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Risk warning: CFDs and leveraged products carry a high risk of rapid loss. The majority of retail investor accounts lose money trading them. Futures brokers are priced by commission per contract, not spreads, so “pips” and “commission-based” are not directly comparable — and a 0.0-pip raw spread never includes the commission charged on top. Minimum deposits, leverage caps, product availability and investor protection depend on the entity that serves your country, and several brokers listed do not accept clients from every jurisdiction. Educational information only — not financial advice.
Aster review
⚠ No recognised financial regulator · no compensation scheme · no ombudsman
Rating is our editorial assessment — not an aggregate of user reviews.
Self-custody perpetuals DEX covering crypto, stock and commodity markets.
Key facts
| Regulation | No financial regulator (decentralised protocol) — Aster is a decentralised protocol, not a licensed broker. No financial regulator supervises it, there is no investor compensation scheme and no ombudsman. Self-custody means no firm can freeze or lose your balance — but it also means a mistaken transaction, a lost wallet key or a smart-contract failure has no support desk and no route to recovery. |
|---|---|
| Client eligibility | [À compléter — Aster's public docs do not state KYC requirements or restricted jurisdictions. Check the Terms of Service for your country before using it.] |
| Min deposit | $0 |
| Pricing | Commission-based — Maker/taker fees on perpetuals plus network gas — [À compléter: fee schedule not published in the public docs] |
| Platforms | Web app (wallet connect), Aster Chain (own L1) |
| Instruments | Crypto perpetuals, Stock perpetuals, Commodity perpetuals |
| Custody | Self-custody — you connect a wallet and keep control of your funds; Aster never holds them for you. |
Indicative figures — spreads are variable, commissions and minimum deposits vary by account type and by the regional entity serving you. Confirm current terms on Aster’s website. Last reviewed: 2026-07.
Our verdict on Aster
Aster is a self-custody perpetuals DEX rather than a broker, which changes the trade-off rather than simply improving it: nobody can freeze or lose your balance because nobody holds it, but equally nobody is obliged to help you if a transaction, a key or a contract goes wrong. It suits crypto-native traders already comfortable operating a wallet, and nobody else.
Only suitable for
- •Crypto-native traders who already self-custody and want perpetuals without handing funds to a firm
- •Traders who value on-chain verifiability of positions and balances over regulatory recourse
Look elsewhere if
- ✕Anyone who wants a regulator, a compensation scheme or a support desk standing behind their money
- ✕Traders new to wallets — a mistaken transaction or a lost key is unrecoverable here
Watch out:There is no financial regulator, no compensation scheme and no ombudsman. Self-custody removes counterparty risk but replaces it with smart-contract and wallet risk, which is entirely yours to carry. Aster's public docs also do not state its fee schedule, leverage limits or restricted jurisdictions — read the Terms of Service for your country before depositing anything.
What self-custody actually changes
Every other venue in this list is a broker: you send it money, it holds the balance, and a regulator (or, in SimpleFX's case, none) sits between you and that firm. Aster inverts this. You connect a wallet, funds stay under your keys, and settlement happens on-chain, so positions and balances are independently verifiable rather than reported to you by the counterparty. The failure mode that dominates broker reviews — a firm delaying or refusing a withdrawal — structurally does not apply here.
That is a real advantage, and it is not a free one. The risks simply move. A regulated broker that loses your money may face a compensation scheme, an ombudsman and a supervisor. If you sign a malicious transaction, lose your key, or a contract behaves unexpectedly, there is no equivalent — no support desk with the authority to reverse anything. Self-custody suits traders who already operate wallets confidently. For anyone still learning that, the absence of a safety net matters more than the absence of a middleman.
What we could not verify, and why it matters
Aster's own documentation describes it as a privacy-focused perp DEX offering perpetual markets on crypto, stocks and commodities, running on Aster Chain, its own L1, and states it provides the self-custody and verifiability a DEX can offer. Those are the claims we could confirm from the official docs. What we could not confirm are the numbers that most affect a trader's outcome: the maker and taker fee schedule, the maximum leverage available, whether KYC is required, and which jurisdictions are restricted.
We have deliberately left those fields marked as incomplete rather than filling them with figures from third-party sites, because a wrong fee or leverage number on a comparison page is worse than an absent one. Treat this listing as a starting point and read Aster's own Terms of Service and fee page before trading — particularly on leverage, which on perpetual DEXs is often far higher than a regulated broker may offer retail clients, and which magnifies losses at exactly the rate it magnifies gains.
Pros
- + Self-custody — funds stay in your wallet rather than with a broker
- + Perpetuals on crypto, stocks and commodities from one venue
- + On-chain settlement, so positions and balances are independently verifiable
Cons
- − No financial regulator, no compensation scheme and no ombudsman — no recourse if something goes wrong
- − Adds smart-contract and wallet risk that a regulated broker does not carry
- − Fee schedule, leverage limits and restricted jurisdictions are not published in the public docs
Ready to trade with Aster?
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