Verdict: a points-season venue, not a Hyperliquid replacement
Antarctic (the team abbreviates it AX) is a real, busy exchange: on September 24, 2026 CoinGecko showed about $402M of 24-hour volume and $358M of open interest, and DefiLlama counted $8.83B over 30 days. It has a polished CEX-style app with iOS and Android versions, 33 perpetual markets including gold, crude oil and seven US stocks, and leverage up to 100x on BTC and ETH. Its fees are a little above Hyperliquid's, and its points program is the main reason people trade there today.
What it is not, as far as anyone outside the company can check, is a transparent on-chain exchange. Matching and balances run on Antarctic's servers, withdrawals can be paused for compliance review, the team is not named, and DefiLlama shows a warning that users have reported withdrawal delays. Use it with money you can afford to have locked up for a while, and keep your core trading on a venue whose state you can verify.
Pros
- CEX-style app (web, iOS, Android), login with a wallet or a Web2 account, gas-free trading.
- Up to 100x on BTC and ETH, 50x on most crypto, 500x opening bracket on gold.
- Gold, silver, crude oil and US-stock perps (NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, MSTR, SNDK, QQQ, SPY).
- AX Points season running before the ATTX token, with LP and referral routes too.
- For people who refer: affiliate rebates from 40%+ up to 60% of fees.
Cons
- Base taker fee 0.05% and maker 0.02% — both above Hyperliquid (0.045% / 0.015%).
- Off-chain matching; no public audit, deposit contract or proof explorer we could find.
- AML holds and fund freezes are written into the risk rules; DefiLlama flags withdrawal-delay reports.
- Several new markets trade 10–95 times their open interest a day; treat headline volume with care.
- Not available in the US, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China and more.
What Antarctic is
Antarctic describes itself in its litepaper as a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that aims for "a CEX-level user experience". The roadmap on its site lists a $7M seed round and alpha testing in 2024, testnet in Q1 2025, the "V2 mainnet upgrade" and the points system in Q3 2025, and the mobile app in Q4 2025 (the iOS app, AntarcticEX by Antarctic Exchange Corporation, went live in November 2025 — November 11 in the US App Store). The 2026 items — a "V3 Quant upgrade", lend/borrow integrations and API access — are still marked "upcoming". CoinGecko lists the company's country as Panama. The docs' team page describes backgrounds in CEXs and DeFi but names nobody.
Everything is margined in USDT. Antarctic's FAQ says you can log in with MetaMask, OKX Wallet, Binance Wallet, Ledger or WalletConnect, or with a "Web2" account for which the system generates an address. The app offers a CEX mode and a DEX mode over the same engine, TradingView charts, cross and isolated margin, and limit, market, stop, take-profit and trailing-stop orders (post-only via GTX).
Not to be confused with Antarctic Wallet, a separate custodial payments wallet licensed in Kyrgyzstan that shows up in the same searches. It has nothing to do with antarctic.exchange.
Custody and architecture, precisely
Most coverage repeats the marketing line — "self-custody and ZK privacy". Here is what the documents say and what we could observe.
- What the docs claim. The Self-custody Fund Account page says Antarctic uses "a non-custodial, on-chain account model", that deposits and withdrawals run through "auditable smart contracts", and that fund movements need your wallet's signature. The zkRollup page says trades are batched off-chain and only a state root plus a validity proof are posted on-chain.
- How the account behaves. Money you deposit lands in a Funding account; you move it to a Trading account that is the same whichever chain you are connected to. Moving funds back from Trading to Funding is capped at 20,000 USDT per 24 hours. Order matching, margin and liquidation all happen in Antarctic's engine. That is the CEX account model with on-chain deposit rails.
- What the rules allow. The Trading Risk Management Framework says a third-party AML system can delay withdrawals, ask you for source of funds, and — when rules are triggered — impose "temporary restriction or freezing of funds" or terminate accounts. Only an operator in control of the funds can do that. The same page adds that "attempts to interfere with the review process—including spreading unverified information or creating public pressure—may be considered high-risk behavior and could result in extended review time". In other words, posting about a held withdrawal can make it take longer.
- What we could not find. No third-party audit, no published address for the trading-side deposit contract or proof verifier, and no explorer for the rollup's state roots. The only contracts shown in the app are the AMLP and sAMLP liquidity-pool tokens. DefiLlama tracks Antarctic's chains as "Arbitrum" (the LP tokens) and "Off Chain", and its TVL figure ($8.45M) counts only those LP tokens, not trader deposits. The Risk Disclosure page linked from the User Agreement returned a 404.
