Aster

Aster is a decentralised venue for perpetual futures: leveraged crypto positions are opened without handing funds to an intermediary, with margin and settlement handled by smart contracts. Funds stay in the trader's wallet or in the venue's contract rather than on a company balance sheet. It operates on networks compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, BNB Chain among them.

A perpetual has no expiry; what pulls it towards the spot price is the funding rate that long and short sides periodically pay each other. That mechanism is the same at every such venue, and what separates them is oracle quality, liquidity depth and liquidation rules.

ASTER is an exchange token, tied to the venue's turnover and to its incentive programmes for active traders, and used in governance. The project is young with a short public record, and part of what is claimed about it is so far supported only by the team's own materials, so this entry sticks to what follows from the product's purpose.

The project is young, and this entry covers only the venue's purpose because little else about it can be verified independently.