George Town, British Virgin Islands, March 17, 2026, Chainwire
Astera privacy-focused commercial ecosystem powered by YZi Labs, announced today official launch of Aster Chain Mainnet. This purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain is designed to dismantle the “transparency trap” of modern DeFi, providing institutional-level privacy and CEX-level performance to professional and retail traders worldwide.
Ending the era of Onchain position hunting
Transparency is a defining characteristic of decentralized finance, supported by public ledgers, verifiable transactions and open protocols. However, transparency between protocols and users differs from transparency between market participants. When trading activity, including order placement, position size and liquidation levels, is fully visible on the chain, such information can be observed and used by other market participants.
Position hunting – where traders identify a large position, see its liquidation price and coordinate to trigger a forced liquidation – has cost traders millions of dollars on fully transparent platforms. Infamously, in March 2025, a trader opened a 40x BTC lottery of $375 million on a fully transparent platform. Traders soon began coordinating openly on Twitter to raise funds and find position.
Aster’s default privacy removes that attack surface entirely.
Aster Thesis: Privacy is a fundamental right
Unlike existing solutions that treat privacy as an optional feature or a third-party wrapper, Aster Chain embeds encryption directly at the execution layer. At Aster, privacy is the default, not a privilege.
The Aster privacy stack uses an encrypted architecture verifiable by ZK:
- ZK-Verifiable Encryption + Secret Address Mechanism: Every order is coded verifiable with ZK before it reaches the chain; with Account Privacy enabled, orders are routed through unique hidden addresses, ensuring no link between users’ wallets and their trading activity and preventing any third party from tracking, correlating or reconstructing trades.
- Selective detection: While asset transfers remain traceable for compliance, the execution layer protects strategic intent. Users who want their activity to be visible can choose to make it public. With account privacy enabled, users can generate a Viewing Pass to share with selected parties, allowing only those with access to the pass to view their private orders.
- Zero performance trade-off: Aster Chain achieves a peak throughput of 100,000+ TPS and an average block time of 50ms, all without throttling – performance that matches the speed traders expect from a centralized exchange.
“Transparency between a protocol and its users is a fundamental feature, but transparency between a merchant and their competitors is a critical vulnerability,” said Leonard, CEO at Aster. “Aster Chain is the only architecture that treats privacy as a fundamental requirement for a fair market, neutralizing predatory attacks at the core layer.”
CEX speed meets the principles of DEX
Aster Chain offers the sub-second finality and high-impact experience of a CEX, while supporting the core principles of decentralization: self-care, verifiability and permissionless access. Trading privacy removes the last reason to stay on a centralized exchange. The network is supported by a native bridge to the BNB chain and proprietary oracles to provide highly reliable price data.
Riding the next wave of innovation
The launch of the mainnet marks the start of a phased expansion. Beyond the core Aster trading UI, the ecosystem is inviting builders to create specialized vaults and collaborative DeFi products through Aster code.
To coincide with the launch, Aster will initiate a Staking Program within a week to reward early backers and liquidity providers.
About Aster
Aster is a first on-chain privacy trading platform powered by YZi Labs, with unique features such as Hidden Orders to protect users’ trading activity. It offers perpetual crypto, stock and commodity contracts, as well as spot crypto trading, and is powered by Aster Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain built to power the future of decentralized finance.
Users can learn more about Aster at the official website or follow Aster in X.
CONTACT
PR & Content Manager
Lola Chen
Aster
lola.chen@asterdex.com
