Aster's New Token Buyback Plan Sends ASTER Price up 19%

Perp DEX platform, Aster is gaining attention after announcing a major update to its token system that sent the ASTER token soaring. CoinCodex data shows that the altcoin is now up 19% in the past 24 hours, trading at $0.78.

In a recent X post, the trading platform announced that it will begin to allocate 99% of its daily fees to buying back ASTER tokens. At the same time, it will permanently remove an equal number of tokens from its reserves. This would essentially reduce the overall supply over time and create scarcity.

The new move has led to new comparisons between Aster and Hyperliquid, which currently leads the decentralized perpetual trading market.

Aster increases rewards for long-term holders

Under the new plan, Aster will use nearly all of its daily revenue to buy ASTER tokens from the market. Those tokens will then be added to the platform's Loyalty Rewards program and distributed to users who lock their tokens through veASTER.

The platform said the rewards will be added on top of its existing 300,000 ASTER reward pool. The team also said they will burn an equal amount of tokens from their reserves. These burns will happen every two weeks until the total supply falls to 3 billion tokens.

The project originally launched with a total supply of 8 billion tokens. As of press time, total supply has shrunk to about 7.82 billion tokens. Aster has already completed more than $214 million in buybacks and removed over 143 million ASTER tokens from circulation in less than a month.

The company believes the new system will directly connect platform growth with token value. If trading activity increases, more fees will be generated. This will lead to more buybacks and more token burns.

Can Aster challenge Hyperliquid?

The announcement comes as Hyperliquid continues to dominate the decentralized derivatives market. Data from Talos shows that Hyperliquid now has more than $10 billion in open interest across its perpetual futures products.

Source: Talos

Furthermore, Hyperliquid has grown to incorporate markets connected with stocks, commodities, indexes, and even privately held firms. Currently, the firm’s HIP-3 market accounts for about $4 billion in Hyperliquid’s total open interest, while trading volume is nearing $3 billion per day.

With such growth, Hyperliquid has become the benchmark for many new trading platforms, including Aster. Just recently, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao publicly praised the platform while still issuing strong warnings amid its rapid growth.

On the other hand, Aster’s most recent tokenomics upgrade is only one of the many shifts happening on its platform. In Monday’s update, the company added a new feature that allows users to post bStocks as collateral. This would enable users of Binance’s U.S. equities tokens to leverage their assets for perpetual trades.

Overall, it looks like the team is seeking to increase liquidity by adding new value propositions.