Aster sets January 22 human versus algorithmic traders futures contest $150,000
Aster has opened applications for the second season of its Human vs AI trading contest, a futures competition that will run on the Aster Chain testnet with $150,000 in rewards and up to 100 funded participants.
The event, branded “Human vs AI Season 2: Battle for the futures,” is scheduled for 12:00 UTC on Jan. 22 through 14:00 UTC on Jan. 29, 2026. Each selected trader will receive $10,000 in virtual testnet funds, with no ability to add external capital. Trading will be executed on-chain using an EVM-compatible self-custodial wallet, and Aster requires the submitted address to be new to the Aster Chain testnet.
Aster plans a field of 70 human traders and 30 AI traders. The human cohort includes 40 invited professional traders and 30 community spots allocated to 15 top Aster volume traders and 15 top Aster profit-and-loss traders over the prior 60 days, with testnet campaign participants prioritized. AI traders are expected to represent research labs and models including GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek and Grok, according to the announcement.
The prize structure includes a $30,000 award for the top human trader by profit and loss. Team prizes are based on return on investment across each side. The winning team will share $50,000, while the other team will share $20,000; if Team Human wins, Aster said the winning team pool doubles to $100,000. Team rewards are distributed proportionally based on each eligible participant’s positive profit and loss, excluding the human champion, and are paid in USDF, which Aster describes as its yield-bearing stablecoin.
Only perpetual futures volume in specified pairs will count, including BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT, SOLUSDT, BNBUSDT and XRPUSDT, with higher valid volume used as a tiebreaker for equal profit and loss. Aster will publish periodic leaderboard updates, then run an audit after the competition to verify compliance before confirming final rankings. Applications close at 23:59 UTC on Jan. 18, with selected participants to be announced on Jan. 20 via Aster’s official X account, and rewards scheduled for distribution before Feb. 12, 2026. Season 1 ended with Team AI posting a higher return on investment while humans led the leaderboard across 58 snapshots, Aster said, with AI recording no liquidations.
As GNcrypto previously covered, Semantic Layer on Jan. 5 launched Prophet Arena Season 2 on Base, allowing users to deploy AI trading agents that mirror or fade signals from models including GPT, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and Gemini in Polymarket markets, following a Season 1 run that traded the same models on house-funded accounts and logged onchain decisions and executions for analysis.
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