Aster's first interview after the surge: Buybacks will be more flexible, the biggest competitor is Binance

Original source: https://x.com/Mable_Jiang, Trends.fun co-founder
Original compilation: Ismay, kkk, BlockBeats

Editor’s note: In this issue's interview, Mable, co-founder of the social protocol Trends, spoke with Leonard, CEO of the hottest Perp DEX Aster, covering everything from personal experiences to project strategies. Leonard's journey from a traditional investment banking tech role to a blockchain entrepreneur is itself a growth trajectory that traverses finance and Web 3. In this interview, he systematically discusses how Aster started with perpetual contracts and gradually evolved into a multi-chain comprehensive trading platform; how it attempts dark pool design on-chain to balance privacy and transparency; and how it seeks to find a balance between efficiency and fairness in token distribution, incentive programs, and buyback strategies.

During the interview, he candidly reviewed the lessons from the XPL incident and shared his thoughts on Aster Chain, the market maker program, and future on-chain governance. The entire interview not only presents Aster's product philosophy and strategic layout but also reflects the balancing wisdom of Web 3 entrepreneurship between compliance, privacy, and market demand, providing readers with a valuable perspective on understanding the development of the new generation of decentralized trading platforms.

Here is the full conversation:

Mable: Let's start with your background. How did you enter the crypto industry? What led you to where you are today?

Leonard: This story is quite long. I started in the banking technology field. I was working in a tech role at an investment bank in Hong Kong, which no longer exists. I initially worked on technical infrastructure, mainly responsible for building high-frequency trading systems. Later, I transitioned to being a risk engine programmer for the stock market, where I worked for about five years. After that, I entered the startup scene and started a B2B fintech lending platform in Asia. But my first startup failed.

Mable: Around what year was that?

Leonard: Around 2015 or 2016. At that time, the concept of "Internet Plus" was very popular in China, where adding "Internet" to anything could turn it into a startup project. Everyone wanted to disrupt the financial industry. But later, regulatory pressure became too great, and some scams ruined the entire industry, leading to a downturn.

During that process, we kept thinking about whether there was a better way to do this, and that’s when I came across blockchain—around 2016, when Bitcoin was already established and Ethereum had just emerged. I was initially attracted by ICOs, invested in a few projects, made some money with the first one, thought I was a genius, but then lost everything on the next few projects. However, it was through this experience that I began to develop a genuine interest in technology.

We wondered if we could put all loan information on-chain. At that time, there was a debate about "permissioned chains" and "permissionless chains." I remember IBM launched a project called Hyperledger, and I started learning about it, trying to build a lending platform based on it.

Of course, looking back now, we chose the wrong direction; we should have gone with Ethereum. Later, I also tried collaborating with gaming companies to integrate NFTs and tokens into games, but it was too early, and no one understood it, so it didn’t work out.

After about a year of trying various directions, I finally joined the DeFi project Injective Finance in 2019. There, I encountered many products and ideas. Later, when dYdX emerged, we began to conceive the possibility of building our own trading platform on-chain, which eventually led to the first prototype of Aster, which later evolved into what Aster is today.

Crypto projects have been iterating through cycles: from dYdX to GMX to Hyperliquid. We have experienced all these stages, continuously adjusting and experimenting until we created something that the market truly needed.

Mable: How do you define Aster now? What do you hope it will develop into in one to three years?

Leonard: A year is already a long time. If you had asked me this question two weeks ago, I might have given you a completely different answer. After all, in the crypto space, a year is too long. To the outside world, Aster is seen as a multi-chain trading platform, a multi-chain DEX. But in my view, we are no longer a traditional perp DEX.

People associate Aster with the Binance ecosystem because we initially started from the BNB Chain and had help from CZ. But we are no longer just BNB Chain; we also support Arbitrum, OP, Linea, Solana, and will connect to more chains in the future.

We did start as a perp platform, but in the last two weeks, our spot trading product has attracted a large number of new users because people need to buy Aster tokens, which can only be traded through the on-chain order book.

At the same time, we are also one of the largest yield asset providers on BNB Chain, with products like USDS and aUSDT, allowing users to earn yields while trading.

So now, we have gradually evolved from a simple perp project into a comprehensive multi-chain trading platform, aiming to enhance user capital efficiency—you can deposit money to earn yields while using those assets as collateral to participate in more strategies.

