Conversation with Aster CEO: When CZ comes knocking with "massive traffic," how are we prepared to respond?

Interview: The Round Trip

Compiled & Edited by Yuliya, PANews

In the increasingly fierce competition within the DEX space, liquidity and user experience are becoming the most scarce and valuable core elements worldwide. After Aster completed TGE and achieved explosive growth a few months ago, this DEX invested by YZi Labs has also attracted greater external attention.

In the new series Founder’s Talk of “The Round Trip,” jointly produced by PANews and Web3.com Ventures, host John Scianna and Cassidy Huang invite Aster founder and CEO Leonard to delve into the story behind Aster’s success, how to handle “massive traffic” and retain users, and how to build a complete business blueprint for “trustless” asset management.

Unexpected Gains from the Human vs AI Trading Battle

PANews: Hello Leonard, we know that Aster recently concluded a highly watched “Humans vs AI” trading competition. It seems to be quite challenging for both sides, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on this, perhaps combined with your observations of the current market?

Leonard: I think it was a very interesting experiment. Many people focus excessively on the performance of human traders versus AI agents, but I believe that today, it’s hard to define what exactly a “pure human trader” is, because almost everyone is using some form of AI tools for research or decision support. Therefore, adaptability is far more important than profitability in a specific period, whether for AI or humans.

However, we did observe something very interesting: AI can actually enable more trustless asset management and copy trading. When we communicate with users, we find that people tend to subconsciously speculate about the motives behind human traders. Human behavior changes based on being observed or due to incentive mechanisms, but AI agents do not. As long as you give them instructions and resources, they will execute faithfully. Therefore, even if an AI agent’s performance is comparable to or slightly worse than a human trader, users are more inclined to entrust funds to AI. Because the input (i.e., its strategic logic) of AI is transparent, which is crucial in a “trustless” infrastructure.

We believe that the breakthrough in the future lies in creating a truly “permissionless, trustless” AI trading product. This is exactly the direction we plan to continue investing in and exploring deeply in the next quarter.

When CZ Comes Knocking: From Massive Traffic to a “Sweet Burden”

PANews: Speaking of attention, many people started noticing Aster because of CZ. Not long ago, he publicly disclosed holding over $2 million worth of Aster tokens and has been very active in the community, even joking that he’s “stuck.” CZ’s involvement is undoubtedly a huge validation and endorsement for Aster. What’s your view on this?

Leonard: CZ’s attention and personal investment are definitely positive signals for us. Any project would be happy to gain such level of attention. Of course, this support also brings enormous expectations and pressure, which the market and price reflect.

But I’d rather bear the pressure than be marginalized by the market. To do something extraordinary, you must first bear extraordinary weight. This “discomfort” keeps us alert and moving forward. I also hope that in the future, more respected industry figures like CZ will put their trust in us with “real money.” This attention can bring heat and users to the ecosystem, and in the long run, it helps us improve our product iterations.

PANews: When CZ brought this wave of sudden attention and traffic, how did your team respond? I’m curious because often, the product might not be fully prepared to handle such scale of demand.

Leonard: There are two aspects to this.

First is “toughing it out.” When traffic floods in, the system exposes various issues under pressure. There are no shortcuts—you have to work around the clock to scale servers, mobilize all available experts to “put out fires.” This ultimately tests how strong your and your team’s resolve is, whether you’re willing to invest extraordinary resources, time, and effort.

Second, after passing the initial crisis mode, you need to calm down and think about how to more efficiently convert this traffic. We admit that we weren’t fully prepared at first, which led to subpar experiences for some early users. Winning back a “hurt” and lost user is much harder than acquiring a new one. We are currently facing this challenge. But the good news is, these stress tests and user feedback have pushed us to make huge progress in UI/UX and system stability over the past three months.

Every entrepreneur dreams of the moment when the product is in demand beyond supply, but for those who haven’t experienced it, my advice is “be careful what you wish for,” because it is indeed a sweet burden.

Survival Rules in the DEX “Involution”: Returning to Product and Value Flywheel

PANews: Today, competition in the Perp DEX track is becoming increasingly fierce, with new projects and features emerging constantly, all vying for users through airdrops and hype. After the TGE hype subsides, how do you plan to maintain market enthusiasm and retain users in this environment?

Leonard: That’s indeed a major challenge in the current market. Every project in a hot track must go through this process. We believe the ultimate answer still comes down to the product itself.

For Web3 projects, a key point is how “user-driven” your product is. Can you create an environment where users feel they are part of the product? Can they participate in governance, influence the product roadmap? When the community feels they have “shares” in the project, stickiness is created.

Ultimately, you need to run a sustainable closed loop:

• Create a product that truly generates value.
• Find a model where users are willing to pay for that value.
• Effectively return the captured value to your token holders.

