Your First Steps on Aster

Which wallet do I need for Aster?

You need a standard Web3 wallet. Aster lists MetaMask, Binance Wallet and Phantom among its connection options. Install one as a browser extension or mobile app, connect it at app.asterdex.com and sign a one-time request. Aster also offers an email login, but its documentation limits email accounts to USDT deposits on Arbitrum, so a wallet is the more flexible choice.

You can tell which kind of account you have from how you signed in. A wallet signature prompt means the four-chain rule applies. A six-digit code sent to your inbox means email login, where USDC, or USDT sent over BNB Chain, Ethereum or Solana, will not credit. Aster documents a way to pull those funds back out through Withdraw, but it is easier never to send them. The wallets themselves are other companies' products, so check each one's own documentation for the chains it handles.

With a wallet login, your funds stay in that wallet until you sign a deposit. The guide to how trading on Aster works explains what happens after that signature, including the on-chain order book and hidden encrypted orders.

Depositing USDT and Choosing a Chain

Aster connects to four networks, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Solana and Arbitrum, so there is no manual bridging step. Each of those chains is run independently of Aster, and confirmation times are set by the network rather than by the exchange. You launch the app, pick the chain your funds are on, connect and sign with your wallet, then deposit.

USDT is the primary collateral, and Aster also accepts USDC, ETH, SOL, and yield-bearing collateral such as asBNB and USDF; Pro mode supports multi-asset margin. Aster charges no deposit fee on its side, and under normal network conditions a deposit typically credits within a few minutes, though congestion can stretch that.

One Aster-specific trap is worth knowing before you fund the account. Realized losses, funding fees and commissions can push a token balance below zero, and the next deposit pays that off first, so a top-up can look smaller than what you sent. The deposit not showing guide covers that case and the chain mismatches behind most missing balances.

How do I place my first trade on Aster?

Pick a perpetual market, choose long or short, set your size and leverage, then place the order. A market order is the simplest first trade, because it fills at the best available price. Simple mode does this in one click, while Pro mode adds the full order book, hidden orders and multi-collateral margin.

The market list goes beyond crypto. Next to BTC, ETH, SOL and ASTER you will find 24/7 stock and commodity perps, which are issued by third parties and priced from third-party oracle feeds, so they keep trading while the underlying exchange is closed.

Aster offers two paths: Simple mode is one-click and supports up to 1001x on select BTC/ETH pairs with no initial margin, while Pro mode gives you the full order book, hidden orders, and multi-collateral margin. Aster supports market, limit, stop-loss, and take-profit order types, and limit orders can be placed as hidden encrypted orders that stay out of the public book until they execute.

The 1001x figure applies to Simple mode on select pairs and behaves differently from ordinary leverage, so read the 1001x leverage explainer before you use it.

Fee Structure on Day One

Aster's published fee schedule puts USDT-margined perps at 0% maker and 0.04% taker, and spot at 0.005% maker / 0.04% taker. Two savings layers stack on top: paying your fees in ASTER takes 5% off at the point of trade, and signing up with referral code MMTz04 returns 5% of the fees you pay as a rebate that Aster calculates daily at 00:00 UTC and credits the next day, in whatever asset the fee was paid in.

Per Aster's documented program terms the code is applied at sign-up and the referral relationship runs for 365 days. Aster administers that program, not this site. For a first trade of, say, a $100 taker position on BTC, the taker fee is roughly $0.04, and the rebate comes back on top of that.

Funding payments do not run on one clock. Each Aster market sets its own interval, from hourly to every eight hours, so check the interval for the market you trade rather than assuming the eight-hour cycle. Fees and intervals change, so confirm them in the Aster docs and in the app. The full fees breakdown has the rest.

Account Safety and Mobile Access

On a wallet login, the seed phrase is the account, and nobody at Aster can reset it for you. Keep it offline, on paper or a steel backup rather than a screenshot. Some traders also keep a separate wallet just for Aster, so a bad signature never touches their long-term holdings.

Aster's privacy features help here too: hidden encrypted orders keep resting size off the public book, which makes a position harder for other traders to read and target. On a phone, open the app from inside your wallet's built-in browser. Shield Mode gives a simplified, privacy-focused interface for quick trades.

Where do I go after my first trade?

Make your first trade small enough that losing all of it would not bother you, and take it through the full open-and-close flow with the how-to-trade guide open beside it. Then move to the trading hub for order types, leverage, hidden orders and the 1001x mode.

If you came for stocks, the same steps end on an NVDA, TSLA or commodity perp instead of a crypto one. If a deposit or connection goes wrong on the way in, the Aster troubleshooting hub starts from what your screen shows. To see how the platform compares with a rival, read Aster vs Hyperliquid.