In the future, we hope to support more chains and assets, reconstructing all mainstream products and experiences from CEX on-chain, thereby creating a complete and composable DEX product matrix.

Many people compare us to other projects like dYdX or GMX. But our real competitors are not other DEXs; they are CEXs themselves. What we hope to create is an on-chain version of Binance. Ultimately, we hope that one day we can surpass Binance—our largest investor.

Within a year, we hope to replicate 80% of the product experience found on CEXs but reconstruct it entirely on-chain. Five years from now, I hope the entire DEX industry can surpass CEXs, with us as the leader.

Mable: There has been a narrative in the market that Binance strongly supports Aster, even treating it as a "weapon" against Hyperliquid. So if you had to describe Aster in one sentence, what is its core value proposition compared to CEXs or other DEXs?

Leonard: I think the most fundamental point is that our entire infrastructure is built entirely on-chain, which gives us the fundamental advantages of "self-custody" and "transparency." This is our biggest difference from CEXs.

Additionally, as a DEX, we have greater flexibility in our governance model. CEXs are very inefficient when it comes to listing new tokens or adjusting products because their processes are too centralized, approvals are slow, and there are many risk control procedures. On-chain governance can evolve continuously with the needs of the community and the market.

You see projects like pump.fun, which may take years to test new models, but these ideas originally came from the community. Ultimately, what remains will be the product designs that best match the market.

This is the beauty of decentralization.

And we have been building our product in this direction from day one, so I believe on-chain trading platforms can find their market fit faster.

Of course, from the perspective of a startup, we are also more agile and responsive. CEXs have more resources, but DEXs are closer to the community and more nimble. For example, when it comes to launching new tokens or products, we can do it faster.

Mable: So are you implying that future new markets or new tokens will be decided through governance voting?

Leonard: This is one of the directions we are seriously considering.

But we also need to balance the fact that in the early stages of the project, we have indeed retained a certain degree of centralized control for the sake of execution efficiency. This is to ensure that decisions can be implemented in a timely manner and maximize benefits for the project and the community.

However, we are also "pragmatists." We know that in the future, there will definitely be a gradual transition towards decentralized governance—once the entire system matures and we find a clear business model, we will gradually release control and allow the community to participate in governance.

Mable: I completely agree; gradual decentralization is a process. And being a bit centralized in the early stages is indeed more efficient—now many projects have a single address with voting rights exceeding 50%, making governance merely a formality.

Leonard: Right, so we need to take governance step by step.

Mable: We will talk about your "dark pool design" later, but I want to ask a personal question first—besides Aster, which DEX do you personally like the most?

Leonard: This question is too easy; of course, it's Hyperliquid.

In fact, I have tried almost all products. You could say these projects have indeed opened a new era for Orderbook perp DEXs. But the true OGs are still projects like GMX, which laid the foundation for later LP models and market-making frameworks.

However, I think there are also some interesting projects that are not well-known, like Surf Protocol. I have tried them too; they also have products with a thousand times leverage, similar to us, but they adopt a completely different profit distribution model—users only pay fees when they make money, which is quite interesting.

There’s also JoJo on Base; I really like their UI. It gives you that "wow, that's cool" feeling at first glance.

I feel that the entire perp product space is becoming increasingly homogeneous. Everyone is chasing after feature parity; if you release a user-attracting feature, others can immediately copy it. After all, Web 3 is a world where everything is open, and many things have a low barrier to replication. So the core of competition becomes "what exactly are you specialized in?" Some teams excel at high leverage, while others focus on oracle-driven LP models. Ultimately, everyone has their strengths, and it's really hard to say who is better.

Aster's Dark Pool Design

Mable: Let's talk about your dark pool design. The hidden orders on Aster do not reveal direction or quantity. So the question is, do users have a way to verify whether these orders were matched fairly afterward? Do you provide any public records?

Leonard: We currently do have the capability for post-verification, such as inviting a third party for independent audits. Our matching engine can take snapshots, and all transactions can be replayed for verification. However, we do not yet have a "public verification" method.

But this is somewhat paradoxical—if you can deduce the transaction content afterward, then the hidden mechanism loses its meaning. So we currently do not have a way for anyone to publicly verify.

