Trade FAQ

Common questions about swaps, perpetuals, slippage, fees, and trading on Raydium.

Basics

What is a swap?

A swap exchanges one token for another using Raydium's onchain smart contracts. No intermediary and no custody. You trade directly against liquidity pools.

Exchange rates are calculated by the pool formula based on available liquidity.

Where does the liquidity come from?

Liquidity comes from Raydium pools. The routing engine automatically finds the best path across multiple pools to minimize slippage and improve execution.

How do tokens get listed?

Raydium is fully permissionless. Anyone can create a pool and list a token. Always verify the contract address before swapping.

Fees

What are the swap fees?

Swap fees range from 0.01% to 4% depending on the pool type and configuration.

Pool type	LPs	RAY buyback	Treasury
AMM v4	88%	12%	-
CPMM	84%	12%	4%
CLMM	84%	12%	4%

What are network fees?

Solana charges fees to process transactions. Expect fees around 0.0001–0.001 SOL per transaction.

Fee type	Amount	Description
Base fee	0.000005 SOL	Fixed cost per transaction. 50% is burned and 50% goes to the validator.
Priority fee	Variable	Optional fee to increase transaction priority in the queue.

Raydium's UI shows recommended priority fee tiers based on recent network activity. You can adjust this in settings.

Higher fees do not guarantee inclusion, but they improve your odds during congestion.

Price and slippage

What is price impact?

Price impact is the difference between the market price and your execution price. It depends on your trade size relative to pool liquidity.

Bigger trades create more price impact.

If you see high price impact, try a smaller amount or use a deeper pool.

What is slippage tolerance?

Slippage tolerance is the maximum difference between your expected price and execution price. If the price moves beyond your tolerance, the swap fails.

You can set it with the gear icon on the swap page.

• Too high means worse execution risk.

• Too low means more failed transactions.

Perpetuals

Raydium Perps routes orders to Orderly. For deeper product-level detail, see the Orderly documentation.

What is funding rate?

Funding fees are periodic payments exchanged between long and short positions. This helps keep the perpetual price close to the underlying spot price.

• Positive funding rate - Longs pay shorts.

• Negative funding rate - Shorts pay longs.

Funding is peer to peer. No fees are collected by the exchange.

Settlement: Every eight hours at 00:00, 08:00, and 16:00 UTC.

Important notes:

• During extreme volatility, funding intervals may be shortened to 4h, 2h, or 1h.

• Each market has its own funding rate caps and floors.

• If you hold positions across multiple funding periods, funding payments can materially affect your PnL.

For the full formula, see Orderly's documentation.

What is initial margin and maintenance margin?

Initial Margin Ratio (IMR) is the collateral required to open a position. It determines your maximum leverage.

Maintenance Margin Ratio (MMR) is the minimum margin required to keep a position open. If your account falls below this threshold, liquidation triggers.

Market	Base IMR (max leverage)	Base MMR
BTC-PERP	1% (100x)	0.6%
ETH-PERP	1% (100x)	0.6%
SOL-PERP	1% (100x)	0.6%
Most alts	10% (10x)	5%

Account Margin Ratio = Total Collateral Value / Total Position Notional

A higher margin ratio means lower risk.

For details, see Orderly's documentation.

What is liquidation?

Liquidation occurs when your Account Margin Ratio falls below the Maintenance Margin Ratio. The exchange closes your position to prevent further losses.

Example: You have $1,000 USDC and open a $10,000 BTC position with 10x leverage.

• Account Margin Ratio = 10%

• BTC-PERP MMR = 0.6%

• If losses push your margin ratio below 0.6%, liquidation triggers.

To reduce liquidation risk:

• monitor your Account Margin Ratio

• add collateral

• reduce position size

• set stop-loss orders

What is PnL settlement?

PnL settlement moves your profit or loss from perpetual positions into your withdrawable balance.

• Your displayed balance already includes unsettled PnL.

• Settlement is required to withdraw profits.

• Settlement does not affect your margin ratio or open positions.

Troubleshooting

Why did my transaction fail?

Issue	Solution
Insufficient SOL	Keep at least 0.05 SOL for network fees.
Slippage exceeded	Increase slippage tolerance.
Timeout	Increase priority fee and retry.

What are versioned transactions?

Versioned transactions are a newer transaction format that enables more advanced swap routing. Most wallets support them by default.

If you use a Ledger and see errors, update your Solana app in Ledger Live and re-enable blind signing.

Tokens

What is wrapped SOL?

wSOL is SOL wrapped for use in smart contracts. It is redeemable 1:1 for SOL.

If a swap leaves you with wSOL, go to Raydium.io/swap and Raydium prompts you to unwrap it automatically.

Are tokens on Raydium wrapped?

Some are. wBTC and wETH are commonly wrapped through Wormhole's Portal bridge. Other tokens may use different bridges.

Always verify the mint address. If you are unsure, ask in Discord or Telegram.

Support

Still have questions?

Join Discord or Telegram for support.