Wallet-Only Platforms: Crypto Exchange Without KYC or an Account
Onboarding and access30Custody and settlement25Trading cost20Market coverage15Liquidity10the method in full
Ranking
Venues where a wallet signature is the entire sign-in
This is the register's own test, applied without the order-book condition the rest of the site adds, so the table reaches wider here than anywhere else. 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. ApeX Omni, Aster, dYdX, edgeX, gTrade, Hyperliquid, Ostium and Paradex all fail it and appear in no ranking on this site. Four of the eight that pass run an order book we could sample and carry a score; the rest price against an oracle and are listed unscored. Ordered by the overall score. Whatever the door asks for, a leveraged position asks for margin and can take all of it.
| Place | Venue | Score of 5 | Maker / taker | Perp markets | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LighterHybrid, ZK-proven | 4.5 | 0% / 0% | 214 | 0% default fees on a wallet-only account |
| 2 | ExtendedHybrid | 3.9 | 0% / 0.025% | 325 | the widest market list without an email |
| 3 | EVEDEXHybrid | 3.4 | 0.015% / 0.045% | 52 | non-crypto markets on a wallet-only account |
| 4 | AevoHybrid | 3.3 | 0.050% / 0.080% | 102 | pre-IPO exposure from a wallet |
| – | DriftPaused; fork runs as Velocity | not scored | Velocity: 0.0025% maker rebate / 0.06% taker | 4 | a Solana-native pool venue with no account |
| – | Jupiter PerpsOracle pool | not scored | 0.06% to open and to close, plus price impact and borrow fees | 3 | high leverage on three Solana markets |
| – | Orderly (WOOFi Pro)Hybrid, not scored | not scored | 0.025% / 0.040% on WOOFi Pro | 80 | a shared book reached through other front-ends |
Prices are the entry tier on the BTC perpetual and counts are the venue's own. Two venues on the same total hold the same rank. Who may open an account is settled in each venue's terms, so read the ones that cover you. Entry-tier BTC perpetual rates, before volume changes them, read on 18 September 2026; market counts are what each venue documents in its own terms. One formula scores every page on this site, and access differs by country: read your own jurisdiction's terms before money moves.
Listed but not scored: Drift, Jupiter Perps, Orderly (WOOFi Pro) — they price against an oracle and fill from a pool, so there is no resting order book to measure.
The verdict
A crypto exchange without KYC still usually offers an email login as a fallback. Four order-book venues do not: Lighter, Extended, EVEDEX and Aevo take a wallet signature and nothing else. Lighter comes first, on zero default fees, though its free tier delays every taker order by 300 ms.
Order
What sets the order
- No password to lose, no account to recover: the wallet key is the account on all four scored venues.
- Cheapest of the four: Lighter at 0% maker / 0% taker on its default account.
- Widest market list: Extended at 325 perpetual markets.
- Beyond crypto: EVEDEX lists gold, silver, crude oil, two FX pairs and US-listed shares on the same account.
1 · Lighter — 0% default fees on a wallet-only account
Registration is a signed message from an Ethereum wallet, and deposits go to Lighter's smart contracts (Lighter docs, checked 18 September 2026). The default account trades at 0% maker / 0% taker with 300 ms of extra taker latency, and critical exits can be submitted on-chain.
Entered for
- 0% maker and taker on the default account
- On-chain exit documented
Entered against
- 300 ms taker delay on the free tier
- No published screening policy in the docs we read
Not for traders who want a recovery option.
Official site: docs.lighter.xyz
2 · Extended — the widest market list without an email
Two wallet signatures create and register the account, EVM or Starknet (Extended docs, checked 18 September 2026). 325 perpetual markets trade at 0% maker / 0.025% taker. Its terms reserve the right to deny access after a risk assessment.
Entered for
- 325 perpetual markets
- 0.025% taker fee
Entered against
- Terms reserve a risk assessment before access
- No documented forced withdrawal
Not for traders who want checks ruled out in writing.
Official site: docs.extended.exchange
3 · EVEDEX — non-crypto markets on a wallet-only account
Sign-in is a wallet signature, and deposits arrive in USDT through a personal deposit contract on Arbitrum (stated in the EVEDEX documentation, 18 September 2026). EVEDEX states it runs no traditional KYC and screens deposits automatically. Its 52 markets include gold through XAUT, silver, crude oil, EUR/USD, USD/JPY and US-listed shares, trading around the clock at 0.015% maker / 0.045% taker.
Entered for
- Screening described in writing
- Six asset classes on one USDT account, all 24/7
Entered against
- Positions written to Arbitrum in batches rather than trade by trade
- Cross margin only
Not for UK retail clients.
4 · Aevo — pre-IPO exposure from a wallet
Aevo connects an EVM wallet and states in its terms that transactions happen only through the wallet service a trader selects (Aevo terms, checked 18 September 2026). It lists 102 perpetual markets including pre-IPO names, at 0.050% maker / 0.080% taker.