Once this flywheel is spinning, the project becomes sustainable. The rest is about finding your differentiation in fierce competition—either offering something others don’t have or providing a much better experience on the same features.

From Privacy “Shields” to Focus on “Application Chains”

PANews: I noticed a very interesting feature on Aster DEX called “Shield Mode,” which seems to be a new privacy trading function. Why did you choose privacy as a core layout direction? Are you aiming to fill a market gap?

Leonard: We have been working on the privacy narrative for some time. As early as June this year, discussions around “liquidation sniping” were very intense in the industry. Regardless of the truth behind these disputes, they revealed a clear market demand: traders want to protect their trading privacy while maintaining self-custody and verifiability. Currently, there is no perfect solution on the market that can meet all these requirements simultaneously.

Our team believes that to achieve large-scale adoption of cryptocurrencies, we must address this segment of market demand. Therefore, we have been trying to launch various features with “privacy options.” “Shield Mode” is one such attempt; it not only offers privacy but also tests other new features, such as leverage up to 1000x, and these trades do not enter the public order book, suitable for traders with special strategies. We are also testing a “profit-sharing” mode, where we only charge fees when your trade is profitable.

Our goal is to provide users with more options—whether different fee structures, leverage levels, or privacy features—so that users with different preferences can find a suitable trading method on the DEX.

PANews: Since we’re talking about products, Aster Chain is also about to launch. How do you view Aster Chain as an independent product? Does this mean Aster will evolve from a single DEX app into a broader ecosystem?

Leonard: First, I want to clarify: Aster’s core product remains trading. In the next two to three quarters, we won’t focus too much on building a large ecosystem around Aster Chain.

We believe there are already enough general-purpose public chains on the market to meet most needs. The reason we are building our own chain is very specific: to serve our own trading products. We need a chain that can deliver the performance we expect, the transparency we require, and support privacy options. In existing solutions, we cannot find one that satisfies this “impossible triangle,” so we have to build one ourselves.

Therefore, Aster Chain is more like an “application chain” at this stage, with its primary goal being to optimize Aster’s trading experience. Of course, in the future, other projects might find they also need similar blockchain infrastructure, but that’s not our current focus. In such a highly competitive industry, you must excel in what you do best—delivering top-tier trading experience to survive.

PANews: Aster Chain is expected to launch mainnet in 2026. How do you view the market prospects for 2026? (Disclaimer: not investment advice)

Leonard: Hopefully so. I’m not good at predicting prices because they involve too many complex variables like market liquidity and macro sentiment. But I am personally quite confident. As long as we keep building, I believe in the next cycle, we have the chance to reach new heights.

Aster Chain aims to go live with mainnet by the end of Q1, which will undoubtedly add more utility to our token and is positive from a fundamental perspective. We might currently be at the bottom of the market, so future performance is likely to be better than now.

How We Build Confidence with the Community

PANews: In the current market environment, how is the community feeling? After all, price performance directly affects holders’ confidence.

Leonard: We understand this very well. Many community sentiments are indeed tied to price performance, as everyone has invested real money. Our team has been listening carefully to community feedback and continuously improving our economic model accordingly. For example, we have optimized the protocol revenue-based buyback and burn mechanism to ensure that the value captured by the protocol is fairly returned to token holders.

We cannot control the market, but we can control our actions—how many new features we launch that create value, and how we design our economic model. We are a project with sustainable positive cash flow, and we will continue to use the generated fees for buybacks. I believe that as long as we keep doing the right things and repeat this value cycle, we will eventually accumulate enough buying pressure to push the token price to new all-time highs. This might take a month, two months, or even a year, but as long as the direction is correct, we will see the right results.

Looking Ahead to 2026: Three Expectations for AI, Privacy, and “Perpetual Sustainability”

PANews: Finally, for 2026, what are you personally most looking forward to?

Leonard: I look forward to three things.

• First, the adoption of privacy features. We have invested a lot in this direction. I am eager to see how many users choose to trade openly and how many prefer private trading. This will be an important validation of our assumptions about user needs.
• Second, the integration of AI and asset management. I firmly believe AI will shine in “trustless” asset management. Letting AI take over investment decisions and building user trust in this mode could lead to many exciting innovative products.
• Third, “everything can be perpetual.” Perpetual contracts, with their 24/7 trading, low fees, and high leverage, are an excellent trading product. As long as an asset has sufficient liquidity and can be quantified, it can potentially be “perpetualized.” Last year, there was much discussion about stocks and commodities. I am very curious about what new, even more “qualitative” assets (like influencer impact indices, project reputation scores, etc.) will be created and mature into perpetual contracts by 2026, especially driven by the increasingly hot prediction markets. This unknown excites me the most.