Aster returned money to users after a sudden XPL price jump on its perpetual market. The token spiked to four dollars on Aster while other venues showed about one dollar and thirty cents, forcing leveraged positions to close and straining trust and day-to-day risk on crypto desks.

Reports and on-chain records say the jump started at 09:45 UTC, prompting Aster to freeze the XPL contract and send the equal value in USDT to every account that lost money.

Aster Refunds Users: What Happened

The root cause sits in the price feed: investigators say the index price was locked at one dollar and the mark price capped at one dollar and twenty-two cents. When the cap came off, the mark leapt while the index stayed stuck, creating a mismatch that detonated forced sells and a DeFi-style flash crash.

Reputation also felt the shock; Aster moved fast with USDT refunds, yet blunt announcements can erode confidence even as losses are repaid.

If correct, it would explain why XPL’s price was suppressed. When the mark price was allegedly removed, the token then spiked to $4. This theory appears to have become the consensus across crypto social media, as well as for traders in the Aster Discord.

Speed versus safety remains a trade-off as Aster vies with Hyperliquid for daily volume on BNB Chain; racing to list new pairs can loosen code checks and governance guardrails.

Operations discipline is essential: anyone using leverage should plan for bad data, set position caps, and map exit. With traders not directly owning the asset, the functions of tracking the token’s price are different from spot trading, which is where the XPL glitch originated.

Aster finished the repayments and keeps the perpetual offline while engineers trace the flaw. Traders and treasury teams face one task: test the oracle, size the bet, and write the crisis script before the next order lands.