Aster vs dYdX: A Closed Chain Against a Validator-Held Book
Updated: Console View operations
Aster vs dYdX is not close on the book. Aster takes 12.2 of 16 against 9.1: it crosses at 0.040% rather than 0.050% and held $14.7 million inside ten basis points against $839,899. dYdX suits a trader who wants the book held by validators. At 100x, one percent against a position is the whole margin behind it.
Order-book depth30Round-trip cost25Loss and audit record15Settlement and withdrawal15Contracts listed10Getting started5how we rate
| Criterion | Aster | dYdX |
|---|---|---|
| Score of 16 | 12.2 | 9.1 |
| Maker and taker at the entry tier | 0% maker / 0.040% taker | 0.010% maker / 0.050% taker |
| Resting dollars within 10 basis points | $14.7 million | $839,899 |
| Who holds the book, and who may order it | In Aster Chain, encrypted; no outside validator in phase one | In each validator's memory; a public set, the proposer rotating |
| Bitcoin leverage, and the notional it holds to | 200x to 400 USDT, then 100x to $800,000 | 50x, 2% margin, no notional tier published |
| Perpetual contracts listed | 578 in order-book mode, six asset classes | 78 active, 218 more in final settlement |
VENUE FACTS READ 18 September 2026 in each venue's own documentation, interface and terms; the order-book figures are our own, from the capture cycle named below. Both columns are scored with one formula for the whole site, fixed on 22 September 2026, and the lit cells are that score drawn out.
- 01The fee is the smaller half of a large order: a $100,000 round trip came to about $88.40 at Aster and about $239.20 at dYdX once the fill was counted, against $80.00 and $100.00 in fees.
- 02One venue was tighter and deeper at once: Aster quoted 0.01 bps on a book of $14.7 million within ten basis points, dYdX 1.78 bps on $839,899.
- 03Breadth runs the same way: 578 contracts against 78, and $1.4 billion of reported open interest against $37.3 million on 22 September 2026.
- 04dYdX finishes ahead on no criterion here and still holds one number Aster does not: a bounty paying up to $1,000,000 for a critical report, against up to $200,000.
| Venue | Median spread | Depth within 10 basis points | Depth scale | Impact on a $100,000 order | Snapshots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aster | 0.01 bps | $14.7 million | 0.42 bps | 252 | |
| dYdX | 1.78 bps | $839,899 | 6.96 bps | 251 |
Both books were read in the capture cycle named above and the figures are medians of all successful snapshots. IMPACT = what the resting orders charged a market order of that size, at that tick.; no account was opened and no order was placed.
Every order here goes into Aster Chain, the proof-of-stake-authority network the venue started on 16 March 2026, encrypted on the way in and proved rather than shown (Aster documentation, checked 18 September 2026). Posting costs nothing and crossing 0.040%, so a $10,000 round trip is $8.00 and a $100,000 one $80.00 before the fill. Its bitcoin book was nearly eighteen times the one in the next column: a median $14.7 million within ten basis points across 252 snapshots, at 0.01 bps.
IN FAVOUR
- 578 perpetual contracts in order-book mode, against 78 in the other column
- Nothing on the maker side at any tier since 2 February 2026, and 5 per cent off a taker fee paid in its own token
AGAINST
- Phase one of Aster Chain admits no outside validator, and the core contracts stay closed
- Seven reports on file, all of them on vault, earn and stablecoin contracts; chain and engine, none
- A deposit sent on the wrong network to an email-login wallet is not refunded, by its own terms
Not for: anyone who wants the matching code and the chain under it open to read.
Documentation: asterdex.com
There is no company book on this venue. Orders live in each validator's memory, outside consensus, until the proposer of the current block matches them and writes the result into dYdX Chain (dYdX documentation, checked 18 September 2026). Liquidity is what the arrangement costs: a median $839,899 of resting bitcoin within ten basis points at 1.78 bps, where a $100,000 market order would have paid 6.96 bps on top of 0.050%. It lists 78 active contracts and reported $87.8 million of 24-hour volume on 22 September 2026.
IN FAVOUR
- The set that orders the trades is public and the right to propose rotates through it
- Half the trading fee comes back as a rebate after each trade, and a Cantina programme pays up to $1,000,000 for a critical report
AGAINST
- A failsafe stopped the chain during the crash of 10 October 2025, and prices were stale after it came back
- Withdrawals are capped per hour and shut for fifty blocks after an outage of five minutes or more
- An account past bankruptcy is closed out against profitable positions picked at random, by its own documentation
Not for: anyone who sizes an order from the screen rather than from the depth behind it.
Documentation: dydx.xyz
Two chains, and who is allowed to run one
Both venues answered the same question by building a chain, then answered it differently. Aster matches and settles inside Aster Chain, the proof-of-stake-authority network it started on 16 March 2026, where an order arrives encrypted and is proved rather than displayed (Aster documentation, checked 18 September 2026). Its own overview states that phase one accepts no outside validator and that the core chain contracts stay closed.
dYdX keeps no company book at all. Orders sit in each validator's memory, outside consensus, until the proposer of the current block matches them and writes the match into dYdX Chain, a Cosmos proof-of-stake network of its own (dYdX documentation, checked 18 September 2026). Collateral arrives as USDC bridged through Noble.
