My personal judgment on Aster:

The technical vision is advanced, but the on-the-ground proof is still insufficient: why I personally do not recommend continuing to hold Aster

Aster's current narrative is undoubtedly advanced—privacy trading, zero-knowledge proofs, exclusive execution environments, next-generation DEX architecture; these keywords are enough to attract attention in any cycle. However, investing is never about whose vision is grander, but rather which assumptions have been validated and which are still merely bets.

Essentially, Aster's current valuation is not based on genuine demand that has been repeatedly validated by the market, but rather on one premise: whether a sustainable privacy trading ecosystem can actually be established in the future, attracting a sufficient scale of real funds for long-term use.

This in itself is a bet, not a conclusion.

What needs to be faced is that the route of privacy DEX is extremely complex in engineering. It must not only solve performance issues but also handle execution fairness, MEV, liquidation credibility, and the ultimate asset security exit mechanism for users. If any one of these aspects is not handled well, it will degrade “decentralization” into “a more complex semi-centralized system.” Before these key issues have been long-term validated by the market, all valuations are closer to option pricing rather than value pricing.

More realistically, at the current stage, Aster's price and attention largely stem from emotions and endorsements, rather than from stable, quantifiable fundamentals. Even with public statements from influential figures, such impacts can essentially only raise expectations, but cannot replace the validation process of technology and products themselves. Emotions can drive up prices, but when expectations cannot be fulfilled, the retraction of valuations is often just as swift.