Of course, if someone has a good solution, we welcome collaboration. We are continuously improving this part of the product design. If anyone is working on privacy trading-related chains or features, we welcome them to contact us for collaboration. We have some ideas, but we haven't fully figured them out yet.

Mable: You implemented dark pool design on the first day of launch, so you must have had a strong judgment about this direction?

Leonard: We have actually been thinking about this issue from the very beginning. In the TradFi world, dark pools and OTC volumes far exceed those of public trading markets.

Many people have discussed this with us, asking if we could replicate this model on-chain, would there be similar demand? This is actually a somewhat conflicting concept—blockchain is all about transparency, but financial transactions inherently have a "privacy preference."

Later, there happened to be a public conversation between CZ and James Wynn, where James mentioned he was "liquidation sniped" on Hyperliquid because the trades were public. CZ responded that on-chain transactions should remain transparent. This debate inspired us.

We thought, maybe this is an opportunity. Everyone is aware of this need, so why not take the chance to try it? So we basically worked overnight on development, and within about a week and a half, we launched this feature. CZ is also our advisor, and Yzi Labs is an investor, so we felt this was a good entry point, and we went for it.

After launch, we did see users trying it out, but to be honest, the demand was not as large as we expected. We later realized that if someone really cares about trading privacy, they might find it more convenient to go to a CEX.

However, we haven't given up. We will continue to explore and test whether there are more suitable models for on-chain privacy trading and OTC. Our goal is to "verify without leaking market signals." We are still in the experimental stage, but currently, retail users do not have such a strong privacy preference.

Mable: This is similar to TradFi's dark pools, which mainly serve institutions rather than ordinary traders. In other words, if you want this product to succeed, don't you need more institutions to enter the market?

Leonard: That's right. The problem is that once it involves institutions, it will involve a whole regulatory and compliance framework. And our current anonymous, non-KYC state is actually a barrier that most institutions cannot cross.

We have also talked with some institutions, and they have expressed interest, but they are stuck at this point and cannot enter the market. So I think if you want to start a new Web 3 project now, you really should consider the direction of "permissioned mechanisms."

Although we are not currently working on this, I do believe that in certain scenarios, adding a bit of "permission control" layer could be the answer to resolving the conflict between privacy and compliance.

I suspect that in the next 1-2 years, those prop trading high-frequency funds may start to test the waters.

Mable: Returning to Aster's token distribution, we currently see on-chain that 96% of the supply is concentrated in a few addresses. Can you explain the structure of these wallets?

Leonard: I have seen discussions about this online, but that’s not entirely accurate. We do not control all the tokens in these addresses.

We do control a portion, but about 80% of the tokens are locked and can be verified on-chain, with a clear distribution: 50% is from airdrops, with 8% being early airdrops, and about 40% directly sent to on-chain wallets, all of which are verifiable.

The largest wallet addresses actually include one asset contract address used for users to conduct spot trading, so naturally, many tokens will be stored there.

After we opened withdrawals, a few large holders withdrew their tokens. We don’t know who they are, but they chose not to sell directly in the trading contract but withdrew to their own addresses, indicating they might be long-term holders.

I understand the concerns about the "96% concentration" figure, but in reality, at least 80% of the share is verifiable and transparently locked.

Currently, about 10% is in circulation, including the user conversion shares from APX. We initially offered old users a 1:1 conversion, which accounted for about 10%; the initial airdrop accounted for about 8%; and there will be linear releases in the future, including marketing budgets, all of which are documented and can be verified on-chain.

The reason the contract address appears to control all tokens is that most trading activities occur within this contract, but in reality, many tokens belong to users.

Mable: Is Yzi Labs your only private investor at the moment?

Leonard: Yes, but they are just minority shareholders with a low ownership percentage. However, they have provided us with a lot of support.

Mable: Does their portion of tokens have any lock-up? The community is quite concerned about this.

Leonard: We cannot disclose specific agreement details, but I can say they have no intention of cashing out. They are not short on funds and are not in a hurry to sell.

From TGE to now, our performance in the BNB ecosystem has already proven the project's value. So even without mandatory lock-ups, they have no incentive to dump the market.

The tokens they can access come from a small portion of the 5% team allocation, which is also completely transparent and can be checked on-chain. Because they invested in equity, not the tokens themselves.

