Making Your First On-Chain Trade 

Previous posts have covered generating and funding your first wallet. The final step to becoming an on-chain trader is to… actually trade on-chain. This post will be a quick run through on how to actually do it.

Your First Swap  

For your first swap, we are going to use Solana to make it easy and low cost for you. From previous posts, you should have a Phantom Wallet set up and funded – if not, check HERE and HERE to learn how. For this first swap, let’s use Jupiter’s dApp instead of Phantom’s swap. Jupiter is a Dex Aggregator, so it helps you get the best rates on your swaps across different Solana Dexs. You can find it by going to the search tab on Phantom. From there you can either search for Jupiter or scroll through Phantom’s trending sites (Jupiter is typically the #1 option). Make sure you access the correct site!  

Connect Your Wallet 

1. Go to Jupiter’s Swap as described above. The correct link should be: https://jup.ag/ 
2. Click Connect Wallet – typically in the top right corner – then select Phantom. 
3. Approve the connection in your wallet popup. 

• Now Jupiter can see your wallet address & balances, but it cannot move funds without your approval. 

Choose Tokens 

For the purposes of safe practice, we will simply swap your SOL to USDC, the stablecoin.  

• Our Goal: Swap 0.1 SOL→ USDC. 
• Enter 0.1 SOL in the “Selling” box (the top one). 
• In the “Buying” box (the bottom one), select USDC. 
• Jupiter will calculate how much USDC you’ll get in return for your SOL. 

Review Trade Details 

Jupiter will show you: 

• Expected Output → 0.1 SOL ≈ 20 USDC (these are just example numbers; real numbers will vary based on the price of SOL). 
• Slippage Tolerance → slippage is how much tolerance the swap has for price movement before your trade confirms. If your slippage is .5% and the price of SOL moves .5% before your trade confirms, the trade will cancel, and you will be quoted a new price. This is not typical when trading major coins like SOL and ETH, but it becomes extremely important when trading memecoins and microcaps, which can move 20% or more in seconds. Jupiter offers auto-slippage, but if you click on the button to the top left of the swap interface, you can make your slippage manual and set it to a certain amount. A good default when swapping major coins like SOL/USDC is .1-.5%, to minimize your risk of getting a bad quote. This will change for memecoin trading, but we can discuss that later. For now, you can set it to either .1% or .5%. 
• Gas Fee Estimate → as we discussed, gas on Solana typically costs just a few cents. 

Approve Token (if needed) 

• For SOL→ USDC, SOL doesn’t need approval, since it is native. 
• If swapping USDC → SOL, you’ll first have to approve USDC before you can sell it. The same will go for any tokens you purchase. 
• This is a one-time transaction per token. 

Confirm the Swap 

1. Click Swap. 
2. Your wallet pops up → shows: 
3. Amount you’re getting. 
4. Amount you’re sending. 
5. Network Fee. 
6. Click Confirm. 

Your transaction is now sent to the blockchain. 

Wait for Confirmation 

• This will typically only take a couple seconds, perhaps a little longer if there is network congestion. 
• You’ll see a confirmation message, and then the USDC will appear in your wallet. 

What’s Happening Behind the Scenes 

• Your SOL goes into a liquidity pool (SOL–USDC). 
• The smart contract calculates the output (AMM). 
• The pool rebalances → SOL increases, USDC decreases. 
• Liquidity providers earn a small fee from your swap. 
• The blockchain records everything permanently. 
• The same thing applies to swaps on other chains 

Checking the Transaction 

• If you want to track/see your transaction then, in Phantom, click the transaction → it links to Solscan. 
• On Solscan, you can see: 
• Gas paid. 
• Input/output amounts. 
• Which contract executed it. 
• Your wallet’s updated balances. 

There you have it; you just made your first on-chain trade! When you trade memecoins or other tokens on chain, you follow the same steps but paste the token’s contract into the buy portion (where the USDC was), and then you swap your Solana for the token. Start with small amounts so you can learn how to trade smoothly before risking bigger amounts!

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