How to paper trade a memecoin on Trenches

How do you practice a memecoin trade without risking real money? This page walks you through one whole paper trade on a computer or a phone. After it, you can find a coin, read the quote, buy, check what you got, set an automatic sell (Protect), sell and find it in your history.

Before you start

Every trade here uses paper cash, practice money with no real value. The prices are real and live.

You need a free account to trade, and it starts with $10,000 of paper cash. Getting started on Trenches: your first ten minutes shows how to make one.

No order reaches a real market, so the app works out your fill, what your order gets. It uses the coin's reported liquidity, the money and coins available to trade against. The bigger your order compared with that, the worse your average price: that is price impact.

Every memecoin buy and sale also pays a 1 percent fee, so a $100 buy pays $1.

Easy to mix up: price impact and the fee. Impact grows with your order's size and shows up as a worse fill. The fee stays 1 percent, on its own line in the quote. The lesson Price impact and the fee are different costs works through both.

Step 1: find a coin

On a computer:

1. Click Trade in the sidebar to open the Trenches board.
2. Pick a column. Migrated lets you try every step, Protect included.
3. Click a row to open the coin page, but not its small $50 lightning-bolt button: that buys at once, no confirm.

New holds coins launched under 6 hours ago. A new coin first sells on a bonding curve: each buy moves the price up, and each sell moves it back. Final Stretch holds coins whose curve is 25 percent full or more. Migrated holds coins that filled the curve and moved to a trading pool, a pot of the coin and SOL (Solana's own coin) that a program swaps between.

On a phone:

1. Tap Trade, then Memes.
2. Under Memes, tap Trenches, then New, Soon or Graduated, the phone's names for the three columns. Pick Graduated to try every step.
3. Tap a row to open the coin.

Read the Trenches board and a coin page explains each row.

Step 2: place a paper buy

On a computer, the order ticket, where you set up an order, tops the page's right column.

1. Keep Buy selected. Sell waits until you hold the coin.
2. Type a dollar amount, or click $25, $50, $100 or $250. Max fills in all your Paper cash.
3. The gear icon holds the Slippage limit, the most price impact you accept: 1, 5, 10, 20 or 50 percent, starting at 50, the loosest. The ticket refuses an order over it.
4. Read the quote, an estimate of what the order would get:
   • Avg price: your average fill after impact, as a market cap (MC), your price times all the coins that exist. So 50K MC does not mean you paid $50,000 a coin.
   • You get: about how many coins.
   • Min received: the fewest coins you accept. Say "You get" is 1,000 coins: with a 10 percent limit, this is 900.
   • Price impact: how much your order's size worsens its price.
   • Fee (1%): the fee in dollars.
5. Click the button that reads Buy and the coin's ticker, its short name. It fills at once.

On a phone:

1. At the foot of the coin screen, tap the button that reads Buy and the ticker. The lightning bolt beside it buys $100 with no confirm.
2. Use the keypad, or tap $10, $50, $100 or Max.
3. Auto, at the top, means 50% max slippage, the most price impact you accept. Tap it to pick 1, 5, 10 or 20 percent, or to turn on One tap, so quick amounts buy at once.
4. Check the summary line: about how many coins, your max slippage and the app fee.
5. Tap the button. With $100 picked, it reads Buy $100 of and the coin's ticker.

Step 3: check what you got

The quote was an estimate. The fill is what your order actually got, and your position, the coins you now hold, follows it. The lesson Quote, submission and fill keeps them apart.

On a computer, the "You hold" line under the ticket shows the coins you got. Compare it with the "You get" line you read before buying. Your position, lower down, lists:

• Value: your coins times the price now.
• Holding: how many coins you hold.
• Avg entry: the coin's market cap when you bought.
• Cost: every dollar spent, fee included.
• PnL: your profit or loss.

Why is PnL already below zero? The fee and impact are already paid. The lesson What a position cost works through it.

Say you buy $100 of a coin. The fee takes $1, and say impact costs about $1 more, so your coins are worth about $98 at the price now. PnL starts near minus $2. If the price stayed put and you sold at once, impact and the fee would come out again, leaving about $96.

On a computer, your receipt is the Trades card on Profile, under Portfolio. Its Amount and Price already include the 1 percent fee.

On a phone, the position card under the chart shows your value, PnL and coins. Tap it for details such as Cost basis: everything you paid, fee included.

Step 4: watch it and protect it

On a computer, the chart marks your trades, B for a buy and S for a sale, with lines at your Avg entry and any stop loss. Easy to mix up: the chart's Alert button sends no message. It only draws a line at a market cap you type, while the page is open.

Protect, at the foot of Your position, is the app's automatic sell:

1. In the "Stop loss, market cap" box, type a market cap below today's. Say the market cap is $80K and you type $60K: if it falls to $60K, the app sells all your coins.
2. Take profit sells them all if the market cap rises to your number. It needs Elite, the paid membership.
3. Click Save Protect.

On a coin still on its curve, the boxes stay grayed out: "Protect arms once the coin leaves its bonding curve." How a coin is made: the curve, graduation and the pool explains that move.

A stop is an instruction, not a price. The app checks it as prices refresh while Trenches is open and sells at the price then, so a fast drop can sell below your line. With Trenches closed, nothing checks it. The lesson Automatic exits are instructions teaches this.

On a phone, tap the position card, then Set SL / TP (stop loss and take profit) in its details. The Protect position panel sets a stop 10, 25, 50 or 75 percent under the market cap now, or a Custom MC. Arm protection saves it. Before the coin graduates (leaves the curve), you see "Exits unlock once this coin graduates." instead.

Step 5: close it and log it

On a computer:

1. Click Sell in the ticket, then 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of your coins.
2. Read the quote: the "You get" line now shows the paper cash you would receive, after impact and the fee.
3. Click the button that reads Sell and the ticker.

The trade then appears in the "Closed" list under "Your positions" on Profile. The Trades card adds the sale with its realized result: the sale's cash minus the cost of the coins sold.

Easy to mix up: while you hold, your PnL is unrealized and moves with the price. Once you sell, it is realized and stays. The lesson Unrealized and realized results explains both.

On a phone, tap the button that reads Sell and the ticker, pick 25%, 50%, 75% or Max, then tap the Sell button. To log it, tap the house at the top of the road to open the Hub, then Journal. Overview lists the close, and Calendar lets you write a note for each day.

Each paper sale also scores in your weekly league, a points table shared with other learners: 8 points for a profit, minus 3 for a loss. Battles, Ranks and the weekly leagues has the rest.