Moreover, this portion is far lower than their actual investment. You can think of it as a very small incentive share. But because the token has increased significantly since its launch, even a small portion of this 5% now seems like a "considerable amount."

But in terms of token proportion, I think there’s no need to worry too much. And from a motivational perspective, they have almost no reason to sell tokens now. However, we have confidentiality obligations regarding the specific agreements and cannot disclose too much.

What are the logic behind the second phase of the points program?

Mable: Since we are talking about tokens, let's also discuss your Genesis second phase points program. I remember you are currently running the points program and have just entered the second cycle. Can you briefly explain the design logic?

Leonard: Of course. This round of the points program actually started two weeks before TGE and will last a total of four weeks.

We just finished the third week, with one week remaining. We will distribute 4% of the total supply in this round, aiming to allocate it as fairly and evenly as possible to everyone.

We particularly want to reward those who genuinely participate in trading. After all, such activities will inevitably attract some users who are just here to farm points, so we are continuously optimizing the rules to ensure that real traders, loyal users, and long-term holders can receive rewards.

We certainly cannot list all the judgment criteria; otherwise, there will always be someone finding loopholes. But for example, users with long holding times are usually genuine traders. We will also look at some other behavioral data to filter out accounts that are obviously farming, trying to ensure that rewards go to real users.

From the results, this round of activities has been quite successful in terms of trading volume. After we announced the end time and total allocation of the points activity, the platform's trading volume skyrocketed, even surpassing other projects, briefly becoming the number one in trading volume among perp DEXs.

We have ranked first in daily trading volume for three or four consecutive days.

Mable: In the third season, do you hope everyone will try other things, or does it not matter?

Leonard: Of course, we hope everyone will migrate their spot trading activities to our platform and tell us what features they truly want. Because many people are testing now, and we have received a lot of feedback. Although it can sometimes be a bit harsh to hear, we still take it very seriously.

Because now we are very clear about what we want to do. So in the new season, we hope everyone will experience our spot products and tell us which assets they want to see listed and what features they hope to add.

Mable: However, the liquidity trading pairs for spot trading probably won't have as many other assets available on Aster, right?

Leonard: Yes, currently we only have some mainstream assets, like BTC and ETH. We hope to collaborate with more issuing platforms to provide liquidity for early projects, which is a direction we have already tried and will continue to pursue, such as the asset generation process and early asset liquidity.

Because we mentioned that one of the core aspects of the entire Adventure Index is how to launch new assets faster. If we can also quickly provide liquidity for these assets, then the entire process will be very efficient, which is what the market truly needs. So we will continue to push this matter across different projects.

Mable: Regarding the rewards for the second season, will the actual distribution wait until the end of the third season to be released together, or is there another arrangement?

Leonard: Our idea is that after the second season, the amount of points and allocation you can receive will be clearly and transparently displayed to everyone. As for the specific distribution method, we are still designing it and considering what would be the most appropriate.

For example, we cannot only consider new participants; we also need to take existing token holders into account. People will worry that if we immediately dump 4% of the rewards into the market, it could create significant selling pressure. Therefore, the project team will definitely have some room for adjustment in the release pace. But the amount you can receive will be immediately made public and transparent to everyone after the second season ends.

Mable: So there will be a unlocking plan or similar arrangement?

Leonard: We are indeed researching the possibility of doing this and will design a plan based on the situation, and we will announce it soon—after all, there is only one week left, so everyone will know shortly.

This is also a key focus we are considering: how to find a balance between the interests of existing holders and the incentives for new users. So I think in the next two or three days, we will make a final decision and release an announcement.

Mable: I saw that there are discussions in the community, but no one has given a clear answer, so I thought it would be better to ask you directly during the live broadcast. Before entering the third season, you currently have not made any incentive measures for spot trading, right? So as it stands, what is the trading volume distribution like for perpetuals, spots, and the high-risk products you just mentioned?

Leonard: Perpetual contracts still account for the vast majority, as the current market trading demand is primarily concentrated in this area.

About 90% of the trading volume is in perpetual contracts, with over 80% concentrated in BTC perpetual contracts. So that's roughly the distribution of trading volume.

Mable: Interestingly, BNB is not among them; I initially thought BNB would at least have a similar proportion in perpetual trading as Ethereum.

