Trading on NEAR, from zero
Eleven steps from no wallet to your first trade on a new launch, and how to read what you are buying.
01
What NEAR is
NEAR is a proof-of-stake blockchain with one to two second finality and fees of a fraction of a cent. Every token is its own contract, named like an address: nearly-993927.nearlytrade.near, blackdragon.tkn.near. That name is the contract address (CA) you copy and paste. Launchpads such as nearly.trade, NearPad, meme.cooking, shards.market and Nira deploy new tokens under their own suffix, which is how elystrade tells you where a token came from.
02
Create a wallet
Install one of Meteor (browser extension and mobile), HOT (Telegram and mobile) or Intear. Create a new account. You get either a named account (yourname.near, easy to share) or an implicit account (64 hex characters, free to create, activated by the first deposit). Both work the same for trading.
03
Back up the seed phrase
Your wallet shows a 12 word seed phrase once. Write it on paper and keep it offline. Anyone with it owns your funds. No real support person, bot or site (elystrade included) will ever ask for it.
04
Get NEAR
Buy NEAR on an exchange (Binance, Coinbase, OKX, Bybit, Kraken and others) and withdraw on the NEAR network to your account. Coming from another chain? Swap into NEAR with NEAR Intents (built into the elystrade Telegram bot and into HOT and Meteor) or Rubic. Keep at least 0.1 NEAR spare for gas and storage.
05
Storage deposits and wNEAR
Two NEAR details surprise newcomers. Storage deposits: the first time your account holds a token, that token contract charges a one-time deposit (usually 0.00125 NEAR, some launchpads 0.005 to 0.02) for your balance record. elystrade adds it to the transaction when needed. wNEAR: Rhea pools trade wrapped NEAR (wrap.near), not native NEAR. elystrade wraps on buys and unwraps on sells, so you only ever see NEAR.
06
Connect to elystrade
Click Connect in the top right and pick your wallet. Nothing is signed at connection. From then on every trade from the Connected wallet opens your wallet to confirm, showing exactly which contracts it calls.
07
Set up the instant wallet and presets
For one-tap buys like BasedBot, create the Instant wallet in the wallet menu. Its key is generated in your browser and encrypted with your passphrase. elystrade keeps that encrypted copy, which only your passphrase opens, so you can log in to the wallet on any device. elystrade's servers also hold a copy of the key that signs your trades, so buys are instant and TP/SL works with the site closed; you can turn that off in the wallet menu. Fund it from your Connected wallet with what you want to trade, and save the private key somewhere offline: it always opens the wallet. Then set P1, P2, P3 (for example 0.5, 1 and 5 NEAR) in the preset menu on the Pulse page. Each column can use its own preset.
08
Your first buy and reading the analytics
On Pulse, hover a token image to preview it, and hover a row for all three preset buttons. Before buying, read the chips under each row: holders; top 10 share of supply (pools and lockers excluded; red above 30%); dev holding (red above 5%); snipers, wallets that bought in the first 30 seconds; bundlers, wallets that bought in the launch block; and the crown showing how many of the dev's launches reached a pool. MC turns warmer as it grows.
09
New Pairs, Final Stretch and Trading
Pulse sorts every token into one column. New Pairs: freshly launched tokens, newest first. Final Stretch: tokens about to migrate (a bonding curve 60% or more of the way, or at least 25%), and tokens gaining traction: trading 20 or more times an hour since launch with $1.5K or more in 24 h volume, even if they are early. The closest to migrating and the fastest trading come first. Trading: the top tier. Tokens that graduated or migrated, tokens in a pool with a $30K+ market cap, $10K+ liquidity or $50K+ daily volume, and pool tokens past their first day (a launch pool nobody has bought from yet stays in New Pairs), busiest first. Hover a column's title on Pulse for the short version.
Curve progress is read from each launchpad's own contract: Umbra, gra.fun and aidols count the NEAR raised toward the point where the token moves to its Rhea pool, and the token moves to Trading once it has. Some launchpads have no curve at all: the Rhea launchpad, JustHoot and nearlytrader put the whole launch supply into a pool as one-sided liquidity, so the token trades from its first block. For those, the percentage on the row is the share of that launch supply already bought out of the pool. A quarter bought out (the price about 1.8 times the launch price) puts it in Final Stretch; after that the same market cap, volume and first-day rules as any pool token move it to Trading. Their liquidity figure includes the unsold launch supply, so it does not count toward Trading.
10
Selling and taxes
Open the token page and switch to Sell, then pick 25, 50 or 100% of your balance. The quote shows what you receive, the minimum after slippage, the 1% elystrade fee, and any token tax (nearly.trade, shards.market and Nira tokens can carry one). Tokens still on a bonding curve are sold back into the curve; graduated tokens sell through the best Rhea pool.
11
Use the Telegram bot
Prefer your phone? @elysiumdottrade_bot does the same in Telegram: paste a contract address to get a card with FDV, the route and socials, buy with presets, track P&L and bridge in from other chains.
12
Stay safe
Most new tokens go to zero; trade only what you can lose. Copy contract addresses from the token page, never from replies or DMs, since fake tokens reuse popular names (the image preview lists same-name tokens for this reason). Very high top 10 or dev shares, heavy sniping and low liquidity are warning signs. Never share your seed phrase or the instant wallet key.