# No KYC Crypto Exchange List for 2026

Updated 24 September 2026, Terms read 18 September 2026, The Wallet First review desk

## Venues that trade perpetual futures without identity documents

This is the register itself, and the rule behind it is one sentence: a venue is entered when the sign-in
its own onboarding pages document is a signature from a wallet the trader already holds, with no email
account, no social login and no wallet the venue opens on their behalf. Four of the ten venues this desk
marks pass — EVEDEX, Extended, Lighter and Aevo. ApeX Omni, Aster, dYdX, edgeX, Hyperliquid and Paradex
each publish a second door and are kept out, whatever their marks. Inside the four, the order is the
overall score: onboarding and access carry 30 of the 100 weight, custody 25.

| Place | Venue | Score of 5 | Maker / taker | Perp markets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lighter | 4.5 | 0% / 0% | 214 |
| 2 | Extended | 3.9 | 0% / 0.025% | 325 |
| 3 | EVEDEX | 3.4 | 0.015% / 0.045% | 52 |
| 4 | Aevo | 3.3 | 0.050% / 0.080% | 102 |

Entry-tier fees on the BTC perpetual, read 18 September 2026.

## Verdict

Every no KYC crypto exchange in this list opens perpetual positions from a wallet signature and offers no
other way in. Zero default fees and a documented exit put Lighter first; Extended follows on the widest
market list of the four; EVEDEX names on-chain screening of deposits in its own documentation.

## 1 · [Lighter](https://docs.lighter.xyz) — 0% default fees with an exit that does not need the operator (4.5 of 5)
Lighter registers an account by signing a message from an Ethereum wallet, with no email step
([Lighter docs](https://docs.lighter.xyz/trading/api.md), checked 18 September 2026). Its default account trades at 0% maker / 0% taker,
adding 300 ms to taker orders, and every batch of trades is proven on Ethereum. Critical exits —
withdrawals and reduce-only orders — can be submitted on-chain, so the sequencer cannot sit on them.

- For: 0% maker and taker on the default account; Documented on-chain exit.
- Against: 300 ms taker delay on free accounts; No public bug bounty programme.
- Not for: latency-sensitive bots on the free tier.

## 2 · [Extended](https://docs.extended.exchange/) — the widest market list on the register (3.9 of 5)
Extended registers an account with two wallet signatures, EVM or Starknet
([Extended docs](https://docs.extended.exchange/extended-resources/account-operations/account-creation), checked 18 September 2026), and lists 325 perpetual
markets across six asset classes. Its terms are also the most explicit about what could change:
access can be denied after a Know Your Transaction risk assessment
([Extended terms of use](https://docs.extended.exchange/extended-resources/legal/terms-of-use), checked 18 September 2026). Fees are 0% maker / 0.025% taker.

- For: 325 perpetual markets; 0.025% taker fee.
- Against: Terms reserve a risk assessment before access; No documented forced withdrawal.
- Not for: traders who want the terms to rule out checks entirely.

## 3 · EVEDEX — screening it describes in writing, and markets beyond crypto (3.4 of 5)
EVEDEX signs in with a wallet and states plainly what happens next: it does not run traditional KYC to
trade, and deposits pass automated on-chain AML screening
(stated in the EVEDEX documentation, 18 September 2026). It is a hybrid venue — orders match off-chain, settlement runs on Arbitrum —
listing 52 perpetual markets that include gold through XAUT, silver, crude oil, two
FX pairs and US-listed shares, all trading around the clock. Fees are 0.015% maker / 0.045% taker.

- For: Screening described in writing; 52 markets across six asset classes, all 24/7.
- Against: Positions are written to Arbitrum in batches, not trade by trade; No documented forced withdrawal.
- Not for: UK retail clients.

## 4 · [Aevo](https://www.aevo.xyz/docs) — a wallet connection and an hourly trip to Ethereum (3.3 of 5)
Aevo takes an EVM wallet connection and says so in its terms of service: a trader transacts only
through the wallet service they chose ([Aevo terms](https://app.aevo.xyz/terms), checked 18 September 2026). Orders are matched in an
off-chain book and risk engine; matched trades settle in Aevo's contracts on its own optimistic rollup,
whose batches are posted to Ethereum every hour. 102 perpetual markets, pre-IPO names
among them, priced at 0.050% maker / 0.080% taker.

