Aster and Hyperliquid have spent the previous week locked in a duel for perpetual decentralized trade (perp DEX) dominance. The query: Can the previous lure merchants sooner than the latter loses them?
Final evening introduced Aster’s first main stumble whereas a suspected rug pull deepened the exodus of capital from Hyperliquid’s L1.
Aster’s catastrophe
Yesterday’s launch of Plasma’s mainnet and XPL token kicked off an on-chain frenzy. The brand new chain accrued $2.5 billion of complete worth locked (TVL) on day one, based on DeFiLlama information.
Customers hoping to commerce the volatility of a freshly launched and hotly anticipated token on Aster received barely greater than they bargained for, nevertheless.
We’re conscious of irregular value actions on the XPL perpetual buying and selling pair. Relaxation assured, all person funds are SAFU. We’re conducting a full evaluation and can compensate any affected customers for losses.
— Aster (@Aster_DEX) September 25, 2025
Screenshots present the value of XPL wicking to $4, whereas beforehand buying and selling within the vary of $1. A follow-up submit from Aster acknowledged that affected customers “will have their liquidation losses calculated and reimbursed directly to their wallets in USDT.”
Compensation was confirmed round two and a half hours later.
One observer questioned on X, “Why we are calling this a DEX?” After trying to confirm what led to the incident, they declare to solely have the ability to entry “an API that returns the last 1000 trades.”
Additionally they notice that “on Hyperliquid… [you] can reconstruct the full history of trades and even the addresses,” including that Aster is extra like a “CEX without KYC where you login with your wallet.”
Hypervault pulls the rug?
In addition to being the highest perps DEX in DeFi (at the very least till not too long ago), Hyperliquid runs its personal chain. It hosts dozens of initiatives, 10 of which have a TVL of over $100 million.
This morning, blockchain safety agency Peckshield flagged suspicious withdrawals from one of many smaller initiatives, a yield farm known as Hypervault.
Tokens value $3.6 million have been drained from the undertaking earlier than being bridged to Ethereum and despatched to Twister Money. Peckshield notes that the undertaking’s X account has been deleted, the web site can also be offline.
Since Aster’s meteoric rise final weekend, complete worth locked on Hyperliquid has dropped virtually 30%, from virtually $2.8 billion to $2 billion.
