Aster directs 99% of fees to $ASTER buybacks; token up 10%

Aster DEX announced on June 17, 2026 that it will allocate 99% of daily platform fees to automatic $ASTER buybacks and matching burns to reduce total supply to 3 billion. The token rose more than 10% after the announcement.

The buybacks will execute via a time-weighted average price (TWAP) across each day and settle on-chain to a public wallet at 0xa0edBaBcb48034e368de286b49F9603C7AfA1b60. Repurchased tokens will be added to the Loyalty Rewards pool on top of an existing 300,000 $ASTER base allocation and distributed proportionally to veASTER lock weight.

For every token bought back, an equal amount will be permanently burned from reserves. Burns will occur every two weeks and begin by removing team allocations until total supply reaches 3 billion. Permissionless spot listings will incur a 50,000 USDT fee that will be routed into the same buyback mechanism.

Aster launched with an 8 billion total supply. As of June 17, 2026, total supply stood at about 7.82 billion, with circulating supply near 2.68–2.70 billion. Earlier buybacks and burns have removed tens of millions of tokens, and fee-generated repurchases have previously exceeded hundreds of millions of dollars. Previous phases allocated roughly 70–80% of fees to buybacks; the new plan raises that share to nearly 99%.

The protocol processes significant perpetual trading volume and competes with other perpetual DEXes such as Hyperliquid. Aster described the program as continuous, stating the pace of supply decline will depend on sustained or growing trading volumes.

On X, Aster posted “[Tokenomics Update] $ASTER Buyback and Burn Steps Up to 198%.” The on-chain execution and the public wallet address are intended to allow market participants to verify buybacks and burns. The protocol noted possible future product work, including layer-1 developments and governance changes that could affect fee generation and the size of Loyalty Rewards.