Odaily Exclusive Interview with Aster: DEX Will Ultimately Consume the Entire Trading World, and Privacy Options Are the Key Step

In recent times, Aster has kicked off the next phase of its one-year anniversary milestone, taking key steps toward building institutional-grade privacy DeFi infrastructure. On March 17, the Aster Chain mainnet went live, aiming to provide traders with fair ordering and an optional privacy transaction experience. Shortly after, on March 20, Aster Chain launched its native staking feature, deeply tying network security and ecosystem growth through a dual-rewards mechanism.

From record-breaking trading volumes in the second half of 2025, to successfully completing a brand upgrade and the TGE, and now to the launch of its L1 mainnet, Aster is rapidly evolving from an innovative Perp DEX into a more complete infrastructure layer.

However, in today’s environment—L1 being overly saturated, market sentiment being subdued, major macro shifts, and attention being severely fragmented—does launching an L1 really count as the best timing? Where exactly does Aster Chain’s differentiated advantage lie? And what kind of route plan comes next?

To answer these questions, Odaily Planet Daily conducted an exclusive special interview with Aster CEO Leonard, delving into the key decisions made over the past year, insights into industry challenges, and the long-term vision of building “trusted infrastructure.”

I’ve found that its core logic is: “first have users and revenue, then launch the mainnet,” rather than “a cold start.” This means every step Aster takes is grounded in real demand and market validation. At the same time, Aster Chain’s unique value proposition of “optional privacy” will be the origin point of its moat.

In Aster’s story, there are too many things worth a deep dive for Web3 founders. Below, with Aster CEO Leonard speaking in the first person, I’ll tell this story—enjoy~

What did Aster get right over the past year?

Starting in the second half of 2025, the platform’s 24h trading volume kept breaking records—rising from $1 billion in June to $11 billion in September—making it clear the project was developing at a breathtaking pace. Also in September, during the Aster TGE, it achieved milestones such as 24h trading volume surpassing $345 million, 330,000 new wallet addresses, and platform TVL exceeding $1 billion, solidifying Aster’s position in the DEX market. When trading volume broke records, it made us realize: we entered the right track at the right time—.

Along with the TGE, the brand also successfully transitioned from APX to Aster.

And when we launched a real L1 mainnet with an “optional privacy” feature, this is a unique product the market doesn’t offer, and it’s also a prerequisite for on-chain trading to move toward large-scale application.

In the darkest moment, how did you get through it?

When we initially carried out our brand reshaping, the market was almost monopolized by Hyperliquid—at the time, no one believed anyone could challenge their position. Before our TGE, for a long time the general public believed this was impossible. Before Aster’s TGE, the estimated FDV (fully diluted valuation) was not that high, but in the end we obtained a valuation far higher than expected—this also caused the market to re-evaluate Perp DEX (decentralized perpetual contract exchange) projects.

In fact, we once even postponed the TGE plan, because at the time we thought there was still room for product improvement before going live. However, we later decided to choose “execution speed” over “pursuing perfection.” Looking back, that was the right decision.

The lesson we learned is: in emerging markets like Perp DEX, there’s no such thing as a “standard playbook” for handling the toughest problems. Most consensus-based advice only applies to normal situations. There’s no magic here—only believing in what you’re doing and burying yourself in hard work.

And the belief at the core that allows the team to “embrace hardship” is: DEX will eventually consume the entire trading world, and “optional privacy” is the key to making that happen.

Behind the rapid growth, what team growth lessons can be reused?

As the project’s scale expanded, we proactively moved away from early decision-making patterns that relied on intuition, and instead relied deeply on data. Now Aster’s organizational structure is more refined, decisions are more systematic, and each team’s metrics are clearer—so that growth becomes quantifiable and trackable.

Even though the organization has grown, some underlying logic never changes: a full “owner mindset” across the entire team—taking full responsibility for the final outcome; refusing hesitation and prioritizing action; and being result-oriented—so that the process ultimately must be converted into real value for users and the protocol.

