What Is Aster Chain and How the Protocol Plans to Expand Beyond BNB Chain

Aster Chain is a privacy-focused Layer 1 blockchain for on-chain perpetual trading. Learn how it works, what it’s built on, and how it’s expanding beyond BNB Chain in 2026.

Soumen Datta

Aster Chain is a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain designed for on-chain derivatives trading. Its mainnet launched in March 2026, giving the Aster perpetual exchange its own independent infrastructure after years of operating on BNB Chain. The protocol uses zero-knowledge (ZK) encryption and a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) model so that traders can open high-leverage positions without broadcasting their order details to other market participants.What Is Aster and Where Did It Come From?Aster was formed in late 2024 through the merger of two separate DeFi projects: Astherus, a yield and liquidity protocol, and APX Finance, a decentralized perpetual exchange that had been running since 2021 under the original name ApolloX. The deal brought together APX Finance’s trading engine and Astherus’s yield-bearing collateral products. The unified platform publicly rebranded as Aster on March 31, 2025.The project has backing from YZi Labs, the family office of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, which invested in Astherus in November 2024. Binance Labs had also participated in ApolloX’s seed round in June 2022, giving the combined entity long-running ties to the Binance ecosystem

ASTER staking went live on March 20, 2026, three days after the mainnet. The system runs on weekly epochs and distributes 450,000 ASTER tokens per epoch across two reward layers.Base Rewards go to users who delegate tokens to validators. The yield depends on the validator’s transaction activity and the user’s share of total delegated tokens. Loyalty Rewards operate under a veASTER model, where users lock ASTER for periods of up to 208 weeks. Longer locks receive heavier reward weighting. Active traders also receive a Trading Volume Boost on top of their lock-based rewards.Two planned additions remain on the Q2 2026 roadmap. On-chain governance will give token holders the ability to vote on protocol upgrades and parameter changes. Smart Money is a social trading feature that will allow users to track and automatically replicate trades from top-performing wallets in real time.A tokenomics overhaul in March 2026 cut monthly token emissions by 97%, replacing broad distribution with the staking-only model described above. The intent is to reduce the constant sell pressure that high emission rates create.