Aster News Today: Aster Challenges DEXs with CEX-Speed Liquidity Hybrid

Aster, a decentralized perpetual exchange, has launched Stage 4 of its airdrop program, dubbed "Harvest," alongside a $10 million "Double Harvest" trading competition to accelerate ecosystem growth. The initiative follows strong engagement during Stage 3 and aims to boost user participation and trading depth through parallel incentive tracks. The airdrop will distribute 1.5% of the total $ASTER supply—approximately 120 million tokens—across six weekly epochs, while the trading competition features five independent weekly leaderboards.

The platform's "Double Harvest" structure allows users to earn both airdrop and competition rewards from identical trading activity, creating a compounding effect on user incentives. This dual-reward system aligns with Aster's broader strategy to enhance liquidity and engagement, particularly for early-stage projects. The Rocket Launch product, which debuted in October 2025, has already demonstrated traction, launching five token campaigns with a cumulative $3 million reward pool in its first month.

Aster's infrastructure roadmap is also advancing, with active development of a high-performance, on-chain order-book Layer-1 protocol. Designed to process order placement, matching, and cancellation directly at the protocol layer, the system aims to replicate centralized exchange (CEX)-like execution speeds while maintaining transparency, self-custody, and privacy. Internal testing is slated for late 2025, with a mainnet launch targeted for Q1 2026.

The platform's global expansion efforts are gaining momentum. CEO Leonard recently presented at Binance Campus APAC in Korea, outlining infrastructure plans to regional industry leaders. Aster will also participate in Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai this December, further solidifying its presence in the decentralized trading ecosystem. The platform has deepened integrations with wallet providers like Trust Wallet and Safepal, while expanding its product lineup to include gold and index perpetual contracts.

Aster's token utility is set to expand in the coming quarters, with plans to introduce staking, governance rights, fee discounts, and yield-enhanced DeFi integrations. These developments position $ASTER as a multi-faceted asset within the platform's ecosystem, addressing both speculative and functional use cases.

Meanwhile, the company faces competition from other decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and centralized platforms vying for market share in the high-growth crypto trading space. However, Aster's hybrid model-combining on-chain infrastructure with incentive-driven growth-differentiates it by appealing to both institutional and retail traders seeking transparency and liquidity.