The settlement criterion still lands them on the same mark: every fill reaches chain state, the deposit contracts have been audited, and a wallet signature is the whole account. Neither describes a withdrawal that works once the operator has stopped, which is the three points each of them gives up.
A list of 578 against a list of 78
Aster's contract endpoint returned 578 trading perpetuals in order-book mode on 18 September 2026, out of 599 symbols, with 16 settling and five not yet open (Aster contract list, checked 18 September 2026). Six kinds of asset sit on it: crypto, shares, currencies, commodities, index funds and pre-IPO names. The dYdX indexer returned 296 markets the same day, of which 78 were active and the other 218 in final settlement (dYdX market endpoint, checked 18 September 2026). Outside crypto it carries an oil contract, silver and a gold token, and nothing else.
CoinMarketCap counted them differently again, 686 and 88 on 22 September 2026, because a ranking prints what a venue reports rather than what its interface returns. Either way a count is a claim about the screen rather than about the book behind it, which is why a list is worth ten points here and the measured book thirty.
Neither book here was the deepest this desk read. edgeX held $29.2 million within ten basis points in this capture cycle and EVEDEX $18.6 million, the second of those on a list of 52 contracts. EVEDEX carries its own limits on that list: its position data reaches Arbitrum only once enough changes have piled up, and CertiK Skynet listed no bug bounty for it on that date.
The day each record was tested
The dYdX chain stopped on 10 October 2025. A failsafe fired on an order-of-operations bug in collateral transfers for isolated markets, and after the restart the oracle prices stayed stale until more than two thirds of validators were posting again. Mispriced trades and liquidations followed, and $462,097.79 of trader losses was identified and put to governance for compensation (dYdX incident review, read 18 September 2026). We did not verify that the proposal passed. Two older entries sit on the same record: more than $9 million drained from the legacy exchange's insurance fund in November 2023, and malicious copies of the official client packages published in January 2026.
The one Aster entry was repaid. Its XPL perpetual printed a mark price away from the rest of the market on 25 September 2025, positions were liquidated against it, and the venue paid those accounts back in USDT before refunding their trading and liquidation charges. One more line belongs on a trading desk's page rather than a security record: DefiLlama took Aster's perpetual volume off its public trackers on 6 October 2025, after it began moving almost in step with Binance's.
The security criterion reads the outcome rather than the handling, so Aster takes ten of ten on it and dYdX seven: seven audit reports against six, and one loss of user money inside the last two years that we could not confirm was repaid, against none.
Where both columns came from
Nothing prints here that was not polled or copied out with its date. Depth, spread and impact are this console's own work — every listed BTC book opened on this console's ten-minute poll, over the two days to 22 September 2026, each a median of what came back. The documentary columns came off each venue's own pages on 18 September 2026: fees, contract list, leverage ladder, settlement, sign-in terms, audit history. Open interest and turnover are neither — each venue's own report, as CoinMarketCap published it on 22 September 2026. Six weights, fixed 22 September 2026 before any venue was scored, score the 2 venues on this page (how we rate). No account is held at any of them.
First line, the disclosure: publication here is paid for; row order is not. Settlement and the audit record are marked off documents: a console prints what a venue says of itself, not what it did. The fee column is a new account's rate, before volume tiers, rebates or cashback. Depth is measured, but on BTC alone and over one span of readings: a narrower contract holds less, and another hour reads differently.
Is Aster better than dYdX?
On the six criteria used here, yes: 12.2 of 16 against 9.1. Aster crosses cheaper at 0.040%, lists 578 contracts against 78, and held $14.7 million of resting bitcoin against $839,899. What dYdX keeps is the more open validator set behind the matching.
How much does a round trip cost on each one?
Two taker fills on $10,000 cost $8.00 at Aster and $10.00 at dYdX. The fill is charged on top of that: at $100,000 the bill came to about $88.40 and about $239.20 on the books read here. Funding is paid for every hour a position stays open.
What is Aster Chain?
The proof-of-stake-authority layer 1 that Aster started on 16 March 2026 and now matches and settles its orders on. Orders arrive encrypted and are proved rather than displayed, deposits cross its bridge once three of four validator nodes sign, and withdrawals need two of three. Its core contracts are unpublished.
Does dYdX still have an order book?
Yes, though no company holds it. Its documentation says validators store orders in an in-memory book off the chain and gossip them to each other, and the block proposer matches them. That book held a median $839,899 of bitcoin within ten basis points across 251 readings taken here.
Why is dYdX volume so low now?
Its reported figures are a small fraction of the top of that ranking: $37.3 million of open interest and $87.8 million of 24-hour volume on 22 September 2026, against $1.4 billion and $3.2 billion at Aster. Of the 296 markets its indexer returned, 218 are now in final settlement.
Can you trade anything but crypto on Aster or dYdX?
On Aster, yes. Its list runs to shares, currencies, commodities, index funds and pre-IPO names beside crypto, 578 contracts in all. On dYdX the only markets outside crypto are commodities — an oil contract, silver and a gold token — inside 78 active markets.
What happened to dYdX on 10 October 2025?
The chain stopped. A failsafe tripped over an order-of-operations bug in collateral transfers on isolated markets, and when it came back the oracle prices were stale, so trades and liquidations went through at the wrong price. dYdX put the figure at $462,097.79 in trader losses and sent compensation to governance; we did not check whether it passed.
Updated: | Console View operations | corrections to readout@wp-monero-miner.com