The decentralized perpetual contract exchange Aster, operating on the BNB Chain network, has completed payments to users affected by sharp price distortions in the XPL-perp pair. All compensations were made in USDT and credited directly to traders’ accounts.
How the failure happened
The incident occurred on Thursday and sparked heated discussion in the community. The cause was an error in the price index configuration. According to analysts, the index price for the XPL pair was hard-fixed at $1, while the real market price fluctuated around $1.22.
When the restriction was lifted without adjusting the index, the price of XPL on the Aster chart instantly jumped to almost $4. On other platforms, the asset continued to trade near $1.3, which is three times lower than Aster’s figures.
The sharp jump triggered a series of long position liquidations totaling about $32 million. The trading chart temporarily froze, but after a few minutes, prices returned to normal levels.
Full compensation of losses
The Aster team quickly acknowledged the problem and promised to compensate all losses. Within a few hours, the exchange reported that most affected users had received payments.
Later, the developers clarified that the compensation covered not only liquidations, but also all trading and liquidation fees. Thus, users got back the entire amount lost during the failure.
“Thank you for your patience and understanding. All compensations have been paid in full,” the Aster team stated.
Growth amid technical issues
Despite the incident, Aster demonstrated record results. In the past 24 hours, the exchange earned $16.3 million in trading fees, which is more than three times higher than competitor Hyperliquid ($4.9 million).
The number of registered users exceeded 2.57 million, with almost 468,000 new accounts created in just one day. Daily trading volume reached $35.9 billion, while Hyperliquid’s figure was $10 billion.
According to DeFiLlama, Aster’s total trading volume on Thursday reached a historic high of $70 billion. This makes the platform a segment leader and the main driver of activity in the decentralized derivatives market.
Dynamics of Aster and HYPE tokens
Open interest in the native ASTER token rose sharply: on September 20 it was $143 million, and by September 25 it had jumped to $1.15 billion.
At the same time, the competitor’s HYPE token, belonging to the Hyperliquid ecosystem, is showing more restrained results. According to CoinGlass, its open interest decreased by 1.85% in a day and amounted to $2.2 billion.
What’s next?
The XPL failure revealed the vulnerabilities of fast launches and high-load systems, but also highlighted Aster’s readiness to respond quickly and maintain user trust. Against the backdrop of record volumes and rapid growth in the trader base, the exchange has strengthened its position in the market despite technical problems.
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