Preview
Aster spent months building real traction, achieving 500,000+ wallets and $37 billion in platform trading volume before its September 2025 TGE. Formula ran a three-month campaign that kept Aster in front of traders repeatedly – editorial first, then PR around product milestones, then community formats heading into launch. On TGE day, the ASTER token recorded $2.6 billion in trading volume. The market cap reached $3.7 billion within the first week.
By 2025, token launches were competing in a fast-moving market: new projects every week, liquidity rotating quickly, attention fading in days. For teams preparing for TGEs, visibility alone is no longer enough. People want a story they can repeat, and signs that the project won’t disappear a week after listing.
That was the backdrop for Aster’s TGE campaign.
Aster launched in March 2025 after the merger of Astherus and APX Finance. The project positioned itself as a perpetual DEX focused on solving common issues in onchain derivatives trading. The platform paired perpetual trading with asset management tools, and added features like Hidden Orders for traders to place private onchain orders. According to Aster, the platform crossed $37 billion in trading volume within its first 20 weeks and connected more than 500,000 wallets before the TGE.
By the time the token launch approached, Aster already had product traction. The next challenge was scaling market attention beyond existing users and turning the TGE into a story that traveled beyond the existing user base.
Building the narrative before the TGE
Formula joined pre-launch to turn Aster’s positioning into a clear media plan, determining what to say, where to say it, and how to repeat it without sounding repetitive. We narrowed the story to a few hooks traders actually cared about: tighter execution, privacy via Hidden Orders, and why perp DEXs on BNB Chain were gaining share.
That positioning became the base for the campaign’s editorial and PR rollout.
Formula coordinated a three‑month campaign with Cointelegraph placements, media distribution, social activations, and live community formats. The goal was to stay visible before, during, and after the TGE.
A Cointelegraph advertorial published on August 1, 2025 was one of the story’s key drivers. The piece focused on how Aster approached the trade‑offs between performance, privacy, and usability in decentralized trading. The campaign included a 24‑hour homepage pin, “Read More” widget placement, newsletter distribution, banner support and a Spanish version for additional reach. According to the data, the article generated 23,405 views, with an average reading time of 1 minute and 27 seconds and more than 463,000 impressions.
At the same stage, Formula focused PR distribution tied to product milestones. Coverage around Hidden Orders and the TGE countdown appeared across outlets, including The Block, BeInCrypto, Bitcoin.com and crypto.news. The campaign reached more than 700 media outlets in total.
The role of PR here was practical. Different audiences follow different outlets, so we repeated the message without changing the core story.
Scaling community attention during launch week
As the TGE approached, the campaign shifted toward community formats and social distribution.
Formula organized and promoted a Cointelegraph AMA session focused on Aster’s roadmap, market positioning and next growth stage. The AMA generated 467,000 impressions, 46,500 views and more than 2,200 engagements, including 1,957 likes and reposts.
The supporting X campaign extended the reach further. AMA-related X posts generated another 315,000 in total reach and helped push the discussion into broader crypto trading communities. It also gained organic amplification from trading accounts and crypto influencers after the AMA clips started circulating on X.
Alongside the social campaign, Formula coordinated broader awareness tied to CoinMarketCap launch activity and media visibility. Business Insider later reported that the launch campaign generated more than 400 million homepage banner impressions, over 3 million X impressions, 1.5 million landing page clicks, and more than 500,000 direct visits to Aster’s CoinMarketCap launch page.
Launch-week attention is brutally short. The plan was to show up everywhere at once – editorial, social clips, live sessions, banners, newsletters – so people didn’t just see Aster once and forget it.
Results after the token launch
Aster’s TGE took place on September 17, 2025. The project reported that 704 million ASTER tokens (8.8% of the total supply) were unlocked at the event, with most of them set aside for community rewards and ecosystem growth.
The launch generated strong early market activity. Aster reached $2.6 billion in trading volume on TGE day and a $3.7 billion market cap one week after launch, representing 20x growth during the campaign period.
Total campaign impressions exceeded 300 million across media, social and distribution channels.
Additional reporting around the launch stated that Aster recorded more than $345 million in trading volume during its first 24 hours, while the ecosystem added over 330,000 new wallets after the TGE.
On September 23, CryptoDigest ranked Aster as the top Binance AI Trending Pick. Among all tokens launched that week, Aster posted the highest diluted valuation at $14.1 billion, according to data from CryptoDiffer.
Formula applied a step-by-step approach: led with editorial to set the story, used milestone PR to keep it in circulation, and then let AMAs and social clips carry that same narrative through launch week. For Web3 teams preparing for a token launch, that’s often the difference between a spike and sustained momentum.
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If you’re heading into a TGE and want help shaping the story and getting it distributed, book a call with the team!