- For: 102 perpetual markets across five asset classes; Every matched trade settles in contracts on its own rollup.
- Against: 0.080% taker fee, the highest on the register; Median BTC depth of $3.8 million.
- Not for: traders who need a deep book on demand.

## What sets the order

1. Nothing to upload, and nothing else to sign in with: all 4 entries take a wallet signature and stop there.
2. Terms still matter: Extended reserves a risk assessment before access, quoted in its card below.
3. Screening described openly: EVEDEX publishes that deposits pass automated on-chain AML screening.
4. Resting BTC depth inside 10 bps: $17.9 million on EVEDEX and $16.7 million on Lighter, against $3.8 million on Aevo.

Weights: access 30, custody 25, cost 20, coverage 15, liquidity 10 (https://cafrodytes.com/how-we-score)

## Order books

BTC perpetual books sampled on 19 September 2026, ten minutes between readings, beginning just after midnight UTC; medians of all successful snapshots.

| Venue | $10,000 round trip | Spread | Depth, 10 bps | Impact, $100,000 | Snapshots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lighter | $0.00 | 0.01 bps | $16.7 million | 0.62 bps | 56 |
| Extended | $5.00 | 0.12 bps | $7.3 million | 0.06 bps | 56 |
| EVEDEX | $9.00 | 4.12 bps | $17.9 million | 2.06 bps | 56 |
| Aevo | $16.00 | 1.91 bps | $3.8 million | 3.04 bps | 56 |

## What a no KYC crypto exchange still checks

No documents does not mean no checks. Deposits arrive on-chain, and two venues in this list describe
what happens to them in writing rather than leaving it unsaid: EVEDEX states that deposits pass automated
on-chain AML screening, and Extended's terms reserve the right to deny
access after a Know Your Transaction risk assessment. Lighter and Aevo publish nothing either way in the
documentation we read. Every venue here excludes sanctioned persons, and each keeps its own list of
places it will not serve. Those lists sit in the terms you accepted when you connected a wallet, so read
them at the source: reaching a venue through a VPN breaks the agreement rather than working around it.
None of that is a check on the position itself. Whatever the door asks for, a leveraged position asks for margin and can take all of it.

## The six venues held back by the door, not by the score

ApeX Omni, Aster, dYdX, edgeX, Hyperliquid and Paradex are marked against the same five headings as the
four above, and two of them finish above every entry here but Lighter. None is listed, because each one's
onboarding pages document a second way in: an email address or a social account, with a wallet minted,
split into key shares or otherwise arranged by the venue at the far end of it. That is the one thing
this register is built to sort on, so it decides the list before any score is read.

The exclusion is a statement about the door and nothing else. It is not a finding that those venues run
checks, hold collateral badly or charge too much, and their full marks sit on
[how we rate](/how-we-score#every-mark-on-the-site-in-one-table) where anyone can compare them with the
four here. Two of them keep a page of their own on this site, in head-to-head comparisons that say in
their own text which side of the line each venue falls on.

## Pool-priced venues we did not score

GMX, gTrade, Ostium, Jupiter Perps and Drift's Velocity fork also trade without documents, and GMX's
documentation calls
access permissionless in as many words. They price positions against an oracle and fill them from a pool
rather than an order book, so the liquidity criterion here — resting depth within 10 basis points — has
nothing to measure on them. Drift's fork, GMX, Jupiter Perps and Orderly pass the door test that runs
this register even so, and they are listed with their onboarding terms, and without a score, on
[wallet-only platforms](/wallet-only-trading-platforms).

## Quoted

> "EVEDEX does not operate traditional KYC systems. Instead, we rely on: Automated AML screening via on-chain behavior analysis" — EVEDEX Help Center, AML and Compliance Standards, read 18 September 2026, 18 September 2026.
> "We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to deny access to the Services if a Know Your Transaction (KYT) risk assessment" — Extended, Terms of Use, 18 September 2026. https://docs.extended.exchange/extended-resources/legal/terms-of-use
> "Permissionless — No KYC, no API key provisioning, no rate limit negotiations. Any wallet can trade immediately." — GMX documentation, AI agents overview, 18 September 2026. https://docs.gmx.io/docs/ai-agents/overview/
> "To create a Lighter account, users must have an Ethereum wallet. Using this wallet, users register a main account by signing a message" — Lighter documentation, API, 18 September 2026. https://docs.lighter.xyz/trading/api.md
## Method and limits

Not one of these figures was requested from a venue. The sign-up page, the terms of use behind it, the
fee schedule, the market list — each quoted as it stood on 18 September 2026, and where a marketing
line and a contract disagree the contract is what gets printed. All 4 venues here are
marked against [one rubric](/how-we-score), set down on 21 September 2026 before any had been read. Depth
is the exception: nobody publishes it usefully, so each venue's public BTC book was opened here and
sampled on 19 September 2026, ten minutes between readings, beginning just after midnight UTC. No account was registered, no order sent.

