Aster’s bullish comeback is drawing fresh scrutiny after claims that the perpetual DEX has virtually no users — but on-chain revenue and platform metrics tell a more complicated story. What happened - Crypto analyst Stacy Muur sparked controversy on X (formerly Twitter) by posting that Aster had just 6 daily active addresses, 51 weekly and 346 monthly, asking bluntly: “What went wrong, CZ?” The remark revived last year’s allegations of wash trading on the exchange and prompted heated discussion about the DEX’s real user base. - Aster quickly pushed back, saying the low-address count was the result of a data source pointing to the wrong contract address. “Looks like a data source linked the wrong contract address, so some numbers got creative. If you’re one of the ‘6 users’ on this planet, tap like. Let’s do a headcount,” the team wrote. On-chain activity and fees - The usage debate is at odds with the platform’s recent fee and volume performance. DeFiLlama data show Aster’s weekly fees rose from roughly $5 million in January to more than $8 million in early February. Even after a cooling market, the DEX has continued to post over $1 million in weekly fees and recorded nearly $10 billion in perpetual volumes over the cited period — figures that imply either a larger user count or a small number of big traders. - Dune analytics cited by Aster paint a far larger user picture: 91,000 new users in the past seven days, over 13,000 new traders in the last 24 hours, and a cumulative 9.3 million users. How Aster stacks up vs. Hyperliquid - Rival perpetual platform Hyperliquid reported 2,700 new users in the past week and about 1 million total users — a far smaller user base than Aster’s claimed 9.3 million. - Yet Hyperliquid’s recent weekly trading volume outpaced Aster, with roughly $18 billion versus Aster’s $9 billion, highlighting that user counts and volume dynamics don’t always move in lockstep. ASTER token performance - The ASTER token has largely shrugged off the FUD. Net exchange outflows suggest accumulation, and the token rallied nearly 90% in the first half of February. More recently it traded down about 3% amid broader market weakness, but still posted roughly a 66% recovery for February. - Technical watchers note potential retracement support around $0.63 and $0.46 (TradingView). Takeaway - The dust-up underscores how on-chain snapshots can be misleading if the wrong contracts are queried, and why fees, volumes and independent dashboards should be cross-checked when assessing a project’s health. - Aster’s strong fee generation and claimed user growth complicate the narrative of an “empty” DEX, but the platform will likely remain under scrutiny until data sources and trading behavior — including past allegations of fake volume — are fully resolved. Disclaimer: This is informational content, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading carries high risk; always do your own research. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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