DefiLlama has removed Aster’s perpetuals data after its founder flagged suspicious correlations in XRP trading volumes, raising questions about how the decentralized exchange reports activity.
Earlier Monday, DefiLlama’s pseudonymous founder, 0xngmi, noted on X that Aster’s XRP perpetual volumes were moving almost identically to Binance’s. Such near-perfect alignment suggests possible wash trading or data manipulation, since decentralized trading usually exhibits independent order flow. “Until we can verify if there’s wash trading, Aster perp volumes will be delisted,” 0xngmi wrote.
Aster, like other perpetual DEXs such as Hyperliquid, allows leveraged long and short positions on crypto assets without a centralized exchange. The platform recently topped DefiLlama’s leaderboard for daily fees and volume, briefly surpassing Hyperliquid.
Aster’s native token, ASTER, has surged from $0.09 to over $2 in under three weeks, generating gains of more than 1,500% for early investors. XRP and Ether volumes were major contributors to its metrics.
While one wash trading risk model rated Aster as “low,” the one-to-one volume correlation with Binance raised red flags. Hyperliquid, by contrast, showed a weaker correlation of 0.59 and retained its metrics despite a “medium” risk rating.
Adding to scrutiny, Binance listed ASTER with a “Seed Tag” on Monday. The timing drew attention as Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, an advisor to Aster, has been actively promoting the project on X.
ASTER prices fell roughly 10% after DefiLlama’s delisting but recovered following Binance’s listing announcement. Aster did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