Our reading: the self-custody claim cannot be checked from outside, so treat your trading balance like a balance on a centralized exchange. DefiLlama's protocol page carries the notice "Users of this platform have reported dissatisfaction with delays when attempting a withdrawal. Please be careful". Before depositing much, make a small round trip — deposit, trade, withdraw — and see how long it takes.
Antarctic fees
Fees depend on your 14-day trading volume in USDT, recalculated every day at 07:00 UTC. There is no gas on orders.
| Tier | 14-day volume (USDT) | Taker | Maker |
|---|---|---|---|
| VIP 0 | under 2.5M USDT | 0.050% | 0.020% |
| VIP 1 | 2.5M+ | 0.045% | 0.018% |
| VIP 2 | 10M+ | 0.040% | 0.015% |
| VIP 3 | 50M+ | 0.035% | 0.010% |
| VIP 4 | 100M+ | 0.030% | 0.005% |
| VIP 5 | 500M+ | 0.020% | 0% |
Source: docs.antarctic.exchange/antarctic-overview/fees and antarctic.exchange/fee, September 24, 2026. The public symbol API lists the same 0.02% / 0.05% on every market except UNI-USDT (0.04% both sides).
What a trade costs. A $10,000 market order in and out (two taker fills) costs $10.00 at VIP 0. On Hyperliquid's base tier the same round trip is $9.00, or $8.64 with the 4% referral discount from code HOLYGRAIL. A maker round trip is $4.00 on Antarctic and $3.00 on Hyperliquid. Reaching Antarctic's VIP 1 needs 2.5M USDT in 14 days — roughly $180k of volume a day.
Other costs. Liquidations are charged the VIP 0 taker rate of 0.05%, whatever your tier. Funding is exchanged every 8 hours (00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 UTC per the funding-rate API; Hyperliquid pays hourly). The minimum deposit is 10 USDT and there is no minimum withdrawal. The fee schedule is covered in more depth for Hyperliquid in our Hyperliquid fees guide and across venues in DEX vs CEX fees.
Markets and leverage
The trade page listed 33 perpetual markets on September 24, 2026: 21 crypto pairs, gold, silver, WTI crude (CL), two index ETFs (QQQ, SPY) and seven US stocks. Maximum leverage by market, from the app's market list and the public leverage-bracket API:
| Markets | Max leverage | Note |
|---|---|---|
| BTC, ETH | 100x | Falls with size: BTC brackets step 100x → 50x → 25x → 10x → 5x |
| Most crypto (SOL, XRP, HYPE, DOGE, ZEC, ASTER…) | 50x | 21 crypto markets in total |
| GOLD | 500x | Opening bracket only |
| SILVER | 50x | |
| QQQ, SPY, CL (crude oil) | 10x | |
| AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL | 8x | |
| NVDA, TSLA, MSTR, SNDK | 5x |
prod-gateway.antarctic.exchange leverage/bracket/list and the trade-page market list, September 24, 2026. Maximum leverage applies only to the smallest position bracket; larger positions get less.
At 100x the initial margin is 1% and maintenance margin 0.5%, so a move of about half a percent against you can liquidate the position. On the upside, stock and commodity perps are listed from 5x to 10x — more conservative than some venues — and gold has a very high opening bracket. For comparison, Hyperliquid allows 40x on BTC, 25x on ETH and 20x on SOL, and lists tokenized stocks through builder-deployed markets (see our trade.xyz stocks guide and gold perps guide).
Volume: how much of it is real?
Headline numbers on September 24, 2026:
- CoinGecko: 4,776 BTC of 24-hour volume (about $402M at $84,135 per BTC) and 4,254 BTC of open interest (about $358M), 35 perpetual pairs tracked.
- DefiLlama: reported 24-hour volume $420.2M, but normalized volume $361.6M — DefiLlama discounts about 14% of Antarctic's reported number. Open interest $358.5M, 7-day volume $2.51B, 30-day $8.83B, 30-day fees $2.55M.
