Aster (ASTER) Burn

Aster's ten rounds fall into two eras. The first (Dec 2025–Feb 2026) burned tokens bought back with fees: on 5 Dec 2025, 77.86M ASTER from buyback season S3 went to the dead wallet — half of what was bought, the other half moved to a locked airdrop wallet — worth $79.8M at $1.02; on 5 Feb 2026, 100% of the S4 and S5 tokens were burned: 98,400,345 ASTER (53.92M from S4 + 44.48M from S5), $53.9M at $0.55. These two rounds are 90% of lifetime burn and $133.7M of burn value at burn-day prices.

The second era began with the 17 Jun 2026 tokenomics: 99% of daily platform fees buy ASTER via TWAP for veASTER lockers; in return, an amount equal to what was just bought is burned from reserves — the team allocation (5%, 400M) first — every two weeks, until total supply reaches 3B. Aster calls it "198% buyback-and-burn", but read it precisely: the bought tokens are not burned, they go to stakers; what burns is the team's unreleased tokens. Circulating supply does not fall because of a round — it simply will not grow by that amount later.

From 29 Jun to 24 Aug 2026 this ledger measured five rounds leaving the reserve contract 0x59d8…3b19 for the dead wallet, exactly 14 days apart, always on a Monday: 2.94 – 3.08 – 2.21 – 2.85 – 7.16M ASTER. Against DefiLlama fees in each two-week window ($2.1 – 2.15 – 1.88 – 2.19 – 2.54M), the first four rounds came to only 74–89% of fees divided by price, while round #10 was double — but all five together, 18.25M ASTER versus $10.9M of fees at an average ~$0.65 ≈ 16.7M, land within 10%. The mechanism is honouring its promise cumulatively, not round by round.

The reserve 0x59d8…3b19 holds 381.75M ASTER = the 400M team allocation minus exactly the 18.25M burned — on-chain confirmation that the biweekly burn comes out of the team's pocket, as the docs state. The team's 12-month cliff ends 17 Sep 2026, after which 10M a month vests over 40 months (≈2.3M a week, the "Team" entry in the unlock card). So from mid-September the same reserve both unlocks to the team and burns: at the current pace, burn ≈ 7–8M a month against 10M a month unlocking.

Aster's boom lasted exactly two months: fees of $136.6M in Sep 2025 and $133.1M in October, with the record day on 28 Sep 2025 at $25.1M — more than all of August 2026 combined. Then a steady slide: Nov 2025 $53.5M, Dec $36.2M, Jan 2026 $28.1M, Feb $17.4M, Mar $7.5M, and $4.8–6.3M a month since April. 2025 brought in $375.6M; 2026 through 2 Sep $81.7M, with August at $5.2M.

Total supply today is 7.804B; reaching 3B needs another 4.8B burned. The current pace — 18.25M in 10 weeks, about 95M a year — takes roughly 50 years; even round #10's pace (7.16M per fortnight, ~186M a year) is 26 years. Getting to 3B in two years would require fees back at September 2025 levels, sustained for 24 months at early-September-2026 prices. The "3B target" is therefore a direction, not a schedule; the numbers to watch are monthly fees and the burn every other Monday.

Of the original 8B, 53.5% (4.28B) is airdrop — 704M unlocked at TGE on 17 Sep 2025, the rest over 80 months; 30% ecosystem; 7% treasury; 5% team; 4.5% liquidity unlocked at once. 2.70B (33.75%) circulate today. Over the past twelve months the airdrop and ecosystem schedules released about 1.06B ASTER — 5.4 times the lifetime burn, 58 times what the new mechanism has burned. Price reflects that balance: ATH $2.41 on 24 Sep 2025, around $0.72 in early September 2026 (−70%), still seven times the $0.10 launch level.

Burn = the change in the ASTER contract's (0x000a…556a) dead-wallet balance on BNB Chain at 00:00 UTC daily; the ten rounds in the table match the dead-wallet balance to the token (196,031,880). From round #6 the source is confirmed as the reserve contract 0x59d8…3b19. The Revenue column = 100% of platform fees per DefiLlama (aster-perps + aster-spot) since 99% goes to the buyback; the TWAP buys distributed to veASTER are not shown because those tokens return to circulation rather than burn. Unlocks come from DefiLlama and Aster's docs; price from CoinGecko. The three small rounds #2, #4 and #5 (0.3–0.75M) are on-chain, but this ledger found no matching announcement.