In the crypto space, a year is too long. If you had asked me this question two weeks ago, I might have given you a completely different answer," said Aster CEO Leonard in a recent interview. This entrepreneur, who transitioned from traditional investment banking, is now steering the much-anticipated decentralized exchange platform Aster.
Aster is seen by outsiders as a Perp DEX of the Binance ecosystem, but Leonard offers a whole new definition: "We are no longer a traditional perp DEX."
His goals are even more ambitious: to replicate 80% of the product experience on CEX within a year, and hopes to one day surpass Binance—their biggest investor.
01 From Traditional Finance to Web3: Leonard’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Leonard’s career began in a technical position at an investment bank in Hong Kong, focusing on the development of high-frequency trading systems and risk engines. This experience gave him deep insights into the operational mechanisms and limitations of traditional financial markets.
Around 2015 and 2016, he started his first business, venturing into a B-end fintech loan platform in Asia. However, there was immense regulatory pressure at that time, coupled with chaos in the industry, and the project ultimately failed.
After his initial entrepreneurial setback, Leonard began searching for better solutions and came into contact with blockchain in 2016.
He recalled: "I was initially attracted by ICOs, invested in a few projects, and made some money on the first one, thinking I was a genius. However, I ended up losing everything on the next few projects."
It was these early experiences that sparked his strong interest in blockchain technology itself.
In 2019, he joined the DeFi project Injective Finance, and subsequently was influenced by dYdX Inspired by this, the possibility of building a trading platform on the chain began to take shape, ultimately giving birth to the prototype of Aster.
02 Beyond Perp DEX: Aster’s New Positioning and Vision
Although it started with perpetual contracts, Leonard emphasized that Aster has evolved into a multi-chain integrated trading platform.
"In everyone’s impression, Aster is a project of the Binance ecosystem, because we started from the very beginning. BNB"We started with Chain," he explained, "but we are no longer just BNB Chain. We also support Arbitrum, OP, Linea, Solana, and in the future, we will connect to more chains."
In the past two weeks, it has been the spot trading product of Aster that has attracted a large number of new users, as users can only trade Aster coins through the on-chain order book.
At the same time, Aster is also one of the largest yield asset providers on the BNB Chain, offering products like USDS and aUSDT, allowing users to earn yields while using these assets as collateral for trading.
Leonard clearly pointed out Aster’s competitive direction: "Our real competitors are not other DEXs, but CEXs themselves. What we hope to do is an on-chain version of Binance."
03 Dark Pool Design: Balancing Privacy and Transparency in On-chain Experiments
Aster launched the "dark pool" design on the first day of the product launch, allowing users to conduct order trades with hidden directions and quantities. This design is inspired by traditional finance.
Leonard shared his insights: "In the TradFi world, the volume of dark pools and OTC far exceeds that of the public trading market."
He believes that there is also a potential demand for "privacy preferences" in on-chain financial transactions.
However, the design of dark pools has also brought about a conflict between transparency and privacy. Leonard admitted that there is currently no method for "public verification" of the fairness of hidden orders.
"If someone has a good solution, we welcome cooperation very much," he said, "We also have some ideas, but we haven’t figured them out completely yet."
Regarding the future of dark pools, Leonard believes that success largely depends on institutional participation, but the current anonymous, non-KYC status is a barrier for most institutions.
He speculates that the Prop Trading high-frequency fund may start to test the waters in 1-2 years.
04 Token Economy and Incentive Program: Pursuing a Balance of Fairness and Efficiency
In response to external doubts about the Token "96% concentrated in a few addresses," Leonard provided clarification:
- At least 80% of the Tokens are verifiable and transparent on-chain locked states, of which 50% is used for airdrops.
- The largest wallet address is actually the asset contract address, used for users to conduct spot trading.
- Yzi Labs is the only private investor, investing in equity rather than the Token itself, and their share of Tokens is very small with no intention of cashing out.
Aster is conducting the second phase of its points program, allocating a total of 4% of the total supply, with the goal of fairly and evenly distributing it to loyal users who actively participate in transactions and long-term holders.
After the announcement of the plan, Aster’s daily trading volume once surpassed other Perp DEXs, becoming the number one in trading volume.
To avoid significant selling pressure caused by the immediate release of 4% of the rewards, the project party will maintain a flexible release schedule, but the specific amount obtained by users will be made public and transparent immediately after the end of the second quarter.
05 Honest Review: XPL Incident and Oracle Challenges
In an exclusive interview, Leonard candidly reviewed the incident where the pricing configuration error of the XPL perpetual index led to a price surge.
He analyzed the root of the problem: "The biggest mistake is that XPL got stuck in the ‘pre-market mode’, and the pricing can only rely on the internal matching book rather than the open market price, leading to internal allocation errors that resulted in incorrect pricing."
After the incident, Aster immediately switched back to the regular perpetual mode and fully compensated the affected users.
Leonard also shared the future improvement direction: even for pre-market perpetuals, oracle prices from external pre-market markets will be introduced as a reference.
Regarding the trading of tokenized stocks, he pointed out the current technical limitations: due to the limitations of oracles like Pyth, Aster is temporarily unable to provide 24/7 tokenized stock trading services.
06 Aster Chain: Infrastructure Focused on Verifiability
Leonard revealed in an interview the positioning of Aster Chain - it is not just another "universal L1", but an infrastructure focused on "transaction credit aggregation and verifiability".
"We hope to aggregate all transaction credits on the blockchain so that everyone can verify these transactions," he elaborated on his vision.
This pragmatic strategy runs through Leonard’s planning for Aster Chain: in the short term, the focus will be on providing a good trading environment and user experience.
Building a complete ecosystem is a long-term direction, but he bluntly stated that "there are already enough chains now," and attention should not be scattered.
07 Buyback Strategy and User Experience: The Path of Pragmatism
Regarding the market’s concern about the repurchase issue, Leonard holds a pragmatic attitude and opposes rigid and predictable fixed mechanisms.
"Aster will allocate a certain proportion of its revenue for buybacks, but will not commit to a fixed schedule and ratio, in order to retain the autonomy for optimal allocation based on revenue and project stages."
He believes that in the early stages of a project, allocating funds to invest in the team and partnerships to drive growth is more valuable than using 100% for buybacks.
In terms of user experience, Aster has launched a grid trading feature that not only helps non-professional traders implement strategies but also allows them to become liquidity providers by trading reversely through limit orders.
With the completion of the TGE (Token Generation Event), the user composition of Aster has also changed: before the TGE, users mainly came from Asia, and after the TGE, there has been a noticeable increase in interest from the Western world.
Future Outlook
Aster’s goal is not to become another dYdX or GMX, but to create a complete and composable DEX product matrix. Leonard and his team are gradually reconstructing the CEX trading experience on-chain with a pragmatic strategy.
"In five years, I hope the entire DEX industry can surpass CEX, and we will be one of the leaders." This entrepreneur, who comes from traditional finance, is steadily leading Aster towards this goal.