Overall volume is roughly equal to open interest, which is normal for a derivatives venue. The picture changes market by market. The two big books look healthy; several recently listed markets trade many times their open interest every day:
| Market | 24h volume | Open interest | Volume ÷ OI |
|---|---|---|---|
| BTC-USDT | $103.3M | $160.8M | 0.6x |
| ETH-USDT | $57.4M | $99.7M | 0.6x |
| SNDK-USDT (SanDisk) | $63.4M | $4.2M | 15x |
| CL-USDT (crude oil) | $39.7M | $3.0M | 13x |
| MSTR-USDT | $12.1M | $1.1M | 11x |
| GOLD-USDT | $5.2M | $0.05M | 95x |
CoinGecko /derivatives/exchanges/antarctic tickers, September 24, 2026. SNDK, CL and MSTR were listed in 2026; points are paid per 100 USDT of volume.
High turnover on small open interest is what points-farming and self-matching look like, and it is also what active scalping looks like; the data cannot tell them apart. What it does tell you: the depth you see in SNDK or gold is thinner than the daily volume suggests, so size those trades by the order book, not by the volume column. For how Antarctic ranks among perp DEXs, see our perp DEX ranking.
AX Points season and the ATTX token
The points page is the live rulebook. As of September 24, 2026:
- Trading: 1 point per 100 USDT of volume up to 500k USDT a day, 1.5 points per 100 USDT between 500k and 3M, and 2 points per 100 USDT above 3M. Points are credited when you fully close a position and settled daily at 08:00 UTC; the old 1,000-point daily cap was removed. First trade: 200 points.
- One-off tasks: link X (50) and Discord (50); deposit USDT on Arbitrum (100) and on Ethereum (100); add liquidity (200).
- LP: 2 points per day per 100 USDT in the pool for the first 7 days, 3 points from day 8 to 30, 4 points after that; withdrawing resets the clock.
- Referrals: 100 points for each invited friend who reaches 1,000 points, up to 5 a day.
- Decay: no trade or invite for 7 days costs 5% of your balance per week; after 28 days of inactivity the fourth week burns 50%. One trade or invite a week stops it.
The rule that matters most is in FAQ 7: points will be "converted into native tokens at a specified ratio", and that ratio "will gradually decrease as the total supply of AX points increases". The more everyone farms, the less each point is worth. The docs add that points "are not a token" and that any benefit is "not guaranteed". Note that the litepaper's older Base Earn Rate page still says 1 point per dollar with a contribution-score multiplier; the live page (1 point per 100 USDT) is what the app applies.
ATTX is the planned token and has not launched; no TGE date is published. The docs describe governance, fee discounts, VIP levels and buy-backs, and a fixed supply of 100M:
| ATTX allocation | Share |
|---|---|
| Incentives (mining, LP) | 45% |
| Ecosystem development | 10% |
| Seed investors | 8% |
| Private sale | 8% |
| Team | 8% |
| Airdrop (from AX Points) | 8% |
| Liquidity (market making, IDO) | 6% |
| Advisors / KOLs | 5% |
| Treasury | 2% |
docs.antarctic.exchange/tokenomics/token-distribution, September 24, 2026. A separate lightpaper page says "up to 63.4%" goes to the community; the documents do not reconcile the two, and the team says a full breakdown will come before TGE.
Promotions. Antarctic also runs the Trader Revival Account: over a fixed 14-day period, 50% of your eligible realized net loss is credited to a separate account you can trade but not withdraw; profit on it is paid out only above the funded amount and is capped at that amount. It is promotional capital, not a refund. The trade-page banner advertising a "New Trader Welcome Bonus" linked to a campaign that ran from February 27 to March 12, 2026, so check dates on any promotion before you chase it.
Antarctic affiliate program
If you run a community, Antarctic's split is among the highest published by any perp venue. Terms as of September 24, 2026:
- Access: by application. "Register and fill out the application form… Once you've been approved, you can start earning" (antarctic.exchange/affiliates).
- Rate: the docs say rebates "begin at 40%+" of referred trading fees and rise with referred activity; the affiliates page says "up to 60%". Tier thresholds are not published.
- Payout: the comparison table says "next-day payouts"; the same page also says "earn monthly rewards". Ask for the schedule in writing when you are approved.
- Referee benefit: none published.
- Enforcement: self-referrals, multi-accounting and wash trading lead to suspended rewards, tier cuts or account restrictions. Trading on Revival accounts generates no referral commission.
Antarctic says it has paid "200K+ USDT" in affiliate commissions in total. Rough maths: a referee trading $250,000 a month as taker pays $125 in fees; at 40% you earn $50, at 60% $75. Compare that with Hyperliquid's 10% or dYdX's 30–50% in our referral program comparison.
How to start on Antarctic (5 steps)
Check you are eligible
Read the User Agreement's Prohibited Countries list. Do not use a VPN: the agreement allows account termination and liquidation of open positions if you misstate your location.
