Nov AMA: Aster's Roadmap Unfolds!

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Aster
@Aster_DEXNov 11, 2025

The Spaces brings an in-depth AMA with Esther’s leadership on product, infrastructure, token utility, and growth. CEO Leonard and Head of Partnerships Amber outline a two-quarter roadmap centered on elevating core trading UX, expanding asset coverage (commodities and stock indices), and launching a privacy-focused L1 with a CLOB at the protocol layer. The L1’s goal is not raw speed supremacy but a comparable CEX-like experience plus optional privacy to protect strategies, enabling professional and institutional flows to migrate on-chain. Token utility expands with fee discounts, VIP tiers, airdrops, near-term yield via lending partners, and staking/governance aligned to the L1 timeline (aggressive internal test by year-end; testnet/production in Q1). Validator incentives will combine ecosystem allocation and fee sharing. Liquidity will be deepened via a market-maker program prioritizing long-tail pairs. The team will limit new native chain integrations, lean on bridges, and integrate fair-launch/crowdsale platforms and partners (including wallets) while advancing the USDF “earn-and-trade” collateral use case. The buyback-and-burn mechanism is evolving toward on-chain automation on Esther L1 for verifiable transparency. Community input remains central; CTO Oliver will engage more on technical topics.

Esther November AMA — Comprehensive Summary Notes

Participants and Roles

  • Amber — Head of Partnerships at Esther; host and moderator for the AMA.
  • Lena — CEO of Esther; primary speaker on product, roadmap, L1, token utility, and partnerships. Note: Lena was referred to as “Lena” throughout; in an early greeting she said “I’m Leonard,” likely a transcription artifact. We will refer to the CEO as Lena.
  • Oliver — CTO of Esther; introduced as a special guest who will engage the community on technical topics in Discord going forward.

Vision and Roadmap

  • Vision: Build a CEX-level performance DEX with DeFi transparency, delivering robust trading experiences while protecting user privacy.
  • Community-led development: Many improvements and feature priorities are informed by community feedback (general chats, online/offline events). Recent milestones include a buyback system, spot features, trading competitions, and earn/stock index products.
  • Roadmap focus for the next two quarters:
    • Core trading experience improvements (UI/UX, reliability, feature parity with competitors, addressing minor but impactful UX issues).
    • Infrastructure: Launch a privacy-focused Layer 1 (L1) to support a specialized on-chain order book (CLOB) with protocol-level order handling.
    • Token utility expansion: Fee discounts, airdrops, VIP tiers, staking, governance, and yield opportunities via partnerships.
    • Product expansion: Beyond crypto—commodities (gold already added), more stock indices, experimentation in innovative asset markets.
    • Partnerships: Wallet integrations (Trust Wallet live; more coming), regional partners to build front ends, yield partners (e.g., Lista mentioned), AI ecosystem collaborations via campaigns.

Core Trading Experience and Features

  • Priority: Close gaps with competitors on core trading features and polish minor UX issues that compound user friction.
  • Light Mode rollout: Highly requested; rolling out in batches via A/B testing.
  • QR and other UX features: Introduced to align with user expectations from other platforms.
  • Liquidity improvements: Ongoing work to deepen liquidity, especially for non-standard assets (commodities and indices) where liquidity is historically weaker.

Privacy-Focused Layer 1 (L1)

  • Rationale:
    • Current blockchains are not designed specifically for trading optimization; Esther seeks protocol-level order creation/matching/cancellation (CLOB on-chain).
    • Fully transparent order books can disadvantage sophisticated traders and expose strategies. Esther believes privacy is a fundamental right and essential for enabling complex strategies on-chain.
    • Esther previously rolled out a hidden order system (~10 days after a community debate featuring James Wayne and Cici) to protect trading signals; L1 extends this philosophy.
  • Design Philosophy:
    • Performance: Aim for comparable performance to CEX (TPS/latency fast enough for most users), not chasing theoretical maxima at the expense of other values.
    • Privacy option: Distinguishing feature enabling professional/institutional strategy migration without revealing positions/signals.
    • Migration path: L1 designed so centralized strategies can be ported with minimal modifications.
  • Timeline:
    • Aggressive target: Complete internal testing and be ready for testnet by end of this year.
    • Production: Targeting Q1 next year for mainnet/production usage, subject to reasonable flexibility.

Token Utility, Staking, and Economics

  • Current utilities:
    • Fee discounts for ESTHER token holders.
    • VIP tiers.
    • Airdrops and participation in campaigns (e.g., Rocket Launch) requiring token holding or staking.
  • Staking:
    • Staking to go live alongside L1, providing validator rewards and enabling governance participation.
    • Short-term: Exploring yield generation for ESTHER via partnerships with lending protocols prior to L1 launch.
  • Governance:
    • Protocol governance to be introduced post-L1; token will have associated voting utility and future utility expansions enabled by governance.
  • Validator Incentives & Economics:
    • Incentives from ecosystem allocations and potential sharing of trading fees generated by the protocol.
    • Esther’s positive cash flow strengthens sustainability of validator rewards even with near-zero gas.