Leonard: I think this is because for those who genuinely want to trade BNB, Binance's own products are already very mature. And in other markets, the demand for BNB is not that high, so the trading volume is relatively low.

Mable: I feel like I've asked enough about tokens. Let's talk about the XPL incident. I know there are some details you may not be able to disclose, but within the scope you can share, could you walk everyone through what happened? For example, the XPL perpetual index pricing configuration error caused the price to spike to $4, resulting in losses for some users. Can you tell everyone about the post-mortem process?

Leonard: Regarding this experience, some very smart people later summarized the issues on Twitter. I believe our biggest mistake was that it got stuck in "pre-market mode."

If it were a regular perpetual contract, it would automatically follow the correct index price, and there wouldn't be a situation where the price spiked and deviated from the market price. But pre-market perpetuals inherently carry this risk—because their pricing can only rely on the internal matching book, not the public market price. In other words, during the pre-market phase, there is no external price source, and we can only derive the price from our internal order book. When we adjusted the configuration, we mistakenly derived an incorrect price from the internal order book.

We quickly identified this error and immediately switched it back to the regular perpetual mode, restoring normalcy. It was our mistake, and we quickly decided to fully compensate the affected users, absorbing the losses ourselves. Because at that time, there was no better solution to this problem. It also reminded us that pre-market products inherently carry higher risks.

In the future, we will take some improvement measures. First, even for pre-market perpetuals, we can obtain oracle prices through external pre-market data, such as referencing pre-market data from trading platforms like Binance, rather than relying solely on the internal matching book. If we had such a mechanism at that time, this incident could have been completely avoided.

Of course, as long as it’s a pre-market, there will inevitably be risks. If there is a lack of external price signals and insufficient liquidity, there is always a possibility of similar price deviations occurring. So we need to find a balance on two fronts: one is to assess whether we have enough capability to manage this risk, and the other is to see how much market demand there is for the product. If the market truly needs it, we must enhance risk control measures to ensure the system's robustness and avoid making the same mistake again.

Mable: Regarding the oracle issue, I actually have a related question. I remember you planned to launch tokenized stock products. So where will the price or data sources for these assets come from? Do you plan to offer 24/7 trading?

Leonard: Currently, we use oracles from sources like Pyth. Due to the limitations of the oracles themselves, we cannot achieve 24/7 trading. For example, when there is no data, we cannot continuously provide prices. We can use a "pre-market" approach, meaning when there are no oracle quotes, we derive prices from the internal order book.

But the problem with this approach is that we can only limit trading within a price range. However, this actually loses its meaning—if volatility is restricted to ±2%, people usually won't be interested in trading; and once real volatility occurs, trading demand is highest, but due to strict risk controls, trading cannot proceed normally, which poses significant risks for users.

So, at present, we cannot provide trading services for tokenized stocks during after-hours. Unless we can find better oracles that can cover longer time periods. For example, we are currently researching some index-type assets whose futures are traded across multiple markets, allowing oracles to provide near 23-hour price data. For instance, the Nasdaq index can continuously obtain market data through the futures market. If it’s such an asset, we might open trading close to 24 hours. But for individual stocks, we are still limited by the reality that oracles cannot provide prices around the clock.

Will Aster conduct buybacks?

Mable: I remember in another interview, someone mentioned that you might have a buyback plan. How frequently would such measures generally occur?

Leonard: I think we don’t want to commit to a fixed timetable for now. We prefer to give the project or operational team more autonomy over how to use the income. That said, we will indeed conduct buybacks and will allocate a certain proportion of income to it. The specific amounts and frequency will be announced later. But it can be assured that we will not design it as a fixed, entirely predictable mechanism. Compared to some other projects, we will retain more flexibility to optimize allocation based on income.

Mable: Yes, actually, on this issue, different founders have very different views. For example, the founders of Pengu believe that buybacks are not the best use of funds, but they do it because of external expectations and pressures, considering it an industry norm. On the other hand, people from Pyth firmly believe that all income should be 100% reinvested into the tokens. I know your answer now does not represent Aster's final decision, but philosophically, how do you view this execution logic?

Leonard: I am personally a pragmatic person, and I believe the best answer often lies somewhere in between. Extreme solutions are hard to apply in all situations. Sometimes, using 100% of income for buybacks may be the optimal solution, but at other times, allocating a larger proportion for project development may be more beneficial.

