Supported by YZi Labs and focusing on privacy-preserving transactions, the Aster ecosystem today announced the official launch of its Aster Chain mainnet. As a Layer 1 blockchain designed for transaction scenarios, Aster Chain aims to break the "transparency trap" facing current DeFi, providing a foundation for global professional and retail traders with institutional-grade privacy protection and centralized exchange-level performance.

Ending the Era of On-Chain "Liquidation Hunting"

Transparency has always been seen as a core advantage of DeFi: an open ledger, verifiable transactions, and open protocols collectively form its trust foundation. However, it is essential to distinguish between "transparency between protocols and users" and "transparency between traders and counterparties," which are fundamentally two completely different logics.

When order information, position size, and liquidation price are fully exposed to the market, these transparent data originally intended to enhance trust may be used as tools for attacks.

The so-called "Liquidation Hunting," where market participants identify large positions and their liquidation prices and trigger forced liquidation through coordinated behavior, is a structural problem that has caused losses of millions of dollars on several fully transparent trading platforms. A typical case occurred in March 2025: a trader on-chain established a $375 million, 40x leveraged BTC short position, and was then hunted by other traders organized on social media (Twitter, now X), ultimately facing precise liquidation.

Aster's default privacy mechanism is the underlying solution to this structural issue.

Aster's Core Belief: Privacy is not a Feature, but a Right

Unlike the mainstream approach of treating privacy as an "optional plugin" or "peripheral solution," Aster Chain directly embeds encryption mechanisms into the execution layer, setting privacy as a default attribute rather than a privileged option.

Its privacy architecture is based on a zero-knowledge verifiable encryption system, with the core including:

Zero-Knowledge Verifiable Encryption + Stealth Address Mechanism: All orders are cryptographically processed with zero-knowledge encryption before being put on-chain; when account privacy is enabled, orders are routed through unique stealth addresses, cutting off direct links between wallet addresses and transaction behavior, preventing any third party from tracking and reconstructing.

Selective Disclosure Mechanism: While asset transfers can still be traced, the execution layer protects users' strategic intentions. Users who wish their activities to be public can choose to disclose transaction information. With account privacy enabled, users can generate "Viewer Passes" to share with specific parties, and only those holding the pass can view their private orders.

Zero Performance Degradation: Aster Chain boasts a peak throughput of over 100,000 TPS, a median block time of around 50ms, and requires no Gas payment, delivering performance on par with mainstream centralized exchanges.

Aster CEO Leonard stated, "Transparency between the protocol and users is a necessary foundation, but full transparency between traders and competitors actually poses a systemic vulnerability. Aster Chain is the first architecture design that fundamentally treats privacy as a fair market infrastructure from the ground up."

When CEX Efficiency Meets DEX Principles

Aster Chain strives to strike a balance between performance and ideology: on one hand, providing sub-second transaction confirmation and a high-leverage experience, and on the other hand, upholding core decentralized principles, including asset self-custody, verifiable transactions, and permissionless access.

The introduction of transaction privacy also means that the last remaining reason for users to stay on centralized exchanges is being weakened.

At the infrastructure level, Aster Chain has already supported native cross-chain bridging with the BNB Chain and ensured high-precision price data through a proprietary oracle to safeguard transaction execution reliability.

Driving the Next Wave of DeFi Innovation

Mainnet launch is just the beginning of Aster's ecosystem expansion. In addition to the flagship trading interface, the project is opening up the Aster Code to developers to support the creation of customized insurance pools and collaborative DeFi products.

Simultaneously, Aster plans to kick off the Aster Chain staking program within the next week to incentivize early participants and liquidity providers, accelerating network bootstrapping and ecosystem growth.

About Aster

Aster is a privacy-first on-chain trading platform backed by YZi Labs, aiming to protect user transaction behavior through mechanisms like "Hidden Orders." Its product offerings span perpetual and spot trading in the cryptocurrency, stock, and commodity markets. As the underlying infrastructure, Aster Chain is a dedicated Layer 1 blockchain tailored for future DeFi scenarios.

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