Aster CEO talks chain launch, buybacks and future plans

In a new interview, Aster CEO Leonard discusses what the project has in store for its growing community with plans to launch a chain that focuses more on trading utilities as well as a token buyback plan in the near future.

In an interview with social protocol Trends founder Mable Jiang on Sept. 29, the Aster CEO explained that the project is gearing up for the third phase, dubbed Season 3 for the fast-growing project. At the moment, the team is preparing to launch Aster Chain to facilitate trading, but not a whole ecosystem.

Leonard stated that the aim of Aster (ASTER) Chain is to make sure all trade on-chain is transparent, verifiable and preserve the on-chain privacy of its users.

“We want to integrate more into other chain and aggregate that liquidity on our chain and make it verifiable for everyone. I think it’s great what other projects are doing. It’s just that we’re focusing on something different. We want to focus on the trading experience,” said Leonard in the interview.

For the first three to six months, continued Leonard, the team will focus on securing sufficient liquidity and improving the UI-UX for on-chain trading. However, the team is not looking to create “another EVM chain that everybody would build on.”

“I think there are too many chains right now, to be honest, like we don’t need more of L1, but we do need a better decentralized trading experience,” he added.

He said that building an entire ecosystem would take a lot of effort and investment, while the team wants to focus on building a trading platform that includes a suite of features that people see on centralized exchanges.

In addition, Leonard wants spot trading to become an integral part of the Aster project, considering that spot trading of the token recently blew up at a rather rapid pace. He revealed that trading volume for the token recently soared, reaching $3.05 billion.

“Things happened very quickly, and we didn’t expect spot trading to catch fire that fast. That’s why we want to start season three early,” he said.

The new stage will reward loyal early users while also expanding beyond perpetual contracts. Currently, perps make up around 90% of trading on the platform, dominated by Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Aster. By contrast, spot pairs remain limited; with Aster accounting for nearly 90% of that market.

The team also highlighted plans to support early-stage assets with fresh liquidity.

“One of the advantages of a DEX is how quickly we can list an asset. If we can also provide liquidity right away, that’s something the market wants,” said Leonard.

Aster CEO hints at a ‘flexible’ token buyback

When asked about a possible schedule for token buybacks, Leonard said that the team does not want to commit to a fixed schedule when it comes to possible token buybacks. He believes that the operators and community should have more control over where the income is being invested.

“I do think that we will do buybacks and we will contribute a significant amount of our income to that. The exact number, and frequency we will announce, but I don’t think we will make it permanent,” Leonard stated.

According to the Aster CEO, the team will not stick to a “predictable” pattern. Unlike other projects that follow a strict token buyback schedule with controlled amounts that occur periodically, the Aster team wants to “keep some flexibility on how all this income is being invested.” Therefore, at different stages of the project, the team plans on adjusting its token buybacks accordingly rather than implementing a permanent plan.

Although, Leonard emphasized that the team will be putting forward transparency regarding their token buyback plans and how much of the income percentage will be allocated for it. If the community disagrees with the buyback, then the team would make the necessary adjustments.

“After the buyback, all this information should be shared. [It] should be transparent, it should be logged to somewhere where everybody can monitor because otherwise it wouldn’t benefit anyone, right?” Leonard stated.