So the key is to maintain flexibility. As we conduct one or two buybacks, the community will gradually build trust, believing that we are using funds in a good and responsible manner. Ultimately, as the project matures, we can also automate and standardize the mechanism. I have a background in traditional finance and have read a lot about it, so I tend to be rational and cautious in this regard.

When I was younger, I read many investment-related books, so I understand why some people say buybacks are not necessarily the best choice. Because it is essentially akin to dividends; when an institution chooses to distribute dividends, it usually means there are no better ways to utilize those funds. For projects like ours, we still have many opportunities to use funds in more valuable ways, such as investing in teams and partnerships to drive further growth.

Another important factor is that the token price will directly affect the efficiency of buybacks. If we just use an automated algorithm to execute buybacks while the price is high, the effect may be counterproductive. Sometimes it may be effective, but it often distorts market expectations and pushes the price up.

So I think two points are crucial:

First, the proportion of buybacks and how much of the income should be used for buybacks should be flexibly adjusted based on the project's stage, rather than being fixed.

Second, I believe that in terms of execution, it does not need to be 100% transparent; otherwise, it may reduce efficiency. But after the buyback is completed, all information must be publicly transparent, recorded on-chain, and available for everyone to supervise. Otherwise, it becomes a gimmick: you announce a buyback, but no one knows where you bought back or how much, which is meaningless.

Therefore, we need a certain degree of flexibility in execution; but afterward, all data must be transparent and verifiable to ensure that the outside world clearly knows what we have done.

Mable: So you might disclose it like this: for this quarter, you decide to use only 30% of the income for buybacks, while clearly explaining why the remaining funds need to be used for other purposes. This logic is quite reasonable.

Leonard: Exactly, and we can adjust at any time. If the community provides strong feedback and presents reasonable opinions, we can completely change our approach. It is precisely because we did not fix the proportion from the beginning that we have this flexibility to continuously optimize over time.

Mable: Yes, especially as your market cap grows, it’s impossible to satisfy everyone; you always have to find a balance. I believe you are already experiencing this situation.

Leonard: Indeed, our scale is growing rapidly, and we are continuously learning.

Mable: I want to talk about the product itself. I looked at your existing features, and you mentioned earlier that you hope to gradually provide more features and services similar to centralized trading platforms. However, you already have grid trading functionality. Why did you prioritize launching this feature?

Leonard: In fact, we launched this feature quite early, during the internal testing phase of the trading platform. Clearly, this is a very practical feature, especially for those who are not particularly professional traders; if they just want to run a certain strategy, this tool is very convenient. It’s also great for the trading platform, as it can provide such functionality from the start, ensuring a good user experience.

Not just in terms of fee revenue, but more importantly, liquidity. Because most retail users, if you don’t provide them with such tools, will often just place market orders and directly take the market price. But if you equip them with such tools, they will trade using limit orders, which not only allows them to run strategies but also makes them liquidity providers. So this is actually a win-win situation: retail users can run strategies while also providing liquidity to the market. That’s why we launched this feature early on and have continued to refine it to this day.

Mable: So what does your current trading user profile look like? I guess you also pay attention to data like IP distribution?

Leonard: Previously, our IPs were mostly concentrated in Asia. Of course, we basically self-custody this information and do not need to grasp all the information about every user. Just from the overall IP usage, before TGE, users mainly came from Asia. But after TGE, we have clearly felt an increasing interest from the Western world. You can also see this from Twitter, where more and more users speaking English and European languages are discussing us. So you could say that the user composition is changing.

Mable: I heard that some external teams are using your API and data, and it seems that some have provided feedback regarding data format issues. Do you have any improvement plans in this regard?

Leonard: Yes, we have received a lot of feedback on this. Our team is almost working around the clock to address these issues. If we sometimes fail to respond promptly, we apologize, but we are indeed gradually clearing technical debt. Everyone can always join our Discord, or directly DM me, or contact us through our official Twitter account. In fact, after TGS, some developers proactively reached out to us with valuable technical improvement suggestions. For example, one long-standing issue we’ve had is the slow recharge speed of Solana contracts. Later, a developer offered to help, and now we have formed a small group to directly interface with our team to research solutions.

