Aster, a perpetuals decentralized exchange (perp DEX), has launched a “hidden orders” privacy feature less than three weeks after Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao proposed the idea of “dark pool” perpetuals trading.
In traditional finance (TradFi), dark pools are private platforms that allow institutions to carry out large trades without revealing their orders to the market. DEXs, by contrast, have historically prioritized transparency, with order and liquidity data visible on-chain.
Aster, which boasts a total value locked (TVL) of $290 million, unveiled the hidden order mechanism on Friday in a post on X, formerly Twitter. Hidden orders are specialized order types that allow traders to conceal their order quantity from other market participants.
“Be the first to place stealth perp orders without revealing your size or presence in the public order book,” Aster’s tweet reads. “Invisible orders, visible advantage.”
The post was then retweeted by CZ. “This Hidden Order feature went live on @Aster_DEX 18 days after my post,” the Binance co-founder said. In the same post, Zhao revealed more than 30 projects have since approached him with similar ideas.
The rollout of such features underscores a growing interest in protecting traders from on-chain visibility risks, such as frontrunning and Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) attacks. The development could also signal a broader shift toward privacy-first infrastructure within decentralized finance (DeFi).
“There’s growing demand in DeFi for dark pool mechanics, especially from funds and traders seeking to avoid MEV, sandwiching, and toxic flow exposure,” said Vinson Leow, the CSO at Momentum.
However, Leow pointed out that while features like Aster’s hidden orders are “a step forward,” the tradeoff is that it’s limiting transparency. He called this critical for price discovery and trustless composability. “Dark pools will need to integrate selective disclosure and maintain auditability without revealing [live] trade intent in order to scale,” he said.
Luis Bezzenberger, the Head of Product at Shutter Network, echoed this sentiment, stating that while short-term privacy is beneficial, if orders stay hidden too long, it could damage market transparency and efficiency. “An interesting direction could be threshold-FHE (fully homomorphic encryption) on top of threshold cryptography, letting us balance privacy with fair, verifiable settlement,” he suggested.
Zhao originally proposed the idea on June 2 in response to the widely publicized losses of pseudonymous trader James Wynn, who publicly shared his $1.2 billion BTC long position on Hyperliquid. Wynn later claimed that this public disclosure made him a target, leading to efforts to liquidate his position and resulting in approximately $17.5 million in losses. ”The only reason price has gone down is because they are hunting me,” he said in a tweet that week.
“For perps (or futures), it is even more important to not let others know/see your orders,” CZ said at the time. “If others can see your liquidation point, they could try to push the market to liquidate you. Even if you got a billion dollars, others can gang up on you. This was possibly what we have seen recently.”
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