salman malik

In crypto, people often think that being close to a project or having access to insider information guarantees profit.

But the ASTER case shows otherwise. Even for those close to the ecosystem, such successes are rarely predictable.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spoken with a few dozen former Binance employees, and I was surprised: very few of them actually bought ASTER. You’d think “insiders” would know and buy, right? But that’s not how it works. Let me explain.

Aster grew out of the old project ApolloX. ApolloX itself was never considered an industry star. The project went through tough times, changed teams more than once, and was even hacked at one point. There were no clear signs of sudden success.

Within the crypto circles, people had known about ASTER for months, and about ApolloX for years. Sure, everyone understood that BNB Chain needed its own perp DEX. But Binance has always had plenty of similar projects - both internal and ones it invested in. Remember KiloEX? They tried to push that one too, but it never really took off. Binance never saved a team just because it had “big names” behind it. The approach was always the same: a project has to prove it has market fit on its own.

And that’s exactly why it’s never clear in advance how deeply Binance or CZ is involved in a project. There were many candidates to become the top DEX, and picking the “right” one was almost impossible. The moment a trend becomes strategic and receives capital and strong support can only be seen in hindsight.

That’s why arguments like “this project has CZ/Justin/Arthur behind it” don’t mean much to those who understand the space. What matters isn’t the name, or even the product itself - it’s the final intentions of those making the decisions.

CZ has followed the same pattern multiple times: notice a successful trend and then launch a competing product once a proven leader and business model already exist. With Aster, this worked. In some ways, it’s similar to SushiSwap’s attack on Uniswap back in the DeFi summer.

The main takeaway: in crypto, what really matters is capital and timing. The strongest marketing is the token itself. If the token is pumping, it creates positivity and loyalty. If it dumps, the product gets buried no matter how good it is. Aster didn’t have a breakthrough product, but that turned out not to be necessary - strategic timing and capital support were the key factors in its success.

Right now, Solana is also “looking for its team” to build a perp DEX. It’s obvious that at some point, one of those perp DEX tokens on Solana will take off. But predicting exactly which one will be at the center of attention? That’s almost impossible, we can only guess.