Is this a safe exchange platform to deposit into?

Is astarexchange.com a safe exchange platform? I got offered an illustration job and the payment was with crypto but in the contracts I signed they required me to create an account in this platform and have a wallet in and I can't find anything about the platform online, customer service said they're a closed exchange platform and I need to deposit 0.0015bitcoin to verify my external wallet for safety and to withdraw my prepayment, is this a common thing with verification of external wallet? In other exchange platforms I use I didn't have that verification I just did minimum amount of deposit for it to be good to go. Wanted to ask here if anyone knows