On Monday, Bitcoin's sudden plunge directly dragged the entire market into a downtrend. The once-hot DEX track last year also couldn't escape—major exchange tokens all fell.

Let's first look at HYPE's performance, which slid from 25 down to around 23.8, a decline of about 5%. Not particularly fierce, but enough to cause concern. In contrast, ASTER performed much worse, dropping from 0.7 to 0.611 in less than half an hour, a single drop of over 12% (liquidity may vary slightly across platforms). That speed is truly frightening. LIGHT's decline was the most moderate, falling from 1.85 to around 1.77, a decrease of less than 5%. But that's normal, given it hasn't been online for long and selling pressure is limited. Today, LIGHT continued its downward trend, already approaching 1.66.

Looking at the current market landscape, Hyperliquid remains firmly the leader, while ASTER and Lighter are competing for second place, and this competition seems likely to continue for a while.

In this round of market movement, if you really want to bottom fish, HYPE is a relatively safer choice. The other two, frankly, are better to wait until the next bull market to make a move. Personally, I am more interested in ZK-rollup order book solutions based on the Ethereum ecosystem—there's a solid technological moat, and the airdrop incentives for the community account for 25%. This combination aligns better with the long-term vision of DeFi 2.0, and Lighter's layout in this area is quite on point.

As for ASTER, those in the know are well aware of the story—since that round of market manipulation by the whales, this coin has been halved, and its vitality has taken a significant hit.