ASTER plunged roughly 75% to fresh lows, and the token fell more than 12% to $0.61, while Hyperliquid widened its lead in the perpetual decentralized exchange market. The divergence underscores a shift from incentive-driven growth to a competition defined by verifiable liquidity, technology and data credibility.
Hyperliquid was reported to command about $40.7 billion in weekly trading volume and roughly $9.57 billion in open interest, with a market-share peak near 71% in May 2025 and daily volumes of $7.5 billion. Those figures supported a narrative of deep, sticky liquidity enabled by a high-throughput matching engine and tight spreads.
ASTER, by contrast, experienced a rapid reversal. After spectacular, incentive-fueled surges in on-chain open interest and headline volumes, its reported metrics collapsed. Aggregators including DefiLlama flagged and removed ASTER’s volume data, a development that materially damaged market trust and coincided with the recent price collapse.
Market trackers and platform reports show Hyperliquid capturing dominant volumes as ASTER’s numbers and incentives drew scrutiny, prompting a rapid reassessment by traders and aggregators.
Why Hyperliquid pulled ahead and ASTER faltered
The competitive edge in the current phase of the Perp DEX market has shifted toward structural qualities rather than raw top-line figures. Hyperliquid’s technical claims—an engine able to process hundreds of thousands of orders per second with sub-0.2-second latency—paired with an ecosystem of complementary products, are framed in the market reports as drivers of sustained adoption.
ASTER’s model relied heavily on aggressive incentives: ultra-high leverage offerings (cited at 1001x), yield-collateral constructs and airdrop-driven volume. Those mechanisms produced eye-catching spikes in open interest and daily volume but also raised questions about volume quality and manipulation. The situation was exacerbated when major data aggregators removed or downgraded ASTER’s metrics, eroding a core asset of market trust.
ASTER has announced a Stage 5 Buyback Program allocating 20–40% of daily fees to repurchases. Market commentary captured in the source material framed that move as addressing price symptoms rather than resolving the underlying credibility gap created by questionable volume and incentive architecture.
The sector-wide lesson, according to the sourced analysis, is that protocols now face a dual test: technological performance and verifiable transparency. Regulators and institutional participants have increasingly prioritized traceable metrics and demonstrable revenue models, a dynamic that penalized platforms whose growth relied on opaque or easily gamed incentives.
Investors and trading desks will watch Hyperliquid’s roadmap — including the planned HIP-3 permissionless perpetual market and the rollout of a native stablecoin — as well as ASTER’s ability to rebuild credible data and demonstrate organic user engagement.