Which venues were eligible to be marked at all is settled before any of that, by the one test this
desk applies: the sign-in a venue's own onboarding pages document has to be a signature from a wallet
the trader already holds, with no email account, no social login and no wallet the venue opens for them
behind it. EVEDEX, Extended, Lighter and Aevo meet it and carry an order book we could sample. The
[admission test](/how-we-score#what-puts-a-venue-on-this-register) names the venues it keeps out, and
the front-page door count is where a reader can check the sorting venue by venue.

Silence in a column is not a clean finding: a venue that writes nothing about screening is recorded as
having written nothing. Every door and every custody line above is a venue describing itself, in a
document it wrote and may rewrite, and one address on one day can be asked for more than any page here
records.

Two narrower ones. Depth was read on BTC books alone; fee columns carry the rate a new account is
charged, nothing taken off.

## FAQ

### What does no KYC mean in crypto?

It means the venue does not collect identity documents to let you trade. On the venues here, a wallet
signature opens a position. It does not mean nothing is checked: deposits arrive on-chain, EVEDEX
describes automated AML screening of them, and every venue excludes sanctioned persons in its terms.

### Which crypto exchanges have no KYC?

The 4 listed here — Lighter, Extended, EVEDEX and Aevo — plus ApeX Omni, Aster, dYdX,
edgeX, Hyperliquid, Paradex and the pool-priced GMX, gTrade, Ostium, Jupiter Perps and Drift's Velocity
fork. Each opens a perpetual position without documents; only the first four take a wallet signature
and nothing else.

### Are non-KYC exchanges safe?

Skipping documents does not remove risk; it moves it. What protects a trader is custody: whether trades
are recorded on-chain and whether withdrawals work without the operator. Lighter is the entry here that
documents an exit bypassing the operator, and our custody criterion counts exactly that.

### Which non-KYC exchange has the lowest fees?

Lighter charges nothing on its default account, so a $10,000 taker round trip costs only the spread.
Among the three that do charge, Extended is cheapest at 0.025% taker, or
$5.00 for the same round trip at the entry tier, with EVEDEX at
$9.00 before cashback.

### Should I use a decentralized exchange to avoid KYC?

Choose a venue on custody and cost rather than on avoiding a form. Pool-priced venues such as GMX ask for
nothing at all, but they have no order book to measure. The order-book venues here trade from a wallet
and publish depth: our BTC snapshots ran from $3.8 million to $17.9 million inside 10 bps.

### Why might someone avoid KYC in crypto?

Documents sit on someone else's server, and exchange data leaks have happened. A wallet signature keeps
the account key with the trader. The trade-off is support: with no account, there is nobody to restore
access if a key is lost, and terms still bar sanctioned persons.

### Is MetaMask non-KYC?

MetaMask is a wallet, not a venue: it holds keys and signs transactions, and it asks for no documents.
Every venue in this list is reached with a wallet of that kind, and on all four a wallet signature is
the whole sign-in rather than one option among several.

### Can you buy crypto without KYC?

Not on the venues here: these are perpetual futures venues, and a perpetual contract tracks a price
rather than delivering the asset. They take USDT or USDC deposits from a wallet. Buying spot coins with
a card is where identity checks usually appear.

### What is a no KYC exchange?

A venue where trading starts without identity verification. In perpetual futures that is the norm rather
than the exception: all 16 venues this desk reads open positions from a wallet,
and this list narrows them to the ones with no second door and an order book to measure.

### Can I use Binance without KYC?

Binance limits unverified accounts to a narrow set of actions, so trading in practice means verifying.
The venues on this page take the other route: a wallet signature, no documents, and restrictions handled
through terms of use rather than through an approval queue.

## Corrections

One formula, fixed 21 September 2026. The Wallet First review desk, 24 September 2026. Corrections: desk@cafrodytes.com

Publication here is paid for.