Leonard revealed that as the scale expanded, the team proactively moved away from the "workshop-style" decision-making common in early Web3 projects and established a refined, systematic, and data-driven decision-making system: the organizational structure has a clear division of labor, with dedicated personnel responsible for each link; all decisions are based on data, not empiricism; and each team has a clear North Star Metric, making growth quantifiable and traceable.

Even as the organization grows, Aster adheres to three fundamental principles: Owner Mindset, Action Biased, and Result Oriented . Every member is an "Owner" of the project, responsible for the results; between hesitation and action, the priority is implementation; and all efforts must ultimately translate into real value for users and the agreement.

To prevent bureaucracy that comes with scaling up, the team adheres to flat management and cuts off ineffective information channels; decision-making power is delegated to those closest to the battlefield to make judgments; and emphasis is placed on "rapid delivery and small, quick steps," not pursuing perfection in one step, but rather making corrections and optimizations based on real market feedback.

50ms block generation + 100,000 TPS + 0 Gas: Say goodbye to being preyed upon due to transparency.

Aster Chain's design philosophy has always been distinct from general-purpose public chains. Aster has chosen to invest heavily in building its own dedicated L1 blockchain, directly addressing the long-standing pain points of on-chain derivatives: "speed cannot keep up with CEXs (centralized exchanges), strategies are exposed without privacy, and institutions dare not enter the market."

"General-purpose public blockchains cannot simultaneously meet the three major demands of derivatives trading: high performance, low cost, and strong privacy. This is the fundamental reason why institutional traders are unwilling to enter the market on a large scale," Leonard pointed out.

To create a dedicated environment for perpetual contract trading, Aster Chain has innovatively developed its underlying architecture:

Aster Chain employs the PoSA (Proof-of-Stake Authority) mechanism, combining the economic incentives of PoS with the validator reputation system of PoA, achieving block generation in 50 milliseconds, over 100,000 TPS (transactions per second), and zero gas fees . The transaction experience directly rivals that of centralized exchanges, resolving the pain point of L2's difficulty in balancing stability and rapid response.

On the public ledger of a blockchain, large changes in holdings often trigger irrational market fluctuations. By building its own L1 layer, Aster can embed privacy features at the infrastructure level, effectively preventing "trading front-running" and "position sniping" to ensure that large-scale trading strategies are not maliciously manipulated.

Having a dedicated L1 token signifies complete customization from consensus to execution, allowing Aster to focus on optimizing derivatives trading. Simultaneously, L1 serves as a foundational pillar of liquidity, increasing asset diversity and reducing reliance on a single stablecoin, thus building a more robust DeFi (decentralized finance) ecosystem.

However, deeper differentiation lies within privacy architecture.

On Aster Chain, account privacy is enabled by default. Every order is encrypted using ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof) , and transaction data is recorded on the chain but not readable. Each transaction pair automatically generates a one-time stealth address , which external observers cannot associate with the user's real account. In short, the flow of funds is transparent, but the transaction behavior is anonymous.

Leonard emphasized that "transaction records remain publicly available and traceable. Aster Chain protects users' trading strategies. Positions, pending orders, and closing points are the lifeblood of traders."

If users need to display transaction records to auditors, limited partners (LPs), or the public, they can generate a time-limited "Viewer Pass" to selectively disclose information. This mechanism satisfies institutions' requirements for compliance and transparency while also protecting strategy security.

“Many professional traders still remain on CEXs not because they dislike decentralization, but because they cannot afford the risk of their strategies being copied,” Leonard said. “Privacy does not mean a black box, but rather the sovereign protection of strategies and assets.”

Obviously, if the whale chooses to set sail on Aster, it will no longer have to worry about being locked onto by "radar" the entire time.

Airdrops are the ticket, retention is the test, and the ecosystem is the future.

Over the past year, Aster's user and transaction volume growth curves have been quite steep. Leonard believes that, unlike the commonly used "burning money to acquire new users" approach, Aster's growth strategy is a combination of building trust, expanding its reach through incentives, and acquiring customers through its products .

The endorsement from BNB Chain and CZ helped Aster complete its initial bootstrap. In the crypto market, trust is the scarcest resource, but it can only be built over time. The Aster team earned the community's trust through long-term dedication and continuous development. With trust as the foundation, user acquisition and conversion became possible.

Airdrops are standard practice on Perp DEX during this cycle, but Leonard remains clear-headed about them.

