Did Aster Fake Its Volumes? DefiLlama Delisting Sends Token Sliding

Aster, the decentralized exchange that has quickly become a rival to Hyperliquid, is under fresh scrutiny after DefiLlama delisted its perpetuals trading volume.

The move followed claims from DefiLlama’s founder that Aster’s reported activity bore a striking resemblance to Binance’s, sparking questions about the integrity of its data.

DefiLlama flags volume patterns

On Sunday, pseudonymous DefiLlama founder 0xngmi posted charts on X showing how Aster’s perpetual trading volumes had begun tracking Binance’s almost one-to-one.

“We’ve been investigating Aster volumes and recently their volumes have started mirroring Binance perp volumes almost exactly,” 0xngmi wrote. By contrast, charts of Hyperliquid showed more natural divergence, according to the post.

Because Aster doesn’t currently provide granular order-level data, DefiLlama said it could not rule out wash trading. As a result, the platform chose to delist Aster’s perpetuals data entirely.

“Until we can get that data to verify if there’s wash trading, Aster perp volumes will be delisted,” 0xngmi explained, emphasizing the goal of maintaining integrity across DefiLlama’s datasets.

The impact on markets was swift: Aster’s native token slid to $2.01 at the time of writing, down nearly 5% in 24 hours and about 22% below its late-September peak of $2.41.

Community reaction on delisting decision

The move stirred lively debate within the crypto community. Some users suggested DefiLlama should have left the data up with a warning instead of removing it entirely.

Defenders of Aster argued the correlation with Binance could reflect the work of active market makers rather than fabricated activity. One user noted that “market making at scale has always been part of building liquidity” and that open interest and volume mismatches don’t always signal fake flow.

Another user commented that DeFiLlama wants to have access to Aster’s hidden order data thereby making the feature useless on the platform.

Amidst all these, Binance has announced it will list Aster on October 6 and open trading for spots.

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