Institutional Flow, Structural Edge, and Liquidity Programs

  • Institutional adoption:
    • Biggest competitor for institutional flow remains centralized exchanges due to familiarity, compliance, and risk management.
    • Post-FTX lessons: Self-custody on-chain reduces counterparty risk; verifiability is valued.
    • Edge for Esther:
      • Competitive fees.
      • “Earn-and-Trade” synergy: USDF stable yield used as collateral for strategies; efficient capital usage.
      • Privacy features to prevent strategy exposure.
  • Market Maker Programs:
    • Liquidity improved on major pairs; ongoing tuning of market maker rebates/programs to more heavily incentivize liquidity provision on smaller alt pairs (where DEXs can list permissionlessly but liquidity is the bottleneck).
    • Open to collaborating with professional market makers; community encouraged to introduce liquidity providers.

Ecosystem: Assets, Chains, DeFi Integrations, and USDF

  • Chain coverage:
    • Native support prioritizes chains covering the majority of trading users and TVL (currently EVM-first).
    • Non-EVM integrations are costly; strategy is to rely on bridges for long-tail assets and limit new native chain additions (likely fewer than three more near-term), with robust cross-chain asset movement.
  • Asset formation and listings:
    • Fair launch and crowd-sale integrations mentioned (e.g., platforms referenced such as “Echo Wheelpad” in the transcript), to insert Esther early in asset formation and help users discover early opportunities.
  • Lending/yield:
    • Short-term integrations with lending protocols to increase yield options for assets used as collateral.
  • USDF stablecoin:
    • Core to the “Earn-and-Trade” narrative: users earn a steady return while using USDF as collateral.
    • In-house risk management reduces counterparty exposures seen in other stablecoins (recent incidents in broader market).
    • Aligns with Esther’s delta-neutral strategy strengths and capital efficiency objectives.

Rocket Launch and Listings Strategy

  • Futures listings:
    • Prioritize assets users want to trade; speed-to-list is important since users can express long/short views and liquidity is the key constraint.
  • Spot listings:
    • More stringent due diligence (product quality, team capability, integrity).
    • Esther’s value-add: Liquidity formation for high-quality projects that need liquidity to reach the next stage (e.g., broader exposure, centralized listings). Aim for win-win outcomes where liquidity helps project growth and benefits traders who participate (including via airdrops/campaigns).
    • Customized trading campaigns for non-TGE tokens to bootstrap liquidity and awareness.

Global Expansion and Community Building

  • Historical strength in Asia; expanding to English-speaking regions, Korea, CIS, Western Europe, and North America.
  • Strategy: Partner with local community leaders and distributors who share Esther’s vision, understand local cultures, and can operate community growth while Esther provides infrastructure/liquidity.
  • Activities:
    • Co-host events with partners (e.g., BNB Chain and others) and run offline trading competitions.
    • Recruit talent with market experience and aligned vision/integrity.
  • Community cadence: More regular AMAs and direct engagement; Oliver (CTO) will join Discord discussions on technical topics.

Buyback and Burn Mechanism

  • Current approach:
    • Buybacks have been conducted on-chain for transparency; goal is to make buybacks provable with transaction-level evidence on Esther’s L1 once live.
    • Buybacks funded by a portion of fees; mechanism has evolved in stages based on community feedback and operational learnings.
  • Future direction:
    • Once L1 is live, automate buybacks on-chain with verifiable proofs (accounts, gas, execution details).
    • Move toward longer, more stable stages for buyback parameters; ultimately aim for a consistent mechanism. Not committing to perpetual 100% buyback—still optimizing for sustainability.

Lightning Round Highlights

  • Multi-Asset Mode and Inverse Coin-Margined Contracts:
    • No immediate plan to offer inverse coin-margined contracts; focus remains on USDT/USDF-margined contracts and enhancing multi-asset mode with more yield-generating collateral.
    • Expansion to coin-margined products may come later once the core offering is stronger.
  • L1 Timeline Clarification:
    • Internal testing and testnet targeted by end of this year; Q1 next year is the more reasonable window for production (mainnet) launch.
  • Buyback & Burn:
    • Reinforced that buybacks are done on-chain for transparency, with plans to move execution and proof entirely onto Esther’s L1 post-launch. Mechanism will continue to be tuned and stabilized over longer stages.

Key Takeaways and Next Steps

  • Esther is doubling down on core trading improvements while pursuing a privacy-focused L1 to enable on-chain CLOB with professional-grade privacy, performance, and strategy portability.
  • Token utility is expanding: immediate benefits (fee discounts, VIP tiers, airdrops, campaigns), near-term yields via partners, and medium-term staking/governance with L1.
  • Institutional appeal centers on self-custody, competitive fees, earn-and-trade efficiency, and privacy protections for strategies.
  • Ecosystem growth will focus on careful chain integrations (favoring EVM and bridges), early asset formation (fair launch/crowd-sale partners), and deepening liquidity—especially on smaller pairs via optimized maker programs.
  • Community is central: expect more regular AMAs, technical engagement led by Oliver (CTO), and regional expansions via local partners and events.
  • Timeline to watch: testnet by end of this year; mainnet/production in Q1 next year if targets are met. Continued updates will come via Discord and future AMAs.