ASTER · an early perp-DEX token whose airdrop unlock still outruns an aggressive buyback.
ASTER is the native token of Aster, a multichain perpetuals and spot DEX on BNB Chain — launched Sep 17 2025, with a 8B max supply and only ~2.68B circulating (~33.5%), so most of the story is unlock timing.
Sell pressure. The 53.5% airdrop allocation keeps vesting into the float — about 200M ASTER over 90 days — plus a small ~6M ecosystem staking emission. The team cliff ends Sep 18 2026.
Buy pressure. Since Jun 17 2026, 99% of platform fees buy ASTER for stakers and an equal amount is burned from reserve — the "198%" program — roughly 22M bought over 90 days, with an equal amount burned from reserve.
Net. About +6.87% to market — the early airdrop-unlock ramp still outruns the buyback, so supply is still growing, just more slowly than the headline unlock suggests.
- Team allocation 12-month cliff ends~10M / moSep 18 2026 · added to market
After a tokenomics update, Aster's old fixed 78.4M-a-month linear schedule was replaced by a much smaller staking-reward emission — roughly 450K ASTER per weekly epoch, about 2M a month, or ~6M over 90 days — a ~97% cut. This ecosystem-funded reward paid to veASTER stakers is the protocol's ongoing new-supply emission and is now small.
The airdrop allocation — 53.5% of supply, about 4.28B ASTER on an 80-month linear vest from October 2025 — is distributed into the float in seasons. Trackers put the scheduled release near $42.6M a month, roughly 68M ASTER, about 2.2% of the float, or ~200M over 90 days. This is the dominant new-supply force and is what drove the ~220M circulating growth over the trailing 90 days.
The Team allocation (400M, 5%) sits on a 12-month cliff that ends Sep 18 2026, then vests 10M a month — but the buyback burns team tokens from reserve first, so those tokens are being destroyed, not released, and the value is 0 with the cliff monitored. The Treasury (560M, 7%) is an unscheduled overhang with no observed release in the window. Both are tracked team-controlled overhangs.
No bankruptcy estate or court-ordered distribution applies to Aster.
Since Jun 17 2026, Aster directs 99% of platform fees to buy ASTER on the open market through a time-weighted average price mechanism and hands the tokens to veASTER stakers, who lock them in vote-escrow. Verified on-chain, the program bought about 2.94M ASTER in its first 12 days — roughly 22M over 90 days — real buy pressure that pulls float into locked staking.
For every ASTER bought back, an equal amount — about 22M over 90 days — is burned from reserve, team allocation first, every two weeks. This is the other half of the 198% mechanism and shrinks total supply toward the 3B target (about 176M burned so far), but the burned tokens are non-circulating reserve, so it does not remove tokens from the trading float and counts 0 against circulating supply.
There is no separate Foundation open-market buying of ASTER beyond the fee-funded buyback already counted above.
The vote-escrow locking of bought-back tokens is already counted in the buyback row; no separate new lockup or escrow contract was created in the window.
My research. My portfolio. Free.
Deep research weekly. My real holdings monthly.