Explore the Aster Universe

The Aster Ecosystem Overview

The Aster ecosystem extends far beyond perpetual futures trading. At its center is ASTER, the native token used for fee discounts, staking, and governance. Holders get a 5% discount when they pay trading fees in ASTER, and can lock ASTER into veASTER to share in the platform's buyback program — a June 2026 upgrade directs 99% of daily platform fees to ASTER buybacks distributed to veASTER stakers, with an equal amount burned bi-weekly as the supply moves toward a 3B target. ASTER launched at its TGE on September 17, 2025, with the largest share of supply (53.5%) allocated to the airdrop. To learn how the token works end to end, read what is the ASTER token. Aster was formed from the 2024 merger of Astherus (yield) and APX Finance (perps), and is backed by YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) with advisory support from CZ.

Aster Earn — Yield-Bearing Assets

Aster Earn is the ecosystem's suite of yield-bearing assets that can also serve as trading collateral in Pro mode. asBNB is a BNB liquid-staking token that captures Launchpool and airdrop rewards. USDF is a fully USDT-collateralized (1:1) yield-bearing stablecoin backed by delta-neutral and funding-fee strategies, and asUSDF is its staked, yield-accruing form. asBTC is a BTC liquid-staking token with a 14-day withdrawal window. ALP is the Aster Liquidity Provider token that backs perpetual liquidity and earns from market-making, trading, funding, and liquidation flows. (Note: asCAKE, the older CAKE liquid-staking token, was deprecated in April 2025.) These assets let users earn while keeping capital productive as margin, rather than leaving it idle.

Aster Chain — A Privacy-Focused L1

Aster is building its own Layer 1, Aster Chain, purpose-built for derivatives and privacy. The design targets up to 100,000 TPS with roughly 50ms blocks, sub-second finality, and zero gas (a cross-chain withdrawal costs about 1 USDT). It is engineered for account privacy, ZK-verifiable encrypted orders, and stealth addresses — the on-chain foundation for Aster's hidden-order model. A testnet went live around early February 2026, with mainnet targeted for Q1 2026. Together with the ASTER token and Aster Earn, Aster Chain rounds out an ecosystem that pairs a high-performance trading venue with native yield and privacy infrastructure, and it continues to expand as the network matures.