Log in
Open antarctic.exchange (bookmark it; the site also has an "Official Verification" page) and log in with MetaMask, OKX Wallet, Binance Wallet, Ledger, WalletConnect or a Web2 account.
Deposit USDT
On the Assets page choose Deposit and the network — Arbitrum, Ethereum or BNB Chain. The minimum is 10 USDT. Funds arrive in your Funding account.
Move funds to Trading and set margin
Transfer to the Trading account, pick Cross or Isolated and set leverage well below the maximum. Add a stop-loss or TP/SL in the ticket.
Test a withdrawal early
Withdraw a small amount before you scale up. Remember the 20,000 USDT daily cap on moving funds back to the Funding account.
Trying Antarctic?
Our referral code: none yet — the button goes to antarctic.exchange directly. Start small, trade BTC or ETH where the books are deep, and withdraw once before you add more.
Open Antarctic →Antarctic vs Hyperliquid
| Antarctic | Hyperliquid | |
|---|---|---|
| Taker / maker (base) | 0.050% / 0.020% | 0.045% / 0.015% |
| Best published tier | 0.020% / 0% (14d ≥ 500M USDT) | 0.024% / 0% (14d over $7B), rebates to −0.003% |
| Discounts | None for referees; ATTX discounts planned | HYPE staking 5–40%; 4% referral discount (HOLYGRAIL) |
| Max leverage | BTC 100x · ETH 100x · SOL 50x · GOLD 500x | BTC 40x · ETH 25x · SOL 20x |
| Perp markets | 33 (incl. 7 US stocks, 2 ETFs, gold, silver, oil) | 178 core + HIP-3 builder markets |
| 24h volume (Sep 24, 2026) | ~$0.40B | ~$9.6B |
| Open interest (Sep 24, 2026) | ~$0.36B | ~$12.4B |
| Funding | Every 8 hours | Hourly |
| Collateral | USDT (Arbitrum, Ethereum, BNB Chain) | USDC (core perps); some HIP-3 builder markets use USDH, USDe or USDT0 |
| Where the order book lives | Antarctic's servers; state roots claimed on-chain | Its own public L1 (HyperCore), readable by anyone |
| Token / points | AX Points season; ATTX not launched | HYPE live since Nov 2024; no points program |
Sources, September 24, 2026: Hyperliquid volume, open interest and market count from api.hyperliquid.xyz (metaAndAssetCtxs, core perps only); Antarctic from CoinGecko. The sources count differently: DefiLlama's perps table on the same day put Hyperliquid at $7.42B of volume and $9.06B of open interest, and Antarctic at $0.42B reported ($0.36B normalized), so the volume gap is about 18 times on DefiLlama's figures and 24 times on ours.
Hyperliquid wins on the things that decide most trades: about 18–24 times the volume depending on the source, lower fees, five times as many markets and an order book anyone can audit. Antarctic wins on headline leverage, a simple CEX-style app, and the chance that AX Points turn into ATTX. A sensible split is to trade on Hyperliquid and, if you want the points exposure, run a small, capped allocation on Antarctic. Details on Hyperliquid in our Hyperliquid review and Hyperliquid app guide.
Want the deeper book? Hyperliquid
Join with code HOLYGRAIL for 4% off fees on your first $25M of volume.
Risks and what to watch
- Counterparty and custody. Balances and matching sit with the operator; withdrawals can be held for AML review and funds can be frozen under the risk rules. There is no public audit, and the team is anonymous.
- Withdrawal reports. DefiLlama's page for Antarctic warns that users have reported withdrawal delays. Test a withdrawal early and keep balances modest.
- The house takes the other side. The FAQ says AMLP liquidity providers "become a counterparty to users' trades" — traders' profits are the pool's losses. The pool held about $5.5M (AMLP) on September 24, 2026, with a 7-day exit lock, against about $358M of open interest.
- Volume quality. DefiLlama's normalized volume is about 14% below the reported number, and newer markets trade 10–95 times their open interest a day. Size by order-book depth.
- Points are not money. Conversion to ATTX is not guaranteed, the rate falls as more points are issued, and inactivity burns points.
- Leverage. At 100x the maintenance margin is 0.5%; at 500x on gold, a fraction of a percent. Liquidations cost 0.05% on top.
- Jurisdiction. Residents of, and people located in, the US, Canada, mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Venezuela and sanctioned regions are barred, and the list can change at any time.
