Human vs AI Trading Battle! Aster Throws $100,000 to See Who Can Earn the Most?

Aster launches a human vs. AI trading experiment, where 70 funded human traders will compete in one-on-one trading contests against 30 AI agents. Each participant receives 10,000 USDT to trade perpetual contracts, can keep all profits, and bears no losses. The grand prize is $100,000, but only if a human reaches the finish line first; if AI leads, the prize is withheld.

Asymmetric Design with Zero Risk and High Rewards

(Source: Aster)

Aster has deliberately set reward rules that favor human traders, making this the most attention-grabbing design of the experiment. The team opened 100 funded spots and strictly selected the final 70 human participants based on their trading records from the past two months. Each participant receives 10,000 USDT for trading perpetual contracts and can freely keep all profits. Crucially, participants bear no losses, as Aster will absorb all losses.

This “zero risk, high reward” design is extremely rare. In traditional trading competitions, participants usually have to use their own capital and bear all the downside risk. Aster’s model eliminates downside risk entirely—the worst-case scenario is earning nothing, but there’s no loss. The deeper purpose of this design is to ensure participants can go all out without being overly conservative due to fear of losses.

The prize distribution mechanism is also meticulously designed. The top prize is $100,000, but only if a human reaches the finish line first. If the AI models lead the rankings, that portion of the prize is withheld, but all profitable human traders will still share at least a $50,000 prize pool. If the human traders’ overall profit exceeds that of the AIs, the prize pool doubles to $100,000. This mechanism cleverly combines individual competition and team collaboration: human traders must compete for the individual championship while collectively battling the AI camp.

Three Key Competition Milestones

December 7: Notify selected participants; traders prepare their strategies

December 9–23: Trading duel period; 15 days of testing across different market conditions

Within one week after final review: Distribute prizes and release detailed human vs. AI performance comparison

Registration opened on November 28 and runs through December 4, giving Aster enough time to thoroughly review participants’ trading histories and select truly skilled traders rather than lucky speculators.

Technical Background of the 30 AI Agents

The human traders’ opponents are not ordinary trading bots, but 30 AI agents operated by @nofA_ai. @nofA_ai is one of the winning teams from the Vibe Trading Arena, meaning these AI agents have already proven their trading abilities in previous competitions. Vibe Trading Arena is a platform focused on AI trading competitions, where participating AI models must trade in real market environments and compete against other AIs.

These 30 AI agents may use different trading strategies. Some may focus on technical analysis, making decisions by identifying chart patterns and technical indicators. Others may use quantitative strategies, conducting high-frequency trading based on statistical arbitrage or momentum factors. Some may attempt sentiment analysis, scraping social media and news to gauge market sentiment. This diversity of strategies means human traders must face opponents with various styles.

The program aims to test whether coded models can rival human intuition, or if machines can truly interpret crowd sentiment. This is a profound question. AI excels at processing vast amounts of data and executing disciplined strategies, but humans may have the edge in perceiving subtle market sentiment shifts, reacting to unexpected events, and making creative decisions. The high volatility and leverage of the perpetual contract market make this test even more challenging.

Aster Ecosystem’s Strategic Layout

This competition follows closely after Aster’s highly anticipated Rocket Launch event, which aims to give users early access to crypto projects before their official listings. Analysts believe the latest announcement may boost ASTER’s market share. According to CoinMarketCap, the price of this new crypto project has risen over 1,200% since its September launch.

At the same time, Aster is developing a new privacy-focused Layer 1 chain for high-speed trading. The project aims to deliver exchange-level performance while ensuring on-chain verifiability. The public testnet is planned for the end of 2025, with the mainnet launch scheduled for early 2026. The new public chain will provide technical infrastructure for the Aster ecosystem, allowing it to move away from reliance on existing chains and better control performance and privacy features.

From a strategic perspective, the human vs. AI trading battle is a key part of Aster’s ecosystem development. It’s not just a marketing campaign, but also a process of product validation and community building. Through this competition, Aster can test its trading platform’s stability under high pressure, collect user feedback for product improvements, and attract more traders to use and pay attention to its platform.