GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, March 18, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Aster, a privacy-focused trading ecosystem backed by YZi Labs, today announced the official launch of Aster Chain Mainnet. This purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain is designed to dismantle the “transparency trap” of modern DeFi, offering institutional-grade privacy and CEX-level performance to professional and retail traders worldwide.
Ending the Era of Onchain Position Hunting
Transparency is one of DeFi’s defining strengths – public ledgers, verifiable transactions, open protocols. But transparency between a protocol and its users is different from transparency between a trader and their competitors. When every order, position size, and liquidation level is visible to the market, that information can and does get used against you.
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 $375 million BTC 40x short on a fully transparent platform. Traders quickly began openly coordinating on Twitter to pool funds and hunt the position.
Aster’s default privacy removes that attack surface entirely.
The Aster Thesis: Privacy is a Fundamental Right
Unlike existing solutions that treat privacy as an opt-in feature or a third-party wrapper, Aster Chain embeds encryption directly into the execution layer. On Aster, privacy is the default, not a privilege.
The Aster privacy stack utilizes a ZK-verifiable encrypted architecture:
- ZK-Verifiable Encryption + Stealth Address Mechanism: Every order is ZK-verifiable encrypted before it reaches the chain; with Account Privacy enabled, orders are routed through unique stealth addresses, ensuring no link between users’ wallets and their trading activity, and preventing any third party from tracing, correlating, or reconstructing trades.
- Selective Disclosure: While asset transfers remain traceable for compliance, the execution layer shields strategic intent. Users who want their activity visible can choose to make it public. With Account Privacy enabled, users can generate a Viewer 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 peak throughput of 100,000+ TPS and a median block time of 50ms, all without gas – 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 trader 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 base layer.”
CEX Speed Meets DEX Principles
Aster Chain delivers the sub-second finality and high-leverage experience of a CEX while upholding the core tenets of decentralization: self-custody, 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 BNB Chain and proprietary oracles to ensure high-fidelity price data.
Fueling the Next Wave of Innovation
The mainnet launch marks the start of a phased expansion. Beyond the flagship 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 supporters and liquidity providers.
About Aster
Aster is a privacy-first onchain trading platform backed by YZi Labs, with unique features like Hidden Orders to protect user trading activity. It offers perpetual contracts across crypto, stocks and commodities, as well as crypto spot trading, and is powered by Aster Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain built to power the future of decentralized finance.
Learn more about Aster on the official website or follow Aster on X.
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