Venue Selection & Opportunities Case Study

(Direct link: https://kvants.gitbook.io/kvants-kusd/systematic-alpha-capture/venue-selection-and-opportunities-case-study#the-airdrop-effect-on-participation-and-oi)

Aster Case Study

(Direct link: https://kvants.gitbook.io/kvants-kusd/systematic-alpha-capture/venue-selection-and-opportunities-case-study#aster-case-study)

Mechanics and scale. In September 2025 Aster launched its token generation event and a large airdrop allocation — widely reported as 704 million ASTER or 8.8 percent of supply — with claims opened September 17, 2025 and a deadline October 17, 2025. The rollout was amplified through CoinMarketCap’s Launch program and BNB‑chain ecosystem support, materially expanding user acquisition and trading incentives.

Increasing IO = larger capacity for quantitative trading strategy yields.

Within days of the campaign, Aster’s open interest exploded from about 3.72 million dollars to roughly 1.25 billion dollars, and its 24 hour perp volume briefly topped the DEX leaderboard near 24.7 billion dollars on September 24. Protocol TVL rose to about 1.85 billion dollars in the same window. By October 1, multiple trackers still showed OI ≈ 1.1–1.2 billion dollars, even after some cooling. These are unusually fast step‑changes in parked risk and throughput.

Context in the wider perps market. Across all perp DEXs, DeFiLlama’s aggregate shows roughly 95.2 billion dollars of 24 hour volume and 1.14 trillion dollars over 30 days at the time of writing.

Aster’s airdrop catalyzed a rare, rapid step‑up in both open interest and flow. That combination of long‑biased takers, elevated funding, and cross‑venue dispersion is precisely the setup that market‑neutral funds seek. The edge may compress after incentives fade, yet while the regime persists, the combination of funding‑rate carry, maker‑fee income, and microstructure dislocations offers a high‑probability, hedged opportunity set, with the end participation of market neutral funds make the market a more efficient place by providing a counter trade to the flow to balance out the bias, and make the exchange a stable marketplace.