With $4 million injected into the market daily, there is no echo, and the Aster team's explanation under the buyback announcement has been drowned out by holders' angry accusations of “buying back with the left hand and selling with the right.”
“Our S4 buyback has never stopped!” The Aster team attempted to reassure the community with data in their statement, but the comments section has been flooded with accusations of “scammers” and “sell-off bots.” A trader claiming to be a long-term holder posted a screenshot of losses, shouting: “Did you sell out immediately in another wallet after the buyback?”
Faced with a buyback plan of up to $4 million daily, totaling $32 million, the price of ASTER tokens has fallen from $1 to below $0.73, with a monthly decline of up to 37.3%. Behind this grand rescue operation is a trust crisis involving the vision of Decentralized USD (stablecoin), data authenticity, and massive whale sell-offs, which is thoroughly dismantling this star project once endorsed by Binance founder CZ.
01 Data falsification allegations
At the beginning of October, the trust foundation of Aster showed its first crack. At that time, the authoritative data platform DeFiLlama, widely recognized in the Web3 space, suddenly removed Aster from its perpetual contract exchange rankings.
This decision did not come out of nowhere. DeFiLlama founder 0xngmi revealed a shocking comparison chart on social media: the trading volume curve reported by the Aster platform almost perfectly overlaps with the perpetual contract trading volume curve of the Coin Security Exchange.
This level of synchronicity is statistically unusual. 0xngmi sharply pointed out: 'Without providing underlying transaction data (such as the identity of the order placer or the order generation mechanism) to prove their authenticity, we can only deem these as abnormal trading volumes.'
The data delisting incident immediately triggered market panic, causing the ASTER price to plummet by 10%. On-chain data shows that the group of seasoned investors known as 'smart money' subsequently reduced their holdings by 37%, while 'whale' addresses holding large amounts of tokens also quickly reduced their holdings by 12%.
02 Buyback maze
Faced with price collapse and community pressure, the Aster team unveiled their 'trump card' on December 12—a large-scale buyback campaign.
The official announcement states that starting December 8, they will launch the 'Full Throttle' mode, raising the daily buyback amount to $4 million and planning to invest a total of $32 million over 8 consecutive days to buy and burn ASTER tokens. This funding is reportedly sourced from 60%-90% of the fee income from the platform's fourth phase (S4).
However, the market's reaction to this heavyweight positive news was unexpectedly cold. Despite the ongoing buybacks, the ASTER price remained weak, unable to regain the psychological threshold of $1.
Community concerns quickly escalated. An analyst tracked on-chain data and found that wallet addresses suspected to be related to the team were still selling during the buyback period. An anonymous trader wrote on a forum: 'They use the income generated from fees paid in Decentralized USD (like USDF) to buy back, but it's like adding water to a leaky pool. If someone is opening a bigger hole at the bottom, the water level will never rise.'
03 Selling torrent
The real price pressure comes from large-scale token releases. On December 15, with the unlocking of the third phase airdrop, 200 million ASTER tokens flooded into the market.
Airdrop recipients are eager to cash out profits, creating strong selling pressure. Blockchain records indicate that a single large holder transferred 13.44 million tokens to exchanges during the same period, directly resulting in a paper loss of approximately $1.37 million.
Additionally, unsettling rumors are circulating in the market. Some crypto researchers claim to have found through on-chain pattern analysis that the daily selling volume suspected to be from insiders may exceed $60 million. Although this claim lacks fully transparent transaction hash validation, it spreads like a ghost in the community, further eroding already fragile confidence.
04 Stablecoin ambitions
In the midst of the token price crisis, the Aster team is shifting some of its focus towards building its Decentralized USD ecosystem, particularly promoting its native stablecoin USDF.
Unlike traditional stablecoins USDT or USDC, USDF is designed as a yield-bearing stablecoin. Users can mint USDF by collateralizing assets while simultaneously using those assets to participate in DeFi strategies to earn passive income. This design aims to create a more stable source of fee income for the Aster platform and enhance user stickiness.
The team's vision goes beyond this. Their ultimate roadmap includes building a Layer-1 blockchain specifically optimized for trading—'Aster Chain'—to compete directly with rivals like Hyperliquid on a technical level. In this architecture, Decentralized USD will not only serve as a medium of exchange but also as the value stabilizer and economic cycle core of the entire ecosystem.
However, the premise of this grand blueprint is that the ASTER token itself can stabilize and reflect the platform's value. When the underlying token falls into a trust crisis, the Decentralized USD ecosystem built upon it also faces severe challenges.
05 Industry war
To fully understand Aster's dilemmas and ambitions, it must be placed within the macro picture of fierce competition among decentralized derivatives exchanges.
Aster's rise is essentially a direct response to the star project Hyperliquid from the previous cycle. Hyperliquid has captured about 70% of the decentralized perpetual contract market through its own dedicated chain, and its token HYPE has seen significant gains thanks to an aggressive value capture model.
As a countermeasure, Aster chose a different path—not limited to a single chain, but compatible with multiple mainstream blockchains such as BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Solana, to attract a broader user base through liquidity aggregation. Its main supporter, YZi Labs, is closely linked to the Binance ecosystem, adding more layers to this competition.
When the ASTER token was launched, Binance founder CZ's public congratulations had set the market ablaze, with investors hoping it could replicate HYPE's success. Now, this highly anticipated industry showdown has turned into a costly trust defense battle.
As night falls again, Aster's official social media accounts continue to update the progress of the fourth phase buyback. On-chain data shows that new buyback transactions are still being confirmed, with each one consuming the fee income earned by the platform through assets like Decentralized USD.
Meanwhile, in a dark corner of a mainstream cryptocurrency forum, a post titled 'Analysis of the ASTER team's wallet addresses' is quietly spreading, accompanied by a chart in which colorful lines intertwine like a maze. The post was last updated ten minutes ago, with only one sentence: 'Look, they have started again.'