To preserve the early team’s execution power and judgment, we adopted three major strategies: extreme flatness—refuse internal friction. Keep management layers as lean as possible, reduce ineffective communication chains, and ensure transparent symmetry of information. Decentralize decision-making—grant full authorization: give teams clear KPIs and Ownership, and put decision power into the hands of the people closest to the front lines. Deliver first, then perfect, emphasizing “fast delivery, small steps and rapid iteration,” so the market provides real-time corrective feedback, and we complete iterative optimization in real conditions.

The toughest era for a new L1? How does Aster Chain define itself?

First, let’s talk about the technical differentiation. Aster Chain uses a ZK + Stealth Address architecture: Stealth Address makes every transaction automatically private, and ZKproof makes every private transaction verifiable. _ (For friends interested in the technical details of how Aster Chain balances on-chain capital transparency with transaction privacy, please see Gitbook. )_

For developers, we introduced **Aster Code—**a fee-sharing ecosystem. The key benefit is that it allows developers to build their own trading interfaces and directly automate revenue capture from them.

In addition, Aster Code also improves developers’ integration efficiency by providing transparent and controlled authorization mechanisms, supporting data monitoring and instant settlement.

The real challenge for L1: after the mainnet launches, how do you keep developers and users around?

The L1 battle is a competition for liquidity.

A technical solution is a baseline requirement. Users should not feel the difference between centralized and decentralized architectures when they trade. Aster Perp DEX’s users themselves are also users of Aster Chain. We start with users, and even revenue, before launching the mainnet—this is the model behind a successful project this cycle, not the approach of launching a chain first and then finding a business model.

On the ecosystem growth side, I believe privacy options will drive institutions toward the substantive adoption of decentralized trading, an obstacle that has long existed. Since we now provide privacy functionality, institutions will at least begin to try moving some transaction flows on-chain. The reason is clear: they want diversification, and many institutions already believe the future of trading lies in DEX. They just need a viable solution. And now, that solution exists—it’s Aster Chain.

What will the future industry landscape look like? And what’s Aster’s moat?

Privacy and the core trading experience are our core. In the liquidity competition track, network effects mean that capital will ultimately concentrate at the top players. I think it’s very likely that we will form a “oligopoly monopoly” landscape led by the top three players; for DEX, this concentration will likely be even higher.

Because for DEX, there are almost no constraints by geography or market segmentation. The differentiation in competition mainly comes from different design principles and philosophies. Like how Aster has always focused on privacy and is willing to make the necessary trade-offs for this core value—this actually becomes our moat, enabling us to survive in long-term competition.

When reaching out to B-side partners, what most moved potential collaborators?

Aster Chain is actively pushing for partnerships with companies in the Web2 and Web3 spaces.

Web3 companies that collaborate with us have huge potential in product cooperation. For example, we’re in talks with other stablecoin projects, exploring partnership models similar to the World Liberty Financial architecture. Also, we’re paying attention to prediction markets, because there’s a high overlap between prediction market users and traders of perpetual contract decentralized exchanges (perp DEX), making obvious cross-selling opportunities.

On the Web2 side, most of the conversations focus on financial companies. The most common interests are: building markets on Aster or listing assets, and for them these types of collaborations are the easiest to achieve as near-term milestones. While large companies—especially regulated financial institutions—take a long time to establish partnerships, once they decide, we will announce it externally.

What should be done now, based on a backward look from judgments about the future

After the mainnet launches, Aster’s priorities in Q2 include:

• Bring in users with privacy needs, professional traders, and institutional traders;
• Increase asset variety and liquidity;
• Expand the ecosystem through Aster Code and Aster Chain;
• Strengthen token utility and governance;
• Optimize the trading interface (UI/UX)……

With the crypto market in a low valley and external AI being hot, how does Aster adjust its rhythm or respond?

Aster can’t predict the market—it can only focus on building. Surviving the winter and continuing to create value is the only certain path to the next ATH.

As for AI trends, Aster has already provided relevant skill interfaces for AI agents. Although we’re not AI experts, we can empower AI developers and agents so they can build tools on Aster and then feed back to us how to optimize the product—so that Aster is not only friendly to humans, but also appealing to AI agents.

In a few years, I hope the industry’s evaluation of Aster is: an infrastructure that users can trust long-term, and that can carry both funds and strategies.