George Town, British Virgin Islands, September 28, 2026 — Aster, the privacy-first onchain trading platform backed by YZi Labs, has launched a Liquidity Pool Mining campaign with a total reward pool of up to 140,000 $ASTER, according to a Chainwire announcement. The four-week incentive program runs from September 28 to October 25, 2026 (UTC) and is open to all Aster users running Perpetual Grid strategies on eligible trading pairs, marking the launch of the platform's upgraded Perpetual Grid 2.0.

Rewards will be distributed hourly based on each eligible Grid's share of trading volume. The base reward pool is set at 10,000 $ASTER per epoch, with additional rewards available depending on market conditions and trading activity on the platform. Participation is automatic and requires no registration.

Grid trading, the strategy at the center of the upgrade, is an established automated approach that places buy and sell orders at set intervals across a predefined price range — a design intended to capture value from routine price oscillations without requiring constant manual monitoring.

"As Aster continues to bring more emerging assets and opportunities onchain, we're also focused on building the tools traders need to navigate increasingly dynamic markets," said Leonard, CEO at Aster. "Perpetual Grid offers a flexible way to capture opportunities amid market volatility, and Grid 2.0 takes this experience further with greater flexibility and independence. This upgrade is another step toward our broader vision of building the frontier of onchain trading."

Incentivizing Automated Perpetual Trading

Liquidity mining, in which a protocol distributes token rewards for designated trading or liquidity-providing activity, has been a core incentive mechanism across decentralized finance since it was popularized in 2020. Aster's campaign follows that model, building on the platform's expanded Perpetual Grid infrastructure and giving users a new way to participate in automated trading while earning additional $ASTER rewards from eligible Grid activity. Both Maker and Taker volume count toward the campaign, while manual trading and activity outside the Grid strategy are excluded.

An Estimated Bonus APY is also displayed to provide an indication of potential annualized $ASTER rewards based on recent campaign activity. The estimate can change as trading volume, participating Grids, and other campaign conditions change, and does not guarantee future rewards or returns.

Grid 2.0 Separates Automated and Manual Strategies

Alongside the campaign, the newly upgraded Perpetual Grid 2.0 enables Grid strategies to operate independently from users' regular Perpetual trading. Each Grid runs through a dedicated Grid Bot subaccount, keeping its positions and margin separate from the main Perpetual account. That separation is the practical significance of the upgrade: where automated and manual trading share a single account, positions draw on the same margin and can affect one another.

With support for both Cross and Isolated Margin, users can run automated Grid strategies while continuing to trade Perpetuals manually, including on the same trading pair. Isolated Margin supports up to 50 independent Grid strategies per account, with no per-pair limit.

Discovering Strategies Through the Grid Marketplace

Aster's Grid Marketplace simplifies strategy discovery by allowing users to browse active Grid strategies and review metrics such as PnL, ROI, runtime, price range, leverage, and trading activity. Users can use an existing strategy as a starting point through Copy, or switch its direction through Reverse, turning a Long strategy into a Short, or vice versa. Copied or reversed strategies remain independent from their source and do not automatically synchronize with the original Grid.

Eligible Trading Pairs

The Liquidity Pool Mining campaign is available on designated eligible trading pairs, with Week 1 pairs including OURA/USD1, POLYMARKET/USD1, and META/USD1 — a lineup in line with platform's stated focus on bringing emerging assets onchain. The reward pool is shared across participating pairs, and individual rewards are determined by each Grid's eligible trading volume relative to the total eligible volume generated during the relevant hourly period.

More eligible trading pairs may be added in subsequent weeks to reflect the latest market trends, making the pair list and hourly reward conditions points to track as the four-week program runs toward its October 25 close. Further details about the campaign, eligible trading pairs, and current campaign parameters are available on the official campaign page.

About Aster

Aster is a privacy-first onchain trading platform backed by YZi Labs, featuring tools such as Hidden Orders to protect user trading activity. It offers perpetual futures, spot, and earn products for top-trending assets, including RWAs, memes, and core crypto markets. The platform is powered by Aster Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain built to support decentralized finance. More information is available on the official website, and updates can be found on Aster's X account.