Aster's token is not bullish because activity on Aster is clearly slowing, with its P/E rising even as the price falls. That makes the token more expensive per unit of earnings, as @AdiFlips noted, and expensive here means bearish. Lighter's LIT token shows the same pattern. x.com  x.com 

Aster's token supply overhang sank it, and its fixes come too late. ASTER is down 75% from its high even though it once beat Hyperliquid in trading volume; Hyperliquid had 5x more open interest. Only 32% of its 8B max supply is unlocked. Aster has cut emissions by 97% and started buybacks, the right move but too late. x.com 

Aster remains one of the most undervalued DEX and privacy coins, with a bottomed-out chart ready to run back to previous all-time highs. It still generates over $200K a day in revenue, which should grow in a good market. Its dark pools make it the only DEX where traders can size perps without getting hunted, it is backed by Binance, and it lists attention tokens faster than anyone. x.com 

Aster looks like a BNB special: it would be about 70% lower if CZ were not burning cash to keep it propped up for vanity reasons. x.com 

Aster's ceiling looks low because its rival Hyperliquid has captured TradFi and real-world assets, leaving Aster to bet on small-cap, high-volatility crypto. That is a self-downgrade: this cycle has had no broad altseason, and even future 10x or 100x hot spots tend to draw one-wave capital and users with poor stickiness, as with NFTs and inscriptions. Even with Binance and CZ as a floor, the gap with the leader will likely widen, and its founder seems to lack confidence. x.com  x.com 

Aster is a bet on CZ's ego rather than on the DEX itself, and the ego of crypto's richest man isn't priced in at all. x.com 

Hyperliquid has no real second-best competitor, while Aster's valuation has expanded even as its fundamentals deteriorated. Per DefiLlama data, Hyperliquid's TVL is up 19% this year to $4.9 billion while Aster's fell 28% to $853 million, and Aster's open interest fell 34% versus 7% for Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid returned $186 million to token holders in Q1 versus about $12 million for Aster, yet Aster trades at 19.7x fees against 11.1x and faces unlocks. HIP-3 has shown Hyperliquid's resilience. … Show more

Aave's protocol fees do not reach token holders because Labs controls DAO governance and votes itself grants. Labs voted itself $25 million for operations and $17.5 million in performance incentives, including $5 million for launching an app. Buybacks were paused after the rsETH bridge exploit and have not resumed. Despite the protocol's quality, the Aave token is uninvestable and will keep grinding lower; unlike buyback-funded peers, holders get no direct value. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  … Show more

Tokens that fund buybacks from revenue gained another reason to catch a bid after SEC staff said buybacks alone don't make an otherwise non-security token a security once its protocol is live. More usage can mean more fees for buybacks: Hyperliquid fees buy HYPE, Raydium swap fees buy RAY, and Pump, Jupiter, PancakeSwap, Aster, NEAR, Pendle, Maple and Sky do similar. Uniswap burns UNI from pool fees; Lido's DAO buys LDO by accumulation. Buybacks must be big relative to market cap and new supply. … Show more

dYdX is the biggest decentralized perpetuals exchange, with billions in daily volume and real fees, users and protocol, yet its token is down 97% from its all-time high. The DeFi perps narrative is heating up, and dYdX is the original. x.com