How to Trade Successfully on EtherDelta

This is not trading advice, it’s just me playing with some ETH!

Let’s go to: https://etherdelta.github.io. EtherDelta is a decentralized exchange, your funds are held in a smart contract.

Be careful, trades are NOT reversible. If you make a mistake in entering your order, as soon as your order appears in the order book, other traders will be all over it. Traders are watching their screens waiting to profit from someone’s mistake.

For example: 10 bananas for 1$ is not the same as 10$ for 1 banana.

Before you send ETH to EtherDelta, take the time to play around with it to see what happens as you click on the different areas, especially the “NEW ORDER” buy and sell, this is where mistakes happens.

My first time at this exchange was a little bit confusing, so I took some screen shots as a went through the entire process.

In this walk-through, I will make one trade using the “ORDER BOOK” and one trade using the “NEW ORDER”.

Account Creation
To use EtherDelta you need a wallet that is managed by EtherDelta inside the browser, note that your wallet and private key will be stored in the browser. You can also use MetaMask or Parity.

1. To create a new account managed by EtherDelta, Select account in the upper right corner.

1. Select: New account.

1. A pop-up will appear with:

Your public key at the top. This is your sent to address, it’s your Ethereum wallet linked to EtherDelta.
Your private key is at the bottom. Don’t share your private key.
Copy the entire content into Notepad and save the file offline in a safe place.
If someone has your private key, they have access to your funds.

Transferring ETH The New Wallet

1. Now you need to send Ethereum to this wallet (you send to the public key).

For this example, I used https://www.myetherwallet.com to send 0.25 ETH to my newly created wallet.

1. Return to EtherDelta

In the BALANCE area, you will see:
Token: This is the symbol for the Tokens you have in your wallet.
Wallet: The balance in your wallet (we see the 0.25 ETH I transfered).
EtherDelta: The amount of token you have available to trade inside the EtherDelta exchange smart contract. This is not a wallet. it may be confusing the first time.
Now that you are at EtherDelta with ETH in your wallet, you need to deposit some ETH in your EtherDelta smart contract before you can trade it for another token.

Deposit ETH Into The EtherDelta Exchange Smart Contract

1. Once you have ETH is in the wallet managed by EtherDelta, you need to take some ETH out of the wallet and DEPOSIT them in the EtherDelta smart contract.

-Don’t deposit the entire amount because:

1- You will need to have a little amount of ETH in the wallet to pay for the transaction fees.
2- If you make a mistake in the transaction, your loss will be limited to the deposit amount inside the smart contract.
Step 1. Select Deposit on the upper left corner to access the Deposit menu.

Step 2. Enter the amount of ETH you want to deposit.

Step 3. Click Deposit on the lower right as per the image below.

A pop-up will appear with a transaction that you can track on https://etherscan.io. The deposit transaction fee was 0.000177972 Ether.

Now I have 0.030 ETH in my wallet available to pay for transaction fees, and I have 0.22 ETH inside the smart contract available to trade.

Pair Trading Selection

1. I want to trade my 0.22 ETH for PPT.

-Select PPT from the drop-down menu.

-For this trade, I will use the order book.

The order book is a list of buy and sell orders waiting to find a matching seller or buyer.
The order book is split with two orders types.
The orders in RED are SELL orders, you click a RED order to BUY from that SELLER at his price.
The separation in the middle, is the pair that I chose to trade, PPT/ETH.
The orders in GREEN are BUY orders, you click a GREEN order to SELL to that BUYER at his price.
-How to read the order book:

The first seller in line wants to sell 10.000 PPT for a total of 0.223 ETH. This seller is asking for 0.02225 for each PPT he wants to sell. You see the ratio in red (0.225 ETH / 10 PPT = 0.02225).
The first buyer in line wants to buy 34.990 PPT for a total of 0.778 ETH. This buyer is offering 0. 02224 for each PPT he wants to buy. You see the ratio in green (0.778 ETH / 34.99 PPT = 0.02224).

Trade Entry And Execution

1. I look at the order book to find the sell order with the lowest asking price with enough volume to fill my order.

-The lowest asking price, is a seller who wants to sell 1600.000 PPT for 57.920 ETH, but I only have 0.22 ETH in my account. That is not a problem, I can buy a small portion of his order and other buyers will do the same, until his entire order is filled and out of the order book.

-How to buy using the “ORDER BOOK”?

I click on the lowest sell order (red) and a Buy order form will pop-up pre-filled with the complete order, but I need to edit this order.
I click in the field under the ETH to specify how much ETH I want to send for this order, in my case it’s .22 ETH.
I click anywhere on the Buy order form to refresh the quantity in the “Amount to buy (PPT)” field and the Buy order form will calculate the amount of PPT I can buy with the amount of ETH I want to spend. In this case, I want to exchange 0.22 ETH at a ratio of 0.0362 which is 6.077 PPT.

-A pop-up will appear with a transaction you can track on https://etherscan.io. Keep in mind that every time this box pops, there is a small transaction fee, 0.000372 ETH in this case.

Once the transaction is complete, it will appear in the “MY TRANSACTIONS” area. In this case I bought 6.059 PPT and I paid 0.219 ETH for a ratio of 0.0362. (0.219 ETH / 6.059 PPT = 0.0362) .

That’s it. That’s the end for buying with the order book.

The next step shows how buy with the “NEW ORDER” menu.

Buying with “NEW ORDER” menu.
Warning! This is where traders screw up.
-Now PPT is trading around 0.011, I will place an order to buy 10 PPT and I want to pay 0.010 ETH for each PPT I want to buy, for a total of 0.100 ETH.

-In the “NEW ORDER”, next to PPT, I enter 10. This is the quantity I want to buy.

-In the “NEW ORDER”, next to PPT/ETH, I enter 0.010. This is the price I want to pay for each PPT.

-The form will calculate the total amount of ETH this trade will cost, 10 PPT x 0.010 = 0.100 ETH.

-The last field “Expires”, is how long the trade will be active calculated in Ethereum blocks.

• Danger - Once everything is double cheked, click Buy ONLI 1 TIME. There is NO asking for confirmation. The trade is sent as soon as you click Buy. The box will stay there and a small confirmation pop-up will appear in the lower right corner of your browser. I delete the values in the field as a precaution.

-The drawback of using this method, is that there are always other traders willing to pay a little more just to get in front of your order, and by a little more I mean 0.00001.

-After the confirmation, you will see your order in “MY TRANSACTIONS” and it will be highlighted in the “ORDER BOOK”, you can click “Cancel” if you change your mind. There are fees to cancel an order.

-The order is highlighted in the “ORDER BOOK.

-After the order is filled, it will appear in the “TRADES” area. (The fees for this trade were 0.000370408 Ether).