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They dropped all fees on their stock perpetual contracts. That means if you trade “stock perps” like Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon, or Apple on Aster, you now pay 0% maker fee and 0% taker fee.

On top of that, if you provide liquidity as a maker, you don’t just trade for free – you also earn points in Aster Harvest Stage 4, which is their ongoing rewards program.

In simple terms:

Aster is saying, “Come trade US stock perps here, we won’t charge you fees, and if you help with liquidity, we’ll even reward you.”

This is not a small marketing line. It’s a direct attack on the normal business model of both centralized exchanges and other perp DEXes.

First, What Is Aster?

Aster is a decentralized perpetual exchange (perp DEX). It lets people trade crypto and stock perpetuals with leverage, on-chain, while keeping control of their own funds.

Some key things about Aster, explained in easy words:

Aster is built as a “next-gen” DEX for futures and spot – you can trade normal crypto pairs and perpetual futures from the same place.

It supports multiple chains like BNB Chain, Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum, and is powered by its own Aster Chain underneath.

It tries to remove MEV problems and give one-click, smooth execution in “Simple Mode”, and full professional tools (order book, hidden orders, grid trading, etc.) in “Pro Mode”.

It also has a strong angle around capital efficiency: you can use yield-bearing assets like liquid staking tokens or yield-generating stablecoins as collateral, which means your margin can be earning while you trade.

In the last days, Aster’s numbers have exploded. On December 10, it reported roughly 24-hour trading volume of around 76 billion dollars and open interest around 27.2 billion dollars – insanely high activity for a DEX.

So we’re not talking about a random tiny project. This is already a serious player in the perp space, and now it’s making a very aggressive move with stock perpetuals.

What Are Stock Perpetuals, In Normal Language?

Stock perpetuals are like “forever futures” on stocks.

You are not buying real shares of Apple, Tesla, or Nvidia. Instead, you are trading a contract that tracks the price of those stocks, using crypto collateral like USDT.

You don’t own the stock itself. You’re trading a synthetic version of it.

There is no expiry date like classic futures. You can hold the position as long as you want, as long as your margin is okay.

You can go long (bet on price going up) or short (bet on price going down).

You trade them 24/7, unlike normal stock markets that close each day.

On Aster, these stock perps are settled in USDT and allow you to use leverage (for example, up to 50x on some contracts according to their docs).

So Aster is basically letting crypto users around the world trade US tech stocks in a crypto-native way, with crypto-style leverage, at any time of day.

Now, they are saying: “You can do all of this with 0% trading fees.”

What Exactly Changed With The 0% Fees?

Before this update, like every other exchange, Aster charged trading fees (maker and taker) on stock perps.

Now they are doing the opposite.

All major stock perpetual contracts on Aster – such as Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), and others – are set to 0% maker and 0% taker fees.

Some extra important details from different announcements and coverage:

The 0% fee change is active from December 10, 2025.

It is not described as a short, time-limited promo in some reports – it is framed as a new “zero-commission” policy for stock perps, with Stage 4 Harvest rewards on top for makers.

Takers pay zero and do not earn points; makers pay zero and earn points, which incentivizes liquidity providers and market makers to stay active on Aster’s stock markets.

The message is clear: Aster wants stock perp liquidity and volume, and is ready to pay for it with rewards instead of charging fees.

Why 0% Fees Matter So Much For Traders

In trading, fees are like silent gravity. They pull on every trade you make.
Every time you open and close a position on a normal exchange, you pay taker or maker fees. If you are a high-frequency trader or scalper, fees eat a lot of your edge. Even for normal traders, fees are a constant drag on PnL.

Now imagine this:

You are trading Apple stock perps on Aster. You open a position. You close it. You adjust size. You scale in or out.

Normally, every one of those moves costs something. Here, the fee part is literally zero.

That changes how many strategies feel:

Scalping becomes more realistic because you don’t have to “fight” the fee layer on each small move.

Active hedging feels cheaper. You can hedge positions more often without thinking “I’m wasting money on fees every time.”

Testing new strategies becomes less painful because each experiment doesn’t drain your account via constant fees.

For small account traders, this is huge. Fees are regressive: they hit small portfolios hard because every dollar counts. Zero fees give those traders more room to breathe.

Why It’s A Big Signal For Market Makers And Pros

For professional traders and market makers, the 0% fee plus points is a loud invitation.

Makers can:

Quote spreads on stock perps without paying fees.

Earn Aster Harvest Stage 4 points on top of this, which may later translate into rewards, boosts, or other ecosystem benefits.

If you are a market maker, your business model depends heavily on fee structure. A platform that lets you run your strategies fee-free and pays you sideways with points is naturally attractive.

This is how Aster can pull deep liquidity away from other DEXes and maybe even from some centralized exchanges. More liquidity on Aster means tighter spreads and better execution for all traders, which again feeds back into growth.

How Can Aster Afford 0% Fees?

