Aster Compensates Traders After XPL Perpetual Price Spike Triggers Losses

Aster, the decentralized perpetuals exchange backed by YZi Labs, known for its ties to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, has reimbursed traders who suffered losses following an abnormal price spike in its XPL perpetual contract.

Key Takeaways:

• Aster swiftly reimbursed traders in USDT after an XPL price glitch triggered forced liquidations.
• The spike was likely caused by a transition error during the shift from pre-launch to live trading.
• Despite the incident, Aster’s market presence continues to grow, recently surpassing Hyperliquid in daily volume.

The disruption occurred late Thursday evening, when the price of XPL surged to over $4, despite trading at approximately $1.30 on other platforms.

In a statement posted to X, Aster acknowledged the issue and reassured users that “all funds are SAFU,” pledging a full investigation and compensation for affected traders.

Within an hour, the exchange confirmed the incident was resolved and began reimbursing liquidated users in USDT.

The initial round of reimbursements was completed within three hours, followed by compensation for trading and liquidation fees.

According to community speculation, the issue may have stemmed from an internal oversight during the shift from pre-launch to live trading for XPL contracts.

Some users suggested Aster had previously hardcoded the index price at $1 and capped the mark price during testing.

When those controls were lifted without syncing to the live market, a sharp price jump triggered forced liquidations. Aster has not officially confirmed the cause but stated it is continuing to investigate.

The value of the compensated losses remains undisclosed, though estimates from traders suggest the liquidations ran into the millions.

The XPL listing came just hours after the mainnet launch of Plasma, a stablecoin-focused Layer 1 blockchain.

Plasma debuted with more than $2 billion in total value locked in stablecoins, immediately placing it among the top 10 blockchains by stablecoin liquidity. XPL, its native token, quickly reached a fully diluted valuation above $12 billion.

The issue on the XPL perpetual trading pair has been fully resolved.

All users liquidated during this period will have their liquidation losses calculated and reimbursed directly to their wallets in USDT within the upcoming hours. Further updates will be shared shortly. We…

The incident comes during a surge in Aster’s market presence. Since launching its ASTER token on September 17, the platform’s valuation soared from $560 million to over $15 billion.

Aster has recently overtaken rival Hyperliquid in daily perpetuals volume and is expected to close the month with record-breaking figures.

Aster’s unique “hidden orders” feature, allowing users to place invisible limit orders, has helped it differentiate in the crowded perp DEX landscape, where transparency is typically the norm.

Perpetual trading volumes on decentralized exchanges hit a record high of $70 billion on Thursday, marking the third consecutive day of volume growth.

Aster, a new derivatives platform on BNB Chain, led the surge, contributing nearly $36 billion, or more than half, of total perp DEX activity, surpassing Hyperliquid and Lighter.

The surge follows a week of explosive growth for Aster, which topped $24.7 billion in volume the previous day.

Much of the platform’s momentum is attributed to incentive farming: users earn points by trading, minting, or holding assets, making them eligible for future airdrops.

As reported, crypto exchange OKX built a decentralized perpetuals trading platform similar to Hyperliquid and ASTER, but shelved its mainnet launch due to regulatory concerns, according to founder and CEO Star Xu.

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