A decentralized finance (DeFi) altcoin backed by Binance is skyrocketing after launching on the crypto exchange and receiving a shoutout from Changpeng Zhao, the firm’s former CEO.

In a new announcement, Binance says that it is adding support for the perpetuals and derivatives exchange platform Aster (ASTER).

“Aster is NOW LIVE on Binance Alpha. Aster is a decentralized derivatives exchange (perpetual decentralized exchange) on BNBChain, incubated by YZi Labs, the investment fund of [Zhao].”

News of the addition – as well as an acknowledgement from Binance co-founder Zhao – preceded Aster’s price explosion, which saw the asset go from a low of $0.895 on September 20th to a peak of $1.73 just a day later, a 93% surge. Aster has since retraced and is trading for $1.54 at time of writing, a 22.7% increase during the last 24 hours.

Zhao, who stepped down as the firm’s chief executive in November 2023, says on X that Aster is the biggest holder of BSC-USDT other than Binance’s very own hot wallet.

In a recent thread on X, Rohun Vura – the founder of non-fungible token (NFT) projects DeGods and y00ts – notes that one doesn’t need a crypto bridge to operate the platform.

“It’s insane to me that I haven’t seen this on my timeline yet but you can literally deposit Solana USDT into Aster and just buy it, you don’t need to bridge.”