$ASTER’s recent move has completely trampled on the word “trust.”

No announcement, no vote—just suddenly dropping an “extreme buyback” plan. They claim it’s to optimize liquidity, but in reality, it’s turned the entire liquidity pool into a mess. Retail investors are still confused, while whales are already staging a “panic sell-off.” Some say a certain whale address dumped everything and ran, while die-hard bulls are shouting “now’s the time to buy the dip,” but market sentiment? It’s already shattered to pieces.

What’s even more outrageous is the team trying to brush it off as a “technical upgrade.” Come on, who still buys that line these days? Isn’t the core of a DEX supposed to be transparency and decentralization? Yet they change the rules at will, and community governance is basically for show.

Now it all depends on whether the team can come up with a meaningful compensation plan. But honestly, once trust is broken, it’s even harder to fix than a token price hitting zero.

A word of advice: no matter how impressive a whitepaper looks, it can’t stand up to a project team ruling over the rules. Before you invest, check the team’s past actions—don’t just focus on yields. If your principal’s gone, nothing else matters.