Frequently asked questions
What is Antarctic exchange?
Antarctic (AX) is a perpetual futures exchange that launched in 2024 and markets itself as a DEX with a CEX-style interface. You trade USDT-margined perps on 33 markets (crypto, gold, silver, oil and US stocks such as NVDA and TSLA) with up to 100x on BTC and ETH, gas-free. Deposits come from Arbitrum, Ethereum or BNB Chain. On September 24, 2026 CoinGecko showed about $402M of 24-hour volume and $358M of open interest.
Is Antarctic a real DEX? Who holds my funds?
Antarctic's docs describe a non-custodial account model: deposits and withdrawals through smart contracts, a zkRollup that posts state roots and validity proofs on-chain, and matching off-chain. In practice the account works like a CEX account: a Funding account and a Trading account inside Antarctic, a 20,000 USDT daily limit on moving funds back from Trading to Funding, and withdrawals that can be held for AML review. We found no published audit, deposit contract or proof explorer for the trading side, and DefiLlama tracks the exchange as "Off Chain". Treat it as trusting the operator.
What are Antarctic exchange fees?
At VIP 0 (under 2.5M USDT of 14-day volume) Antarctic charges 0.05% taker and 0.02% maker. Six VIP tiers bring that down to 0.02% taker and 0% maker above 500M USDT. There is no gas on trades. Liquidations are charged 0.05%, and funding is exchanged every 8 hours. A $10,000 taker round trip costs $10 at VIP 0, against $9 on Hyperliquid.
How do Antarctic AX Points work, and is there an ATTX airdrop?
AX Points are earned mainly by trading: 1 point per 100 USDT of volume (1.5 above 500k USDT a day, 2 above 3M), plus fixed points for a first trade, deposits, LP and valid referrals. Points decay by 5% a week if you are inactive for 7 days. Antarctic says points will be converted into its ATTX token at a ratio that falls as the points supply grows, and that any benefit is not guaranteed. ATTX has not launched and no date is published.
How much does the Antarctic affiliate program pay?
Affiliates apply with an Antarctic account and must be approved. The docs say rebates start at 40%+ of referred users' fees; the affiliates page advertises up to 60%. Tier thresholds are not published. The page promises next-day payouts in one place and monthly rewards in another. Self-referrals, multi-accounting and wash trading void rewards.
Is Antarctic available in the US or Japan?
Not in the US. The User Agreement (last updated 2024/9/17) prohibits residents of, and people located in, the United States, Canada, mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Iran and Crimea, and says the list is non-exclusive. Japan is not on that list, but the agreement does not mention any Japanese registration, so check your local rules before you trade.
Is Antarctic exchange safe or a scam?
We cannot call it a scam, and we cannot call it safe either; here are the checkable facts as of September 24, 2026. DefiLlama shows an alert on Antarctic's page: "Users of this platform have reported dissatisfaction with delays when attempting a withdrawal. Please be careful". Antarctic's own Trading Risk Management Framework lets a third-party AML system delay withdrawals, ask for source of funds, and impose "temporary restriction or freezing of funds". The same document warns that "attempts to interfere with the review process—including spreading unverified information or creating public pressure—may be considered high-risk behavior and could result in extended review time", so complaining in public can slow a held withdrawal down. The team is anonymous and DefiLlama lists no audit. The exchange is live, with about $400M of daily volume. If you use it, deposit a small amount, trade, and withdraw once before you add more.
Antarctic vs Hyperliquid: which should I use?
For most traders, Hyperliquid. On September 24, 2026 it did about $9.6B of 24-hour perp volume against about $0.4B on Antarctic, lists 178 perp markets against 33, charges less (0.045% / 0.015% base, 4% less with code HOLYGRAIL) and settles on its own public chain. Antarctic offers higher headline leverage (100x BTC/ETH, 500x gold), 5x–10x stock perps and a points program before its token launch.
Related: all exchange reviews · Hyperliquid review · Hyperliquid referral code HOLYGRAIL · Hyperliquid fees · Hyperliquid app guide · edgeX review · dYdX review · perp DEX ranking.
Disclosure: we may earn a commission when you sign up through links on this page; it does not change your fees. Links to Hyperliquid use our referral code HOLYGRAIL. Antarctic figures were read from Antarctic's docs, app and public market API, CoinGecko and DefiLlama on September 24, 2026; volumes are one-day snapshots and move a lot from day to day. Perpetual futures are high-risk instruments.