We are now releasing updates almost three times a day to ensure that system improvements can be implemented as quickly as possible. I think everyone will soon see significant improvements. If there’s anything else that troubles you, please let us know; we sincerely hope to fix it as soon as possible.

How to Build Aster Chain?

Mable: Yes, if there’s anything needed on the Solana side, we will definitely help you resolve it. I think this is similar to the situation with Arbitrum or other chains; everyone should be very interested in collaborating with you. I want to change the topic; you mentioned Aster Chain in another interview. Can you talk more about it? What role do you expect this chain to play in the future?

Leonard: We hope that all transactions on-chain can be transparent and verifiable while retaining a certain degree of trading privacy. This is the goal of building Aster Chain.

Some competitors spend a lot of resources building a complete ecosystem on their own chains, but that is not the direction we want to focus on. We prefer to integrate with other chains and aggregate the credit of these transactions onto our chain, allowing everyone to verify. We are not saying that approach is bad; other projects are also doing an excellent job building ecosystems. It’s just that our focus is different—we care more about the trading experience.

We hope to focus on providing a good trading environment and user experience for at least the next three to six months. The positioning of Aster Chain is to provide transparency and verifiability, rather than to create another "universal chain" that attracts everyone to build on it. Frankly speaking, I think there are already enough chains; we do not need another new L1.

But we do need a better decentralized trading experience. So I believe that is where Aster Chain's value lies. Of course, the strategy may adjust over time, and there may be shifts in the future, but at least for now, we want to focus on building a better trading platform.

Mable: I understand. Just like Hyperliquid benefits from having its own chain, allowing it to collect gas fees and have protocol income. I guess you had similar considerations when starting out?

Leonard: Yes, I believe that in the long run, we may invest more in the chain itself. But in the short term, our focus is still on perfecting all trading functions. After all, building a complete ecosystem is a very large and complex project, and we do not want to be distracted at this stage. What we are best at and should focus on is building a fully functional trading platform with a user experience close to that of centralized trading platforms. As for the L1 ecosystem, that is something to consider in the future.

Mable: Right, I mean, if you have a lot of trading settled on Aster Chain, then you can basically earn protocol income, and this income won’t flow to other L1s or other EVM chains. Is this the underlying logic behind your considerations?

Leonard: There are two points. First, we are indeed placing transactions on our own chain, but it is only running internally and has not been fully launched publicly. It will consume gas but has not been fully activated. We hope to make this information public so that everyone can run nodes and verify. This is our goal. As for whether to build a complete ecosystem around it, that is not the primary task right now. We may do so in the future, but it is not the focus at the moment. That will be considered once we feel the platform is mature enough.

Mable: Do you have a market maker program? Can anyone apply to join?

Leonard: We do have a market maker program. If you go to our website documentation, there is a Market Maker Program page with detailed information, including trading volume requirements, fees, and the incentive pool tokens they can earn, which are separate from other points systems. Interested parties can contact us directly via email; all information is on that page.

Mable: Can you share how many market makers you currently have, or is that information not available for now?

Leonard: I won’t disclose specific numbers. But I can say that we have already engaged with many, and quite a few have already joined. Active market makers are dynamic because they become more active with higher trading volumes. If liquidity demand increases, more people will join.

Yes, they mainly provide credit trading; they can only make money when there is liquidity demand. In the past two weeks, trading volume has been very high, and many are willing to pay for quality trades. We receive many inquiries daily from those wanting to join the market maker program because people see the market liquidity and know they can make money by providing liquidity, which is in high demand.

Mable: Currently, you only have a web and desktop version. Will you develop a mobile app or distribute through other front ends?

Leonard: In fact, we do have a mobile version; it’s just that we may not have done enough promotion to let everyone know we have a complete product.

Mable: Oh, really?

Leonard: Yes, we have an Android version available for download on Google Play. The iOS version is still in the process of being approved for the App Store, but it is indeed ready.

We are also collaborating with other wallets. For example, we are working with Trust Wallet and SafePal to help us build the front end. It’s similar to what Base has done; Base and Phantom have also done similar things. We will soon launch with Trust Wallet, allowing everyone to start trading directly using Trust Wallet or SafePal. We are advancing with multiple partners, and if any wallets want to collaborate with us on the front end rather than just doing it for us, we welcome them to reach out. We are also looking for partners.

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