George Town, British Virgin Islands, September 28, 2026, Chainwire — Aster, the privacy-first onchain trading platform backed by YZi Labs, today announced the launch of its Liquidity Pool Mining campaign, a four-week incentive program carrying a total reward pool of up to 140,000 $ASTER. Running from September 28 to October 25, 2026 (UTC), the campaign marks the debut of Perpetual Grid 2.0 and is open to all Aster users running Perpetual Grid strategies on eligible trading pairs.

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 strategies, the format at the center of the upgrade, place automated buy and sell orders at intervals across a chosen price range, an approach built to trade around short-term price swings without constant manual order entry.

"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

The campaign builds on Aster's expanded Perpetual Grid infrastructure, giving users a new way to take part 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 any activity outside a Grid strategy are excluded. Reward programs of this kind are a common mechanism among decentralized exchanges for concentrating activity in designated markets, and the hourly epoch structure ties each participant's share to recent trading volume rather than standing balances.

An Estimated Bonus APY is also displayed, providing an indication of potential annualized $ASTER rewards based on recent campaign activity. This figure can change as trading volume, participating Grids, and other campaign conditions shift, and it 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 means bot-driven positions no longer share a margin pool with manual trades, allowing each strategy's results to be read on its own.

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. Under Isolated Margin, each Grid draws only on the collateral committed to it, while Cross Margin pools collateral across positions.

Discover Strategies Through 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 adopt an existing strategy as a starting point through Copy, or flip its direction through Reverse, converting a Long strategy into a Short one or vice versa. Copied or reversed strategies remain independent from their source and do not automatically synchronize with the original Grid.

Eligible Trading Pairs and Reward Distribution

The Liquidity Pool Mining campaign is available on designated eligible trading pairs, with Week 1 eligible pairs including OURA/USD1, POLYMARKET/USD, and META/USD1 — all quoted against USD1. 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 weekly pair rotation one of the campaign parameters to watch as the four-week program unfolds. Full details on 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 unique tools such as Hidden Orders to protect user trading activity. The platform offers perpetual futures, spot, and earn products for top-trending assets, including RWAs, memes, and core crypto markets. Aster is powered by Aster Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain built to power the future of decentralized finance. Users can learn more on the official website or follow Aster on X.