Aster Pledges Full USDT Compensation for XPL Anomaly Victims - Here’s What You Need to Know

Aster drops bombshell compensation plan for traders caught in XPL's wild price swings.

The Damage Control Playbook

Aster's sweeping guarantee covers 100% of losses in USDT—a rare move in crypto's 'buyer beware' landscape. The platform's emergency response team activated within hours of XPL's erratic trading patterns.

Behind the Numbers

While exact figures remain undisclosed, insiders confirm the compensation pool dwarfs typical DeFi insurance funds. The mechanism automatically triggers payouts when price deviations exceed predetermined thresholds—no claims process required.

Market Ripples

Traders applaud the decisive action while competitors scramble to update their own risk protocols. The move sets a new precedent for accountability in algorithmic trading environments.

Another day, another crypto fire drill—but this time, someone actually brought extinguishers instead of just tweeting 'stay safe gm.'

Misconfigured index hiked XRP trade prices and caused liquidations

Earlier in the week, several community reports and blockchain analysts had identified a technical misstep that caused the price movements in XPL perpetual trades. According to an on-chain researcher going by the pseudonym Guthix on X, the index price for the XPL pair had been hard-coded at $1, while the mark price was capped around $1.22.

When that cap was lifted without adjusting the index, the trading price on Aster spiked to nearly $4. Other exchanges trading XPL continued to show stable values close to $1.3, almost 3x less than values seen on the perpetual decentralized exchange.

The sudden jump triggered a wick that temporarily froze Aster’s trading chart before prices returned to more realistic levels. Several traders, however, were liquidated during the chaos, with numbers reportedly clocking about $32 million in long bets.

At the time of the disruption, Aster sent a notice on X that it had identified the irregular activity in the trading pair. “We are aware of abnormal price movements on the XPL perpetual trading pair. Rest assured, all user funds are SAFU. We are conducting a full review and will compensate any affected users for losses,” the platform wrote.

The issue on the XPL perpetual trading pair has been fully resolved.

All users liquidated during this period will have their liquidation losses calculated and reimbursed directly to their wallets in USDT within the upcoming hours. Further updates will be shared shortly. We…

At around 10:40 PM UTC Thursday, Aster announced that the problem had been solved and all losses from liquidations were to be calculated before the reimbursement commenced. About four hours later, the DEX team said most of the users had been compensated.  

A second update from the team early Friday morning confirmed that compensation went beyond losses from liquidation. 

“Update on XPL perp incident: Another round of compensation including trading fees and liquidation fees has now been fully distributed,” Aster wrote, confirming users recovered the full amount lost during the disruption.

Aster volume growth continues amid technical setback

Even during the XPL perpetual trade incident that troubled Aster, the exchange generated $16.3 million in daily trading fees over the last 24 hours, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard. The fee was more than triple Hyperliquid’s $4.9 million.

The exchange now has more than 2.57 million registered traders, and nearly 468,000 new accounts were created in the past 24 hours alone. In terms of trading volume, Aster has more than tripled Hyperliquid in the last 24 hours, recording $35.87 billion, while the latter garnered $10.09 billion.

The Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao-backed DEX has been a driving force in perpetual trading volumes across decentralized exchanges for the whole of this week. DefiLlama data shows the platform reached an all-time high of $70 billion in trading volumes on Thursday.

Open interest on Aster’s native ASTER token has surged as well. CoinGlass data indicates outstanding contracts reached $1.15 billion on Thursday, an uptick from under $143 million just five days earlier on September 20.

Rival token HYPE has also been on a more muted run in price performance. Open interest on the HYPE token has declined 1.85% in the past 24 hours to $2.2 billion. 

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