⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.
Aster vs SoDEX (2026): 0% Maker vs Published Leverage
Two order-book venues with live tokens, running points programmes and stock perps, that price makers differently and hold funds differently. Aster runs its book on its own L1, Aster Chain, with 0% maker from the first trade. SoDEX matches on a perps appchain of SoSoValue's ValueChain, starts makers at 0.012% and takers at 0.040%, and holds deposits with institutional custodians.
Verdict
Aster for makers and breadth; SoDEX for published leverage, at a custody cost. Aster's zero maker needs no tier, and its market list is far longer. SoDEX publishes a leverage cap per market and offers a staking discount and maker rebates, but its deposits rest with custodians and its only named company disclaims operating the venue. Both run points programmes that point at a token distribution without publishing a ratio.
At a glance
| Aster | SoDEX | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Aster Chain L1 · order book | On-chain order book · ValueChain perps appchain |
| Custody | Self-custody | Deposits held by custodians (Cobo, Ceffu, Coinbase), mirrored 1:1 on-chain |
| KYC | None | No identity step in onboarding docs; KYT/KYA screening; Terms exclude US, China, Singapore, UK + |
| Base perp fees | 0.04% (crypto) / 0.1% (Group B) / 0.0125% (RWA) / 0% t/m | 0.040% → 0.022% (by tier) / 0.012% → 0% (by tier) t/m |
| Funding | 8h default; 1h, 2h, 4h or 8h per symbol via the API | Hourly · docs cap 4% per hour |
| Token | $ASTER · live (TGE claim window 17 Sep – 17 Oct 2025) | SOSO · live (ValueChain gas and governance) |
| Points programme | Active · Aster Convergence: Stage 6 | Active · SoPoints — Layer 1 Season (from 1 September 2026, 20 weeks) |
| Operating entity / access | US, Canada, UK among 11 barred (Terms) | Finova Holdings Limited (Cayman), interface only; disclaims operating SoDEX |
facts verified · each venue's official docs Every cell restates a claim on one of this site's pages: /compare/hyperliquid-vs-aster/ , /aster/fees/ , /eu/aster/ , /sodex/ , /sodex/how-to-start/ , /sodex/fees/ , /airdrops/ .
Fees
Aster — Order-book maker/taker; 0% maker on every perp category, taker by category: Crypto General (USDT- or USD1-quoted) 0.04%, Group B 0.1%, RWA 0.0125%; Shield Mode and 1001x use their own fee rules. Base tier: 0.04% (crypto) / 0.1% (Group B) / 0.0125% (RWA) taker, 0% maker. Taker numeric uses Crypto General pairs (USDT- or USD1-quoted); RWA pairs trade at 0.0125% and Group B pairs at 0.1% — pick per category when calculating. Discounts: 5% off when fees are paid in ASTER; spot VIP grid 4.0→2.3 bps taker by 14-day volume and ASTER held; market-maker rebates to −0.5 bps; referral rebate up to 10% (referrer-configured split, not guaranteed). 0% maker means maker-heavy flow pays nothing — and generates no referral commission. Schedule verified 2026-09-29 on /aster/fees/.
SoDEX — Order-book maker/taker on SoSoValue's ValueChain; seven tiers on 14-day weighted volume (perps + 2× spot). Base tier: 0.040% → 0.022% (by tier) taker, 0.012% → 0% (by tier) maker. Numerics are tier 0 (≤ $5,000,000 of 14-day weighted volume); the public perps API carries the same 0.0004 / 0.00012 on every market. Discounts: Staking SOSO takes 5% to 40% off; makers above 0.50% / 1.50% / 3.00% of 14-day maker volume earn −0.001% / −0.002% / −0.003% instead of the tier maker fee. Deposits are held by institutional custodians and mirrored 1:1 on ValueChain; a separate docs page still quotes testnet rates (0.05% / 0.02%), superseded by the tier schedule dated 13 March. Schedule verified 2026-09-24 on /sodex/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 20 venues side by side and the execution-cost tool adds live slippage on top.
Markets they share
In this site's market join, snapshot 2026-10-07, Aster lists 573 perp markets and SoDEX lists 92; 85 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.
- SoDEX: SOSO · live (ValueChain gas and governance). Points: Active — SoPoints — Layer 1 Season (from 1 September 2026, 20 weeks); Earned from spot and futures volume and open interest, Wealth and SLP vault holdings, and invites (25% of invitees’ points); squad and early-bird boosts stack to +70%. Season 1 (1 February – 1 August 2026) paid 1,000,000 SoPoints a week; weighting is "fine-tuned weekly" and unpublished. Docs: SoPoints "will directly determine your allocation weight in the future $SOSO token airdrop". No conversion ratio is published. The airdrop destination is named but its size and ratio are not; treat points as an unquantified claim until SoDEX publishes one.
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
Maker cost and the shelf. Makers pay 0% on every perp category with nothing to unlock, against SoDEX's 0.012% at tier 0. Aster's contract list is the largest of the two by a wide margin, with more stock-tagged markets. Account Privacy (on by default per the docs) hides balances and positions, no identity step is in the docs, and $ASTER is live.
Where SoDEX wins
Published leverage, collateral and fee routes. SoDEX's market list states a maximum leverage for every market — 40x on BTC and ETH — where Aster's does not publish one. Cross margin counts BTC, ETH, gold and other assets at a haircut, SOSO staking cuts fees, and makers with a high share of volume earn rebates. The Hyperliquid vs SoDEX page covers the custody model in detail.
What this site could not verify
- Aster: Audits of the perpetuals trading engine — the published reports cover vault, earn and yield-token contracts.
- 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.
- SoDEX: Who, if anyone, operates the venue — the only named company disclaims it, and the site footer links another product’s Terms.
- SoDEX: ETH maximum leverage — 25x on the docs’ Margin Tiers page, 40x on the API.
- SoDEX: The SoPoints-to-SOSO conversion and the weighting formula — neither is published.
Which to pick
For zero-cost maker flow, the longer market list and privacy by default, Aster. For a published leverage cap, multi-asset collateral and a staking route to lower fees, after accepting that deposits sit with named custodians, SoDEX. Aster's Terms bar the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom among eleven named countries; SoDEX's Terms exclude the United States, China, Singapore, the United Kingdom and others. The Aster review and the SoDEX review carry the detail behind each cell.
Related comparisons
- Aster vs dYdX
- Aster vs edgeX
- Aster vs Paradex
- Aster vs Extended
- Aster vs Pacifica
- Aster vs GMX
- Aster vs GRVT
- Aster vs Variational
- Aster vs ApeX Omni
- Aster vs Veranta
- Aster vs Nado
- Aster vs Vest Markets
- Aster vs Derive
- Aster vs Ondo Perps
- Hyperliquid vs Aster
- Hyperliquid vs SoDEX
FAQ
Which is cheaper for a taker?
At the entry level they match: Aster's USDT-perp taker rate is 0.04%, SoDEX tier 0 is 0.040%. Aster's RWA pairs carry a lower taker rate (0.0125%) and its Group B pairs a higher one (0.1%), shown in the fees table above, and a SOSO stake lowers SoDEX's.
Which points programme is further along?
Both are running. Aster's Stage 6 points accrue toward an $ASTER allocation; SoDEX's SoPoints Layer 1 Season feeds a future SOSO airdrop. Neither publishes a conversion ratio.
Is either a safer place to hold funds?
This site has no custody finding against Aster's contracts. SoDEX's docs say deposits are held by institutional custodians and mirrored on-chain; see the risk disclosure.
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