⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.
Nado Review 2026: Unified-Margin Order Book on Ink L2
Facts verified against Nado's documentation, its Terms of Use and its public gateway API on 2026-09-30. Where the docs disagree with each other or with the API, this page shows both rather than choosing.
Verdict
A fast order book with the capital efficiency of a single account, and some CEX-style trade-offs. Nado matches orders off-chain in 5 to 15 ms, settles on Ink, and lets spot, perps and borrowing net against each other in one unified margin account. Fees start at 3.5 bps taker and 1 bp maker, and it lists US stock, FX, silver and oil perps beside crypto. Weigh three things: the docs publish no audit reports, an empty insurance fund passes losses to other traders and then to all USDT0 depositors, and its own liquidity vault gets first claim on profitable liquidations.
What Nado is
Nado is "the central-limit orderbook DEX" built on Ink and "backed by the team that brought you Kraken". Its design rests on "a protocol-level clearinghouse and risk engine housed on-chain" and "a powerful off-chain sequencer": the sequencer matches orders "in 5–15 ms, then batches them for seamless on-chain settlement via Ink L2", and "the sequencer holds no custody". Spot, perpetuals and money markets live in one engine, and everything is quoted and settled in USDT0. The Terms of Use (26 August 2026) are with Spira Arc Inc. under the laws of the Republic of Panama, with arbitration seated in Panama City.
Markets: 82 perps, with stocks, FX and commodities
Nado's public symbols endpoint returned 82 perps on 2026-09-30: 75 live, 2 post-only and 5 not tradable. The docs' oracle table classes them as 50 crypto, 26 US equities (single stocks plus QQQ and SPY), three FX pairs (EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY), silver, WTI oil and one Hong Kong stock. Crypto prices from Stork, real-world assets from Pyth, and FX also from RedStone. Nado is "progressively enabling 24/7 trading" on real-world assets, pricing closed-market hours from a median of other 24/7 venues or from its own order book, with each move capped at 1% per tick and 5% on reopen. Silver and oil go reduce-only at weekends and holidays. Nado's live perps are in this site's market coverage join; the API publishes risk weights rather than a leverage cap, so none is listed there.
Leverage is harder to pin down. The docs say perps go "up to 20x leverage", the FX pages list 40x initial leverage, and silver and oil list 10x. In unified margin the leverage slider "acts purely as a front-end sizing control": margin comes from each market's risk weights, not from the leverage you pick. FX pairs are isolated-only.
Unified margin, isolated margin and subaccounts
Unified margin is the default: "your entire account – deposits, positions, and unrealized profits / losses" forms one collateral pool with one health score, so a spot holding can offset a perp and a hedge needs less margin. Isolated margin, for perps only and one position per market, ring-fences a position's collateral. Each wallet gets up to four subaccounts in the app, each with its own margin and liquidation. Collateral beyond USDT0 counts at a discount; tokenized stocks such as SPYx and QQQx count at 80% for opening and 90% for maintenance.
Fees at a glance
Fees scale on 30-day volume across spot and perps, from 3.5 bps taker and 1 bp maker at VIP 0 to 1.5 bps taker and a 0.8 bp maker rebate at VIP 6. The public API carries the VIP 0 rates on 76 of the 82 perps. FX runs a separate, lower schedule starting at 0.70 bps taker. Flat sequencer fees apply to withdrawals (1 USDT0), subaccount transfers and liquidations. The fees page has the tables, and the fee comparison places Nado beside every other venue.
Liquidation, the insurance fund and socialized losses
A subaccount becomes eligible for liquidation when maintenance health falls below zero, but "Nado does not automatically liquidate it; a liquidator must submit a transaction". Liquidators buy at a discount to the oracle price, at least 0.5%, and half of that discount goes to the insurance fund. If the fund runs dry, "losses socialize in tiers": first "pro-rata deductions from other positions in the same market", then "USDT0 Depositor Socialization", where "remaining shortfalls hit USDT0 balances across the platform". Holding USDT0 on Nado therefore carries a share of other traders' bad debt in an extreme case.
The NLP vault
The Nado Liquidity Provider (NLP) takes USDT0 deposits and runs market-making and liquidation strategies, "currently, only one vault is live", aimed at long-tail perps. Withdrawals have a 4-day lock after minting and a fee of 1 USDT0 plus the greater of 1 USDT0 or 10 bps. The NLP "may front-run external liquidators" on perp positions until its own risk passes a threshold, and its main pool, Pool 0, "cannot be liquidated – even in unhealthy states". Yields are variable and not guaranteed.
Points and token
Points are earned from trading, NLP deposits and referrals, and are "non-transferable, cannot be traded". Season 2 began on 21 May 2026 and removed invite codes; the weekly pool scales with protocol volume from a 300,000-point floor to a 950,000-point cap, adjusted for fee tier and "toxicity". The docs name no token and no conversion. A separate fee-based referral programme pays affiliates a share of referees' net fees, and affiliates can pass part of it back as a kickback.
Risks
- No published audits. The docs index lists no audit or security page, and "audit" appears only in a line about settlement history.
- Socialized losses. Beyond the insurance fund, shortfalls are taken pro rata from same-market positions and then from USDT0 balances.
- Off-chain matching. The sequencer orders trades; the docs say it cannot censor trades or forge signatures, and settlement is verified on-chain.
- NLP priority. The house vault can take profitable liquidations ahead of outside liquidators.
- Maintenance windows. Twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays at 22:30 UTC, with up to 10 minutes of limited functionality.
- Inconsistent docs. The fee example still calls VIP 6 the "$5B+" tier, while the Season 2 schedule lowered it to $1B; leverage is "up to 20x" on one page and 40x for FX on another.
- Access. The US, Canada, Panama and sanctioned regions are restricted, and VPN use is prohibited. Confirm eligibility first; this site does not cover access workarounds.
Who Nado suits — and who it doesn't
It suits a trader outside the restricted list who wants a fast book, cross-margin that nets spot, perps and borrowing, and stock or FX perps beside crypto, and who is comfortable with USDT0 as the settlement asset. It does not suit anyone who needs published audits, protection of idle USDT0 from socialized losses, or leverage well above 20x on crypto.
Getting started
- How to start on Nado — the restricted-territory check, email, social or wallet login, card or crypto deposits into USDT0 on Ink, unified versus isolated margin, orders and trigger types, and standard or fast withdrawals.
- Fees explained — the seven VIP tiers on 30-day volume, FX fee tiers, the taker minimum fee, flat sequencer fees for transfers, liquidations and withdrawals, fast withdrawals, funding and money-market interest.
How Nado compares
FAQ
Is Nado available in my country?
Who runs Nado?
Who holds my funds?
Do I need KYC?
Is there a token or airdrop?
official site — no referral relationship · methodology