⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.

Comparison · By Stephan Kulik · Updated 2026-09-09

Aster vs dYdX (2026): 0% Maker vs Maker Rebates

Two self-custody order books with no KYC, and very different ideas about who should pay. Aster charges makers nothing from the first trade and takers a published rate that depends on the perp family. dYdX charges both sides at its base tier and, at the top of a governance-set volume ladder, pays makers a rebate. Aster runs a points programme its docs tie to an airdrop; dYdX documents none.

At a glance

✓ facts verified 2026-07-16 · each venue's official docs Every cell restates a claim on one of this site's pages: /compare/hyperliquid-vs-aster/ , /aster/fees/ , /compare/hyperliquid-vs-dydx/ , /dydx/fees/ , /airdrops/ .

Fees

Aster — Order-book maker/taker; two perp contract families with different taker rates. Base tier: 0.04% (USDT-margined) / 0.005% (USD1-margined) taker, 0% maker. Taker numeric uses the USDT-margined family; USD1-margined trades at 0.005% — pick per family when calculating. Discounts: Referral rebate up to 10% (referrer-configured split, not guaranteed); ASTER-token fee payment discount exists as a separate lever. 0% maker means maker-heavy flow pays nothing — and generates no referral commission. Schedule verified 2026-07-31 on /aster/fees/.

dYdX — Order-book maker/taker; 30-day-volume tiers set by governance. Base tier: 0.05% taker, 0.01% maker. Discounts: Tiers drop taker to 0.025% and turn maker into a rebate (−0.011%) at top volume; referred accounts start at fee tier 3; staked (bonded) DYDX cuts fees up to 50% on a governance-voted grid. Schedule is governance-set — thresholds and rates can change by vote. Schedule verified 2026-07-30 on /dydx/fees/.

Base-tier rates answer one narrow question — what a small taker order costs on day one. Your maker/taker mix, volume tier and holding period decide the real number; the fee comparison lays all twelve venues side by side and the execution-cost tool adds live slippage on top.

Markets they share

In this site's market join, snapshot 2026-09-02, Aster lists 538 perp markets and dYdX lists 99; 84 appear on both. The market index shows every asset with the venues that list it and each venue's published leverage, and the join is refreshed weekly by a fail-closed pipeline. Breadth is not depth: a listing says nothing about how much size a book absorbs, which the execution-cost tool measures live where a venue publishes its order book.

Token and points

• Aster: $ASTER · live (TGE claim window 17 Sep – 17 Oct 2025). Points: Active — Aster Convergence: Stage 6; Calculated weekly; five point categories × team boost, plus two-level referral points; weightings undisclosed. Docs: points "accumulate toward your $ASTER airdrop share at the conclusion of Stage 6". Conversion ratio, Stage 6’s share and the end date are not published.
• dYdX: DYDX · live. Points: None documented . Docs: the trading-rewards "C factor has been set to 0" and "since the C factor has been reduced to 0, traders now get rebates directly". No points or season programme is documented.

Both rows are restated from the points & airdrop tracker, which is re-read against each venue's docs on a 45-day cadence and never prices a point.

Where Aster wins

Fees without a ladder: 0% maker on both perp families, and a taker rate that is lower than dYdX's base on the USDT family and lower still on the USD1 family. Points: Stage 6 is active, weekly, and its docs state that points accumulate toward an $ASTER airdrop share. Market breadth: Aster lists the most perps of any venue in this site's join.

Where dYdX wins

Maker economics at scale and documentation. The top tier pays a maker rebate, referred accounts start at a higher tier, and staked DYDX cuts fees on a published grid. Its access restrictions are stated, where Aster's US access is unverified. Funding is hourly and peer to peer on a fixed cadence; Aster's default interval is longer and varies per symbol.

What this site could not verify

• Aster: US access rules — not verified either way.
• Aster: Liquidity depth — not benchmarked by this site.
• Aster: The points-to-token ratio, Stage 6’s share of the airdrop allocation, and the stage’s end date — unpublished.
• dYdX: Fee thresholds and rates are governance-set and can change by vote; this site restates the schedule as of its verification date.

Which to pick

If you make liquidity at ordinary size, Aster is cheaper today. If you make liquidity at a size that reaches dYdX's rebate tier, price the rebate against Aster's zero. If you take liquidity, Aster's published rates are lower. If you are farming points, only Aster has a programme, and its conversion ratio is unpublished. The Aster review and dYdX review hold the full schedules and their verification dates.

Related comparisons

• Aster vs edgeX
• Aster vs Paradex
• Aster vs Extended
• Aster vs Pacifica
• Aster vs GMX
• Hyperliquid vs Aster
• Hyperliquid vs dYdX

FAQ

Does dYdX have points or an airdrop programme?

No. Its docs describe per-trade trading rewards whose multiplier governance has set to zero, with fee rebates paid directly instead. Aster's Stage 6 is the only points programme on this page.

Which has lower fees?

Aster at the base tier, on both sides. dYdX becomes cheaper for makers only once volume reaches the tiers where its maker fee turns into a rebate.

Which chain is safer?

Different models, not a ranking: Aster runs on BNB Chain, dYdX on its own Cosmos app-chain with its own validator set. This site does not score one above the other.