From paper to real: the way there, with the risks

This page answers one question: what changes when you move from paper money, the practice cash on Trenches, to real money? After reading it, you can check a coin in six lines, name what paper never tested, and fund and protect a trading wallet. You will also know what Trenches shows you if you choose to go live, the app's name for its way to real trading on pump.fun.

Nothing here tells you to trade. Most new coins go to zero. Trade only what you can lose.

Most lessons named here sit further along the Crypto road, which opens one lesson after another.

What is the six line check?

The free Memecoin starter ends with Run a complete preflight check. Before any decision about a coin, you write six lines:

1. Asset: the coin's mint address, the one address that identifies it.
2. Venue: the pool that trades that exact coin. A pool is a pair of token reserves a program swaps between.
3. Control: who can still make more coins, stop people moving theirs, or change the coin's name and link.
4. Supply: the share the biggest wallets hold, since a few could sell a lot into the pool.
5. Depth: how much the pool holds, and how far a buy or sale of a set size would move the price.
6. Unknowns: what your sources do not show. Never guess them, because a guess looks like a checked fact.

On each line, write what you checked, the answer or "unknown", where you found it, and when. The time matters because a pool changes with every trade. After you buy, Re-checking after entry runs the same lines again, and a changed line sends you to your rules, not to an automatic trade.

The asset line comes first, since every other line rests on it. A coin's name, symbol and logo are not its identity, and a look-alike can copy all three. Say you search a name and take the first result, a look-alike. Every later line then holds real numbers for the wrong coin, and nothing on screen looks wrong.

A check with its unknowns written down is complete, but it never decides for you. Rules you wrote beforehand do: buy, how much, or nothing.

What did paper trading not test?

A paper trade is a record, not a purchase: the app writes down the price from a named source at that moment. Nothing is bought, and there is no seller.

Say the order book, the list of offers to buy and sell, shows 15 coins for sale at 10.00 USD, 20 at 10.05 and more at 10.10. A paper buy of 40 fills, or completes, all 40 at 10.00, for 400 USD. A real buy would take the 15 at 10.00, then 20 at 10.05 and 5 at 10.10: 401.50 USD, or 1.50 more.

That is the rule in A paper fill against the order book: the whole quantity fills at the shown price. So a paper result never tested:

• real size at the shown price
• your place in the queue of orders waiting at a price
• the delay between sending and filling
• real fees and taxes, since the simulator's fee is made up
• a partial fill, where only part of an order goes through

It never tested you either. As What practice can and cannot prove says, practice cash cannot be lost in a way that hurts. A run of paper wins proves nothing about how you would act with real money at risk.

What changes in your wallet?

Trading through a wallet interface splits one swap, a trade of one token for another, into four parts:

1. The app prepares the request.
2. You approve it with your keys, the secret information that controls your wallet. This is called signing.
3. A pool program trades under its own rules.
4. The network processes it for a fee in SOL, Solana's own coin.

You sign the request, not the screen's estimate. So read its details first: what you pay, the minimum you receive, the pool, and who pays the fee. A finished swap cannot be undone. Only a new transaction, with its own costs, can reverse its effect.

The lesson A complete first practice check adds two rules. Nobody needs your recovery words, the seed phrase that restores a wallet, to check an address. Pressure to confirm fast is a reason to slow down. Wallets, keys and the seed phrase explains why.

Funding a trading wallet prepares one withdrawal from an exchange, a service that holds balances for you, to a wallet you control. It checks the exact token on the exact network, and the full address, taken from your wallet's receive screen, never from a chat. It also checks the withdrawal fee and a minimum of SOL kept for later fees. If any check fails, you do not send it.

Easy to mix up: a token and its network. The same token, like USDC, can run on Ethereum and on Solana, and USDC sent on Ethereum does not arrive in your Solana wallet.

Why the minimum? With almost no SOL, a wallet full of tokens cannot pay to sell, as Check the native fee reserve before exit shows.

What if a swap fails, or something goes wrong?

The lesson Why transactions fail names three outcomes:

• A rejected request never reaches a block, the network's batch of recorded transactions, and costs nothing.
• A landed failure sits in a block with every change undone, and its fee is still charged.
• An unexecuted transaction is sent but never included, and costs nothing.

A failed swap says nothing about whether the coin is good or bad, so read its stated error first.

The minimum you receive, from the swap's details, is a floor you set. The lesson Minimum output is a transaction condition shows that the swap checks it once, when it runs. Below it, the swap fails: the fee is paid, and nothing else moves.

Say the screen estimates your swap at 8,000 of a coin. With a slippage tolerance of 1 percent, meaning you accept up to 1 percent less, the floor is 7,920. A wider tolerance fails less often, but allows a worse fill, and others can trade just before and after your swap to push it down.

The floor is not a stop-loss, an order that sells later if the price falls. It also checks only how many coins arrive, not whether they are the right coin.

If coins are ever stolen, the lesson After an exploit or loss gives the order:

1. Log what moved, and each step you take.
2. Revoke each permission, the approvals that let another address move your tokens.
3. End the site's connection to your wallet.
4. Check your accounts again to see the permissions are gone.

Revoking cannot undo a transfer. A new wallet with new keys is needed only if your keys or seed phrase may have been exposed. Your written limits still apply. A trade sized to win the loss back, a recovery trade, is never owed.

What does Trenches show when you go live?

Go live shows only once you have an account, and only where your country allows it. On a computer, the Hub, your trader home in the app, carries a Go live card. It reads "Trade for real on pump.fun" and "Memecoins on Solana, with real money. Your paper account stays right here." Under that sits the risk line: "Most new coins go to zero."

In countries where Go live is not offered, there is no card, and the memecoins page says: "We cannot offer this where you are. You can still learn and practice with paper money."

The card opens the Go live page and its three numbered steps. Step one is getting the pump.fun app from a QR code, or opening pump.fun on the web. Step two is entering the Trenches code, shown on the page, in that app when you sign up. Step three says the pump.fun app handles deposits.

On a phone, the Hub has a Go live card too, and one button gets the pump.fun app instead of a QR code.

Trenches itself is paper money only, and no step tells you to trade. Beside every link that leaves Trenches sits the disclosure, word for word: "We may earn a referral fee and rewards from pump.fun when you use our code. You never pay more."

Under "Before you go live", the fine print opens with the risk line and states "pump.fun is for people 18 or older", so if you are under 18, it is not for you. It adds that real trading involves risk, that pump.fun operates independently of Trenches and its link leaves the simulator, and that nothing there is investment advice. Most new coins go to zero. Trade only what you can lose.

Keep practicing

On a computer, the end of the seventh starter unit says: "Keep practicing on paper." In countries where Go live is offered, it adds that pump.fun is where these coins trade, but its first button is still "Practice on the board": paper trades on the Trenches board of new coins. Most new coins go to zero. Trade only what you can lose.

The Trenches Discord follows the same rule: places to trade with real money are talked about in one room only, for members 18 and older, and nobody tells anyone to start trading for real.

The starter's card says what comes next: "After these seven units the sections on the road get harder. Take them in order." Finishing the starter opens Token powers, the road's section on who controls a coin and who holds it.