Trading

Lavarage gives you three ways to interact with any token on the Trade page: leveraged trading (long or short), simple swaps, and borrowing. This page covers all three, plus the settings and mechanics you need to understand before confirming a trade.

---

Three Ways to Trade

The Trade page has three tabs:

• Trade (Long/Short) — Open a leveraged position on any token. You borrow capital from a lender and trade with more buying power than you started with.
• Swap — Exchange one token for another on DEXs via Jupiter. No leverage, no position, no loan. After swapping, you will see an option to trade the token with leverage if margin liquidity is available.
• Borrow — Get a loan against your tokens without opening a leveraged trade. See the dedicated Borrow page for details.

The rest of this page focuses on leveraged trading — the core of Lavarage.

---

Opening a Long Position

What it means: You profit when the token's price goes up. You are buying the actual token with leverage.

How it works under the hood:

1. You put up margin (e.g., USDC)
2. The protocol borrows additional capital from a loan offer
3. All of it is swapped on DEXs via Jupiter for the target token
4. You now hold real tokens worth more than your initial margin
5. When you close, the tokens are sold, the loan is repaid with interest, and you keep the profit

Worked Example: 5x Long on SOL

SOL rises 20% to $180: Position worth $600. Repay $400 + fees. You keep roughly $200 — that is ~$100 profit on your $100 margin, a 100% return.

SOL drops 10% to $135: Position worth $450. Repay $400 + fees. You are left with roughly $50 — a 50% loss on your $100 margin.

Key point: Leverage amplifies both gains and losses equally. A 20% move in the token becomes a 100% move on your margin at 5x.

---

Opening a Short Position

What it means: You profit when the token's price goes down.

How it works under the hood:

1. You put up margin (e.g., USDC)
2. The protocol borrows the target token from a loan offer
3. The borrowed tokens are immediately sold on DEXs via Jupiter
4. If the price drops, it costs less to buy them back
5. When you close, the protocol buys back the tokens at the lower price, repays the loan, and you keep the difference

Worked Example: 3x Short on TOKEN

TOKEN drops 20% to $8: Buy back 20 tokens for $160. Originally sold for $200. Gross profit: $40. That is a 40% return on your $100 margin.

TOKEN rises 15% to $11.50: Buy back 20 tokens for $230. Originally sold for $200. Gross loss: $30. That is a 30% loss on your $100 margin.

When you short, a price increase means a loss. Leverage amplifies it in both directions.

---

Token Search

Use the token search bar to find any token available on Lavarage.

• Search by name or ticker — type "SOL", "BONK", or paste a token address
• Browse Top tokens — the most popular tokens by trading activity
• Browse New tokens — recently added tokens with margin liquidity
• Filter by quote token — narrow results to All, WSOL, or USDC pairs
• Sort results — order by fee, interest rate, or maximum leverage to find the best deal
• Favorite tokens — save tokens to your watchlist for quick access (requires email login)

If a token trades on a Solana DEX and has margin liquidity on Lavarage, it will appear here.

---

Smart Order Routing

When you select a token and leverage, Lavarage automatically finds the best lending pool for your trade. You don't need to think about pool selection — but understanding how it works helps you get better fills.

How It Works

1. Pool discovery — The system queries all active lending pools (called "offers") for your token pair and direction (long or short)
2. Liquidity check — Filters out pools that don't have enough capital for your trade size. A 3x trade on $100 needs $200 of borrowable liquidity.
3. Ranking — Remaining pools are sorted by best terms: highest leverage limit, lowest utilization, and most favorable rates
4. Selection — The top-ranked pool is selected and used to build your transaction

This all happens in milliseconds between you clicking "Trade" and seeing your pre-trade preview.

What Affects Your Match

Tips for Better Execution

• Check available liquidity — The trade panel shows the matched pool's available liquidity. If it's tight relative to your trade size, consider sizing down.
• Compare offers — On the token search page, you can sort by fee, interest rate, or max leverage to see what pools are offering.
• Split large trades — If you need to open a very large position, consider splitting it across two trades to avoid price impact.

---

Loan Offers

The platform automatically matches you with the best available loan offer for your trade — you focus on trading, not on picking a lender.

Behind the scenes, lenders operate lending vaults and set loan offers with their own terms: interest rate, maximum leverage, and available liquidity. When you select a token pair and direction, the platform finds the best match and shows you the key terms:

• Interest rate (APR) — the annual rate you will pay on borrowed capital
• Maximum leverage — the highest leverage available for this pair
• Available liquidity — how much capital is available to borrow

You can review these details before confirming. Different token pairs may have different rates and leverage limits depending on what lenders offer.

---

Trade Settings

Before confirming, review and adjust these settings:

Leverage

Set with the slider or type a number directly. Available leverage varies by token pair, direction, and loan offer — there is no single maximum across the platform.

Higher leverage means higher potential profit, but also a closer liquidation price. If you are still getting comfortable with the mechanics, start with 2-3x.

Slippage Tolerance

The maximum price deviation you will accept on the swap. Default is 0.5%. Increase this for volatile or low-liquidity tokens where the price may move between your quote and execution.

Quote Protection (Degradation Threshold)

Protects against unfavorable price movement between the time you receive a quote and the time your transaction executes on-chain. Works alongside slippage tolerance as an additional safeguard.

MEV Protection

Toggle this on to route your transaction through Astralane, which prevents sandwich attacks.

What is a sandwich attack? A bot detects your pending trade, buys the token before you (driving the price up), then sells after your trade executes (profiting at your expense). MEV protection prevents this by shielding your transaction from these bots.

Recommended for large trades.

---

Pre-Trade Preview

Before you confirm, the interface shows a breakdown of your trade:

Check the liquidation price carefully. Make sure you are comfortable with how far the price would need to move against you before liquidation triggers.

---

Setting TP/SL at Open

Requires email login.

Before confirming your trade, you can optionally set:

• Take-Profit (TP) — automatically close your position when the price hits your profit target
• Stop-Loss (SL) — automatically close your position to limit your downside

Set these using price targets or percentage presets. These are server-side automated orders — they execute even when you are offline or your browser is closed.

You can also add or modify TP/SL after opening. See Managing Positions for details.

---

Fees

Every trade has three cost components:

• Opening fee: 1% of your total position size
• Closing fee: 1% of your position value at close
• Interest: Simple APR on the borrowed amount, accruing daily. The rate depends on the loan offer you are matched with.

Interest formula:

Daily interest = Borrowed Amount x APR / 365

Interest starts accruing from the moment your position opens. Shorter holds mean less interest cost.

---

Next: Learn how to manage your open positions — partial closes, TP/SL, adding margin, and more.