Aster launches first USD1-denominated RWA perpetual markets with $28M liquidity fund

Aster DEX just went live with something the perpetuals market hasn’t seen before: real-world asset contracts settled entirely in USD1, the stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial. Five new perpetual markets launched on August 20, covering tokenized equities and commodities, with a liquidity fund worth roughly $28 million standing behind them. The contracts, listed under Aster’s AOS-2 open listing standard, include SPCXUSD1, CLUSD1, XAUUSD1, SNDKUSD1, and SKHYNIXUSD1. If those tickers look like alphabet soup, think of them as perpetual futures on assets like gold and major equity indices, but denominated and settled in USD1 instead of the usual USDT. What the liquidity fund actually looks like Backing these new markets is a combined growth fund of 250 million WLFI tokens from World Liberty Financial and 12.5 million USD1 contributed by Aster. At current market prices, the total package comes to approximately $28 million. USD1 itself has grown into a meaningful stablecoin, with roughly $4.4 billion in circulation as of early 2026. It’s now the exclusive settlement asset for all of Aster’s RWA and commodity perpetual contracts, a deliberate move to deepen the relationship between...