Zhisheng AI or Collaborative Win-Win? Aster "Humans vs AI" Season 2 Trading Competition is about to begin

In the first season of the “Humans vs AI” live trading competition hosted by Aster, human trader ProMint achieved the highest ranking with positive profits. However, the overall investment return rate for the human trading team was -32.22%, while all AI strategies had an overall ROI of -4.48%.

The second season of the competition is confirmed to start on January 22nd on the Aster Chain testnet. This competition features a prize pool of $150,000 and provides participants with a risk-isolated trading environment.

01 Core of the Event: A Re-Encounter Between Human Intuition and AI Logic

Aster announced that the second season of the “Humans vs AI” live trading competition is about to launch. The unique aspect of this contest is that it is not a simulated environment but a real-market challenge.

According to the official Aster announcement, the new season will shift to the Aster Chain testnet and be open to a broader global trading community.

The design philosophy of the event reflects a deep insight into the current trading ecosystem. AI is becoming a fundamental tool for execution and risk management, while human traders contribute judgment, situational awareness, and narrative interpretation under complex market conditions.

02 Prize Mechanism: A Prize Pool of Up to $150,000 and Risk Isolation

The second season sets a total prize pool of $150,000, with a carefully designed incentive structure aimed at balancing individual performance and team collaboration.

For individual awards, the top profitable human trader will receive a $30,000 reward. The team award features a special mechanism: if the human team wins, they can double the base reward from $50,000 to a special reward of $100,000.

Participants will each receive $10,000 in virtual trading funds provided by Aster. This design allows traders to test strategies and optimize risk-reward ratios without risking their principal.

03 Eligibility: An Elite Duel of 100 Seats

The second season will recruit 100 participants, including human traders and advanced AI agents from top laboratories.

Human trader seats will be selected through multiple channels. 40 seats will invite professional traders, and 30 seats will be chosen from community applicants, including top traders and profitable traders with trading volume in the past 60 days.

The remaining 30 seats will be occupied by cutting-edge models from leading AI research labs worldwide, including GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, and others.

The registration deadline is January 18th. The list of selected participants will be announced on January 20th, and the official competition will run from January 22nd to 29th.

04 Review of Season One: Human Champions and Dual Insights from AI Risk Control

Reviewing the first season, data revealed stark differences between human traders and AI strategies. Human traders showed broader performance variation, with the highest individual profit exceeding $19,000, while the largest loss approached $18,000.

The key difference lies in risk control: 43% of human participants faced liquidation, whereas all 30 AI strategies avoided liquidation entirely, achieving a 100% survival rate.

The competition highlighted the strategic differences between both sides. AI has a structural advantage in risk control, with no AI strategy experiencing liquidation. Human traders, however, can leverage judgment and narrative cognition to capture asymmetric opportunities in volatile markets.

05 Competition Rules: Live Trading on the Testnet

The second season will be conducted on the Aster Chain testnet, using virtual funds to simulate real trading environments.

The rules are clear: trading is limited to specified perpetual contract trading pairs: BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT, SOLUSDT, BNBUSDT, and XRPUSDT. Participants must use self-custodied, EVM-compatible wallets, and create new wallet addresses on the Aster Chain testnet.

Participants are required to publish at least two activity-related tweets during the competition; failure to do so may affect reward distribution. All rewards will be paid in USDF, Aster’s interest-bearing stablecoin.

06 Platform Empowerment: ASTER Trading Opportunities on Gate

As the “Humans vs AI” second season approaches, the ASTER token has attracted market attention. According to Gate platform data, as of January 15th, the ASTER price is $0.7332, with a 24-hour trading volume of $88,500.

ASTER trading pairs on Gate are active, with a 24-hour high of $0.7948 and a low of $0.7274. The current market cap is $1.21 billion, with market sentiment remaining neutral.

For traders interested in the competition’s progress, Gate provides real-time price charts and trading data for ASTER, making it easy to stay updated on token movements. This infrastructure enables traders to observe the “Humans vs AI” duel and seize related trading opportunities.

07 Market Trends: The Future of Human-Machine Collaborative Trading

Aster CEO Leonard summarized the first season by saying, “As markets become increasingly complex, traders need more than just a single tool. They need an integrated system that evolves with the market.”

Aster emphasizes that the purpose of the competition is not to determine who replaces whom, but to clarify their respective roles. Future competitiveness will rely on human-machine collaboration: AI as a foundational tool for execution and risk control, while humans contribute judgment and contextual understanding in complex markets.

The decentralized derivatives market continues to develop. Aster will keep exploring infrastructure designs that better serve professional trading needs, enabling strategies, risk management, and execution to achieve higher on-chain certainty.

Future Outlook

As of January 15th, on the Gate platform, the price of ASTER fluctuated slightly to $0.7332, with the market awaiting signals for the start of the January 22nd competition. When the first testnet trade is executed, 30 AI models will engage in a new round of capital battles with 70 human traders.

Whether humans rely on intuition to capture the next narrative hotspot or AI employs algorithms for perfect risk control, the outcome of this contest will be permanently recorded in the blockchain data of the Aster Chain testnet. The true winners may be those traders who understand the new paradigm of “human-machine collaboration” earliest.