At first glance, it looks crazy: “If they charge nothing, how do they make money?”

The answer is not one simple line, but we can break down a likely picture using what we know about Aster and perp DEXes in general:

Aster is going for scale. With volume in the tens of billions per day and massive open interest, the main goal now is to dominate mindshare and market share in perp trading, especially in stock perps.

Perp exchanges earn from more than just direct trading fees. They can capture value indirectly through their own token (ASTER), ecosystem growth, spreads, liquidation mechanisms, and sometimes funding flows between longs and shorts.

Aster is heavily backed, has its own L1 (Aster Chain), and has merged previous liquidity and user bases (for example, coming out of the merger between Astherus and APX Finance) which already gave it a strong starting point.

So zero stock-perp fees look like a strategic investment: Aster is spending potential fee revenue to buy liquidity, volume, and dominance in a very hot vertical – tokenized stocks and on-chain stock perps.

This is similar to what some big centralized brokers did when they cut fees to zero on stock trading. They didn’t stop making money. They just moved the business model to other layers and used “zero fee” as the main growth engine.

The Bigger Story: Tokenized Stocks And 24/7 TradFi On-Chain

If we zoom out, Aster is not only saying “trade for free.” It is also pushing a deeper narrative.

That narrative is:

“You don’t need a traditional broker to trade big tech names. You can do it on-chain, 24/7, with crypto collateral, from anywhere, with no KYC and no fee friction.”

US equities like Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon, and Apple are some of the most traded assets on earth. Bringing them into the crypto environment as perpetuals and then making those perps fee-free is like hanging a huge neon sign in front of every DeFi trader:

“If you want to trade tech stocks in a crypto-native way, this is your home.”

This is also a direct bridge between TradFi and DeFi:

TradFi side: iconic stocks, familiar tickers, real-world company narratives.

DeFi side: permissionless access, leverage, on-chain settlement, wallet-based accounts.

Aster is trying to sit in the middle and own that bridge.
The Competitive Pressure This Creates

When one serious exchange goes to zero fees on a certain product, others feel the heat.

For centralized exchanges that offer stock perps or tokenized stocks with normal fees, this is a problem. If traders can get deep liquidity, good tools, and 0% fees on Aster, they will at least consider moving there.

For other perp DEXes, especially the ones that started adding stock-style products, Aster is now the benchmark. Matching “0% fees + reward points + huge volume + multi-chain + advanced tools” is not easy.

The more people talk about “zero-fee stock perps on Aster” on social platforms, the more pressure it puts on other platforms to respond. Some may try fee discounts, temporary zero-fee campaigns, or special reward programs, but Aster has already planted the flag first.

The Part Everyone Should Still Respect: Risk

The headline sounds very bullish: “0% fees! Trade for free!”

But risk does not disappear just because fees vanish.

There are a few layers to keep in mind:

Leverage risk. Stock perps with leverage are still leveraged products. A 5–10% move in the underlying stock can be amplified many times in your position, which means fast liquidations if you over-leverage.

Smart contract risk. Aster is a DeFi protocol. That means contracts, oracles, and infrastructure. Users must always remember there can be technical bugs or exploits in any on-chain system.

Oracle and tracking risk. Stock perps rely on price feeds that follow off-chain markets. If there are oracle issues, delays, or extreme volatility when traditional markets open or close, prices can behave unexpectedly.

Regulatory uncertainty. Tokenized stock products live in a grey area in many regions. Rules can change, access may shift, and platforms may have to adjust how these products are offered.

So zero fees are not a magic shield. They reduce cost, but they do not remove responsibility. Users still need to manage leverage, size, and risk, and understand they are trading synthetic contracts, not the underlying shares.

What To Watch Next

If you want to follow this story as it evolves, there are a few key things to watch:

How stable are those huge volume and open-interest numbers over time. Are we seeing a short-term spike, or does Aster keep billions in OI and tens of billions in daily volume across its markets?

How much of that volume shifts specifically into stock perps now that they are zero-fee. If stock perps start taking a big share of the platform’s volume, that confirms the bet is working.

How Aster evolves its Harvest rewards and any future token or points programs. Rewards are currently a key part of the 0% fee model, especially for makers, so any change will matter.

Whether other platforms respond with their own zero-fee campaigns or new incentives on stock perps. That will show how much Aster’s move is hurting or pressuring competitors.

If Aster can keep delivering smooth, stable execution on-chain while volume grows, it will strengthen the idea that on-chain perps can compete head-to-head with centralized venues – not just for crypto pairs but for global equities too.

Aster is a fast-growing perp DEX that already does huge volume and supports both crypto and US stock perpetuals. Now it has removed all trading fees on stock perps like Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon, and Apple, with 0% maker and 0% taker fees, and extra points for liquidity providers. This is a very aggressive move to own the “tokenized stocks on-chain” space. It makes active trading cheaper, helps small traders, and strongly attracts market makers – but the usual leverage and DeFi risks still apply.

$ASTER