Aster, the Binance-linked decentralized crypto exchange often positioned as a rival to the Hyperliquid crypto exchange, is expanding its services, launching its own prediction markets hub.
The new product, called Aster Predictions, lets users trade on the outcome of future events directly from their existing spot accounts, the team said in an X thread on Monday morning.
- The first markets include five-minute Bitcoin price direction bets and predictions tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
At launch, maker and taker fees are set at zero, while winning positions incur a 0.05% settlement fee, the announcement reads.
- But Aster isn't entering an empty category on BNB Chain. PancakeSwap's Prediction product and other smaller apps have already offered binary markets on the network.
The exchange said prediction activity will count toward spot trading volume and VIP tiers.
- Hyperliquid, Aster's larger rival in on-chain derivatives, has also been expanding beyond standard crypto perps.
- Earlier in May, Hyperliquid launched the HIP-4 framework, introducing fully collateralized, event-based "outcome contracts" to its mainnet.
Aster has also been expanding its infrastructure ambitions. The exchange launched Aster Chain, its own Layer 1 blockchain, in March, though the chain remains in its early stages.
- Last year, Aster ran into controversy after DefiLlama, a crypto data platform, temporarily removed the exchange's perpetual volume data, saying it couldn't independently verify lower-level trading activity or rule out wash trading.
- DefiLlama later relisted Aster, but its pseudonymous founder 0xngmi continued to describe parts of the data as a "black box."
Founded in early 2025 after Astherus merged with APX Finance, Aster is a decentralized exchange for spot and perpetual futures crypto trading that later expanded onto its own Aster Chain.
Astherus, one of Aster's predecessor projects, was backed by YZi Labs, the investment firm formerly known as Binance Labs and tied to Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao.