Your First Steps on Aster

Wallet Setup and First Connection

Aster lists standard Web3 wallets among its connection options, including MetaMask, Binance Wallet and Phantom. Those wallets are built and maintained by other companies, so check the current list in the app and each wallet's own documentation for what it supports. You install the wallet as a browser extension or mobile app, visit app.asterdex.com, pick your chain, and click "Connect Wallet." Aster then prompts a one-time signature request that creates your trading session, with no email address, no password and no identity verification step in the flow as it stands today. Once connected, the wallet is the only authentication the account has; losing access to the wallet means losing access to the funds, so secure the seed phrase before depositing meaningful capital. For background on the platform itself, our guide to how trading on Aster works covers the on-chain order book, hidden encrypted orders, and why connecting a wallet does not require giving up custody at any point.

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. Any amount works to start; how much margin headroom you want is a question about your own risk tolerance, not something this site can set for you. If terms or steps are unclear, our full how-to-trade walkthrough covers the connect-deposit-trade flow end to end, and the deposit not showing guide explains what to check if a balance does not appear right away.

Placing Your First Trade: Order Mechanics

Once funded, opening a position takes three inputs: market, size, and direction. From the trading interface, you select a perpetual market (BTC, ETH, SOL, ASTER and more, plus 24/7 stock and commodity perps issued by third parties and priced from third-party oracle feeds), choose long or short, set your size, and choose your leverage. 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. For a first trade, a market order fills at the best available price and is the simplest. Long positions profit when price rises; opening a short uses the same flow with the direction toggle flipped, and you profit when price falls, which is useful for hedging spot holdings or taking directional views. To go deeper on high-leverage mechanics, see our 1001x leverage explainer.

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 (the perpetual-vs-spot price equalization mechanism) settle on a fixed cycle and can add to or subtract from your P&L; for the average new trader these are small relative to position size, but at higher leverage they compound. Always verify current rates in the Aster docs and in the app, since Aster ships fast. See our full fees breakdown for the complete picture.

Account Safety and Mobile Access

Self-custody on Aster means the wallet is the account: losing the seed phrase means losing the funds, and there is no customer-support recovery path. Standard wallet hygiene applies: store the seed phrase offline (hardware wallet or steel backup, never a screenshot or cloud notes), use a hardware wallet for any meaningful balance, and consider a dedicated trading wallet separate from 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. Trading on the go works through any wallet-browser combo on iOS or Android, and Shield Mode offers a simplified, privacy-friendly interface for quick trades. Whichever mode you use, the underlying protocol is permissionless and you keep custody throughout.

Reference and Next Steps

If terms like maker, taker, funding, liquidation, or cross-margin are new, keep our how-to-trade guide open in a second tab during your first few trades, since it covers the workflow used in the trading interface step by step. The fastest learning path is a small first trade, sized so that losing all of it would not matter, taken through the full open-and-close flow live. If you came to Aster specifically to trade stocks, the same wallet-to-first-trade flow applies, ending on an NVDA, TSLA, or commodity position via Aster's 24/7 stock & commodity perps instead of a crypto perp. Once you're comfortable with the basics, the trading hub at /guides/trading covers order types, leverage, hidden orders, and the 1001x mode. If something does go wrong on the way in, our Aster troubleshooting hub collects the fixes for stuck deposits, failed wallet connections, and wrong-chain transfers in one place. Curious how Aster stacks up against the competition? Read our Aster vs Hyperliquid comparison.