Aster DEX Overhauls Tokenomics to Buy Back ASTER After Criticism

Aster DEX is a decentralized perpetual-futures trading platform, with ASTER used for governance and staking across its ecosystem. The way trading fees flow back to the token is central to assessing whether platform revenue can support its price and incentivize holders. The changes also came as OKX founder Star Xu accused Aster of being a Binance “tax-avoidance shell company,” putting its governance transparency and potential conflicts of interest under scrutiny.

About nine hours after Xu’s public criticism, Aster DEX announced a tokenomics overhaul that will use 99% of daily trading fees to buy ASTER on the open market and redistribute the tokens to stakers. Separate reports said the buyback-and-burn ratio was raised to 198% and that 5 billion tokens would be burned. The news briefly sent ASTER up more than 10%, but the gain later narrowed. Available information did not specify the exact announcement date or the value of the buybacks.