ast
How it works

The keeper

The keeper is the off-chain service that turns leveraged tokens into real positions. It runs every 30 seconds against the single Aster account that backs every vault, and every one of its actions is a transaction you can see on BscScan or an order on that account.

Each cycle

  • Prices: signs the Aster index of the stock markets every few seconds for the site to relay inside trades, and posts it on-chain itself when it moves more than 0.2% (or every 30 minutes, as long as it moves).
  • Funding: mirrors Aster's funding rates on-chain so each vault pays or receives what its position really costs.
  • Rebalances: settles vaults whose leverage drifted outside the tolerance band, bringing them back to target.
  • Hedge: adds up what all vaults require, market by market (NAV × leverage, long minus short), and adjusts the positions on Aster so the account holds exactly that net exposure.
  • Sweeps: moves USDT above the idle buffer (about 20% of NAV) from the vaults to Aster, where it works as margin.
  • Redemptions: serves queued redemptions, and refills a vault's idle USDT from Aster when sells have drained it below half the buffer.
  • Alerts: watches its own gas, the Aster margin and the freshness of every price, and pages the team when something is off.

What it publishes

  • The account equity attributed to each vault (its NAV), on-chain, at every settlement. Buying on a token is blocked when its vault's equity is stale.
  • The open positions, equity and available margin of the account — shown live on the Vault page.

Trust model

The keeper holds a hot key for on-chain actions and an API agent for the Aster account. The contracts limit what it can do: it cannot mint LT for free, it cannot move a vault's idle USDT anywhere except to Aster, and withdrawals from Aster can only be forwarded to the vault contracts. It can, however, stop running: then prices and NAVs go stale, buying pauses, and selling continues on the idle USDT until the queue is served. This is the custodial component of the design, stated plainly on the Risks page.