Entered for
- 102 markets, including pre-IPO exposure
- Wallet-only sign-in
Entered against
- 0.080% taker fee, the highest here
- Median BTC depth of $3.8 million
Not for cost-sensitive traders.
Official site: aevo.xyz/docs
Drift — a Solana-native pool venue with no account
The Drift v2 program has been paused since 1 April 2026, and the app and documentation now point at Velocity Exchange, a fork running as its own Solana program. Velocity is self-custodial, with no account to register and no balance held for a trader (Velocity docs, checked 18 September 2026). Orders fill from an on-chain book worked by keepers or from the protocol's own pool, so there is no resting depth for us to measure and no score here.
Entered for
- Wallet-only, no account to register
- Self-custodial by design
Entered against
- Drift v2 paused since 1 April 2026, with trading moved to the Velocity fork
- No resting order book to measure
- BTC leverage capped at 20x on the live API
Not for traders who want book depth they can inspect.
Official site: docs.velocity.exchange
Jupiter Perps — high leverage on three Solana markets
Jupiter Perps takes a Solana wallet and prices three markets — wBTC, SOL and ETH — from a shared pool (Jupiter docs, checked 18 September 2026). Its terms reserve the right to run KYC and AML checks where it deems them necessary.
Entered for
- Wallet-only sign-in
- Up to 250x on three markets
Entered against
- Terms reserve KYC and AML checks
- Three markets only
Not for traders who want a wide market list.
Official site: docs.jup.ag/user-docs/trade/perps/index
Orderly (WOOFi Pro) — a shared book reached through other front-ends
Orderly authenticates wallets with EIP-712 signatures and serves its book through front-ends such as WOOFi Pro (Orderly docs, checked 18 September 2026). The book is visible to logged-in accounts only, so we could not measure its depth.
Entered for
- Wallet authentication with no account
- Book shared across several front-ends
Entered against
- Depth not publicly measurable
- The operator reads the whole order before it is matched
Not for traders who compare venues by measured depth.
Official site: orderly.network/docs
Detail
What a crypto exchange without KYC gives up when it drops the email
Support. With an email account, a venue can send a recovery link, freeze a session or verify a request; with a wallet signature there is nothing to verify against. A lost key is the end of the account, and no desk can undo it. That is the trade a wallet-only venue makes, and it is why hardware wallets and offline backups matter more here than on an exchange that knows who you are.
What a trader gains is that the venue never holds a document, a phone number or a password hash, so a breach of the venue cannot expose them.
Scope
Priced by oracle, not by a book
Drift, GMX, Jupiter Perps and Orderly also sign in with a wallet alone. Drift's own program has been paused since April 2026 and its pages now redirect to Velocity, a fork whose documentation states that it is self-custodial with no account to register (Velocity docs, checked 18 September 2026), GMX offers a wallet or a built-in passkey wallet and calls access permissionless (GMX docs, checked 18 September 2026), and Jupiter's terms reserve the right to run KYC and AML checks if it deems them necessary (Jupiter terms, checked 18 September 2026). All four price positions against an oracle or route to a shared book, so the liquidity criterion has no resting depth to measure and they carry no score here.
Readings
Our measurements
BTC perpetual order books sampled on 19 September 2026, ten minutes between readings, beginning just after midnight UTC. Every figure below is the median of all successful snapshots, and the last column says how many there were.
| Venue | $10,000 round trip, taker fees | Median spread | Median depth within 10 bps | Median impact, $100,000 order | 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 |
Method
How this table was built
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, 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 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.
Questions
Common questions
Is MetaMask non-KYC?
Yes: a wallet holds keys and signs transactions, and asks for nothing. On the four scored venues here that signature is the entire sign-in, so the wallet you already use is the account, and its seed phrase is the only credential that exists.
Can you trade crypto without an account?
On these venues, yes. Lighter, Extended, EVEDEX and Aevo derive everything from a wallet signature, so there is no email, password or profile to create. Deposits go to smart contracts that the venue publishes, and withdrawals return to the wallet that sent them, which is also the only address that can ask for them.
What does no KYC mean in crypto?
No identity documents are collected before trading, and on these four venues no account is created at all. Checks can still happen on-chain: EVEDEX describes automated AML screening of deposits, and Extended's terms allow a Know Your Transaction risk assessment before access is granted.
Why might someone avoid KYC in crypto?
Because documents stored by a venue can leak, and because an approval queue delays trading. The cost of avoiding it is support: there is no password reset on a wallet-only venue, and a lost key cannot be restored by anyone.
Are non-KYC exchanges safe?
Safety here means custody, not paperwork. Lighter documents an exit that its sequencer must process within a set time; the other three rely on the operator to release funds in the ordinary way. Audited contracts holding collateral and a published bug bounty are the other two things our custody and security inputs count.
Should I use a decentralized exchange to avoid KYC?
If the aim is to avoid an account, a wallet-only venue does that whether its book is on-chain or not. Compare instead on depth and cost: EVEDEX held a median $17.9 million of BTC within 10 basis points in our snapshots.
The Wallet First review desk, desk@cafrodytes.com. Updated: .