“Airdrops are a double-edged sword. They can bring exponential growth in the number of users, but they can also attract a group of speculators who have no interest in the product itself,” he said. “But if you don’t do airdrops, you can’t even get a ticket to join the battle. More importantly, how do you balance the ratio of real users and ‘airdrop hunters’ and withstand the pain of declining data after TGE, and manage market expectations?”

Aster doesn't pursue inflated data during incentive periods; its focus is on metrics that convert traffic into organic users and generate sustainable revenue. Airdrops are merely an entry ticket, not a moat. What truly retains users are product-level values such as privacy features, trading experience, and asset classes.

Aster's true goal is to come because of the airdrop, and stay because of the product.

The L1 mainnet launch is just the beginning. Going forward, the protocol's focus will shift to expanding the ecosystem in parallel through Aster Code and Aster Chain.

In terms of cooperation, Aster adheres to a dual-track strategy of Web3 and Web2.

In the Web3 space, the Aster Code program has been launched, with initial strategic partners including Binance Web3 Wallet, Trust Wallet, Safepal, Genius Terminal, Polarise, NOFA, Wallet V, ChimpX, and VergeX, covering multiple core areas of the Perp DEX ecosystem. Developers can build front-ends, tools, or data products on Aster infrastructure without a license and customize their pricing structures.

According to Leonard's vision, Aster can take on the role of liquidity backend, allowing more developers to innovate based on the protocol's data, privacy, and liquidity, and build a complete closed loop from wallets and trading to tools.

Meanwhile, Aster is also in talks with stablecoin projects to explore a model similar to World Liberty Financial's architecture. Prediction markets are also a key focus, as their user profiles highly overlap with those of Perp DEX players, and cross-selling opportunities could become a new growth engine.

In the Web2 space, Aster targets financial institutions, whose most common demand is to create markets or list assets on Aster.

"However, collaborating with traditional financial institutions requires more compliance audits, more departmental involvement, and more approval processes, but this is an inevitable path for on-chain derivatives to enter the mainstream market, and the team will actively follow up," Leonard revealed.

According to the official roadmap, the Aster Chain mainnet launch is only the first step in the protocol's strategy for the first half of 2026.

Q2 will focus on five key objectives:

By attracting users with privacy concerns, professional traders, and institutional traders, institutional funds can be leveraged to enter the market.
Aster Code and Aster Chain continue to expand their ecosystem, attracting developers with open APIs;
Enhance the utility of tokens and launch features such as Smart Money;
Diversify asset types and liquidity, with a focus on long-tail assets and real-world assets (RWA).
Completed a major UI/UX upgrade.

The execution logic of the roadmap is quite clear: first implement the main functions, then optimize the user experience, and steadily move towards decentralized governance.

Exclusive Insight: The Perp DEX market is becoming oligopolistic; privacy and AI will be the next growth inflection point.

Faced with increasingly fierce competition in the Perp DEX market, Leonard offered a clear assessment of development trends.

Self-built L1, Appchain, or modular execution layer technologies will coexist for a long time. With the popularization of cross-chain solutions and account abstract wallets, information silos between chains will be broken down, and users will be able to use products across chains without worrying about the underlying network.

The market structure will become increasingly concentrated. "Liquidity will concentrate at the top, which is determined by network effects," Leonard said. "In the future, it is very likely that an 'oligopoly' dominated by the top three players will emerge. Perp DEX has no geographical or market restrictions; its differentiation mainly comes from its design philosophy."

Aster's moat is privacy. "The agreement is willing to make the necessary trade-offs for this value proposition. This, in turn, gives Aster an irreplaceable position in long-term competition."

In response to the recent AI boom, Aster has also chosen a pragmatic approach. The protocol will open up interfaces for AI Agent skills, allowing AI developers to build tools on Aster. "We are not AI experts, but we welcome AI experts to leverage their expertise on Aster, making it a trading platform that is not only human-friendly but also attractive to AI Agents," said Leonard.

Near the end of the interview, Leonard mentioned that the launch of Aster Chain is just the beginning of a long journey.

From its initial brand rebranding to its current development of a complete L1 privacy ecosystem, Aster's path represents an evolutionary trend in the Perp DEX protocol. Aster no longer blindly pursues extreme transparency, but has begun to respect the essential needs of financial transactions: efficiency, security, and necessary confidentiality.

When the "silencer" for on-chain derivatives trading is installed, professional funds that once lingered outside the crypto market will have a reason to enter.

As the market moves beyond its period of unchecked growth, privacy, compliance, and AI empowerment will become the new benchmarks for competition, and Aster has already positioned itself at the entrance to this next stage.

A PEPE whale bought 8.93 million ASTER tokens and has already made a profit of $3.67 million.

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