Aster Unleashes $USD1 Perps, $ASTER Hovers at $0.67 – Zero Maker Fees, All the Fun (And Also, Your Uncle’s Crypto Portfolio Is Crying)

Aster’s native token ($ASTER) is chilling around $0.6713, up 1.73% in the last 24 hours, like it’s sipping a lukewarm matcha latte while the rest of the market is sprinting through a minefield. It’s holding firm above $0.66—because even degens have standards—and the next obstacle? A wall of $0.69–$0.70 that looks suspiciously like a blockchain version of “one more trade before bed.” Dip below $0.65? Congrats, you’ve unlocked the “I thought this was a yield farm” emote.

The platform just dropped $USD1-denominated perpetual contracts in partnership with World Liberty Financial ($WLFI)—because why settle for USDC when you can have a stablecoin that sounds like a rejected Apple product? Zero basis-point maker fees? That’s right, you’re basically getting paid to place orders. Taker fees? Cheaper than your last NFT gas fee. And $USD1? It’s now accepted as collateral, meaning you can lever up your SOL with the same confidence you’d use to buy pizza with crypto—except this time, the pizza doesn’t evaporate when the blockchain is slow.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana are the first assets on the $USD1 menu, like a crypto buffet where the only thing missing is the “all-you-can-eat” sign written in base58. More pairs are coming, because Aster clearly hasn’t watched enough anime to know when to stop. Traders can slot $USD1 into their leveraged positions like it’s a pre-loaded save file—no re-engineering required, just mildly improved sanity.

Aster’s CEO Leonard calls the $USD1 rollout the “base layer” of liquidity ahead of the Aster Chain mainnet—translation: they’re building the highway before the cars arrive, but at least the road has free WiFi and a free taco stand. Co-founder Zak Folkman wants $USD1 on equal footing with the big stablecoins. Meaning? Soon, you’ll be able to tell your grandma you’re “holding USDC and USD1” and she’ll nod solemnly, assuming USD1 is a new type of Visa gift card.

Incentives? Oh, they’re sweetened. Up to 2.5 million $WLFI tokens per month—minted like a degen’s dream and distributed weekly to those who trade $USD1 perps. Allocations? Based on volume. So yes, your 0.01% of the pie is now a slice you can trade for more pizza. Or a new GPU. Or a very confused NFT of a cat wearing a fedora.

The platform also added a perpetual contract for Ontology Network’s $ONT, offering up to 75× leverage—because why trade at 20× when you can gamble your life savings on a blockchain that hasn’t had a major update since 2020? $ONT surged over 80% in the same window, proving once again that if you list something on Aster, it either moonshots or becomes a meme. Neither is a bad outcome in crypto.

All told, Aster is stacking new markets, zero-fee maker incentives, and hefty $WLFI rewards like a degen stacking chips at the final table of a crypto poker tournament—except the dealer is a smart contract, the blinds are in stablecoins, and everyone’s just waiting for the mainnet to drop so they can finally cash out... or at least claim their free NFT.