Despite the team's increasing efforts in buybacks, the performance of Aster Coin remains weak. The official update on the buyback plan on platform X was intended to stabilize market sentiment, but unexpectedly, the comments section exploded, and the coin price showed no mercy, continuing to decline.
In this post, the Aster team candidly admitted that there are many misunderstandings about the buyback in the market, and therefore decided to publicly explain the current progress. They emphasized that 'the fourth phase of buybacks has never stopped', and starting from December 8, they have increased the daily buyback amount to $4 million, accelerating execution for 8 consecutive days, with a total buyback amount reaching $32 million.
As of now, the team has stated that nearly 90% of the fourth phase's transaction fee revenue has been used for buybacks. The buyback will restart on December 17 and will continue until the end of this phase, with funding still coming from the previous day's transaction fees, and the rules remaining unchanged.
The fourth phase will end on December 21, but the buyback will not stop. Regarding the specific arrangements for the next phase, the team stated that planning is still underway and will make a separate announcement once confirmed.
Aster holders collectively expressed dissatisfaction.
The trader community is generally bearish, and many are completely disappointed with this platform that was heavily promoted and the continuously falling coin price. A well-known trader who claims to have held for a long time but suffered significant losses directly questioned, "Are you secretly selling while buying back?" Another user revealed suspicions that the team was offloading through other wallets, leading to a situation where, even with accelerated buybacks, the coin price still showed no signs of recovery.
Another common complaint is that holders have not received actual benefits, while the team continues to carry out airdrops, a move that is difficult to understand.
Currently, the price of Aster has fallen to 0.73 USD, showing a decline across various time frames, with a 7.2% drop within 24 hours, a 21.2% drop in the past week, and a 37.3% plunge in nearly a month. Despite the ongoing buybacks, the price has not managed to return above 1 USD this month.
Rumors of false trading and CZ sell-offs
In October of this year, the Web3 data platform DefiLlama delisted the trading volume data of the decentralized exchange Aster's perpetual contracts, causing its coin price to fall by 10%. DefiLlama founder 0xngmi also publicly questioned the authenticity of Aster's data and provided evidence showing that Aster's trading volume highly coincided with Binance's perpetual contract data.
The chart released by xngmi indicates that Aster has a very high correlation with Binance's trading volume, and this trend continued from Saturday evening to Sunday. He also added that similar platforms like Hyperliquid did not experience similar situations.
"As Aster failed to provide the underlying data such as the identities of the order placers and the sources of the orders, related abnormal trading volumes will be removed until it is confirmed that there is no wash trading behavior." They wrote in the statement and emphasized that they have never engaged in long or short operations on Aster or Hype.
After the October turmoil, as the end of the month approached, new rumors emerged in the market, claiming that CZ sold Aster tokens worth 30 million USD, causing the coin price to drop again by 19%. It should be noted that at the beginning of Aster's launch, CZ had publicly supported it multiple times, showcasing his personal holdings, which led many investors to believe that Aster could replicate Hype's trend, as it directly competes with Hyperliquid.
However, on-chain analysts later clarified that the so-called "CZ sell-off" transfers were actually fund allocations between Binance's internal wallets and had nothing to do with CZ personally. The relevant screenshots were suspected to be tampered with, intending to create market panic.
CZ later publicly responded, stating that he purchased about 2 million USD worth of Aster in November and plans to hold it long-term. Even with the subsequent significant drop in coin price, there has been no indication on-chain that he is continuously selling.
