Getting a wallet
A wallet is how you sign in here, how you pay for an evaluation, and where your payouts land. It replaces the email and password you would use at any other firm. Setting one up takes about five minutes and costs nothing.
What a wallet actually is
The name is misleading. A wallet does not hold your money the way a bank account holds your money. Your balances live on the Solana network itself, and the wallet holds the key that proves an account is yours.
The closest familiar thing is the signature on a cheque. The bank holds the money; your signature is what authorises it to move. A wallet is a signature nobody can forge, and the whole system is built on that one idea.
Two consequences follow, and they are the reason this page exists:
- Nobody can move your funds without your key, including us, including the firm you trade at.
- Nobody can restore your key if you lose it, including us, including the company that made the wallet.
Which one to install
Two wallets are supported directly, and either is fine:
| Wallet | Desktop | Phone | Get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phantom | Browser extension for Chrome, Brave, Firefox, Edge | iOS and Android app | phantom.app |
| Solflare | Browser extension for the same browsers | iOS and Android app | solflare.com |
Phantom is the more common starting point and has the gentler setup. Solflare does the same job. On desktop the platform also detects any other wallet that follows the Solana wallet standard, so if you already use something else it will most likely just appear in the connect dialog.
Install it from the official site above and nowhere else. Search-engine ads for wallet downloads are a known way people get robbed, and typing the address yourself costs you four seconds.
Setting it up
The wallet asks you to create a new wallet, then shows you a recovery phrase: twelve or twenty-four ordinary English words in a fixed order.
Write them down on paper. Put the paper somewhere you would put a passport.
That phrase is your account. Anyone who has it has your funds, and there is no second factor standing behind it. Equally, if your laptop dies and you have the phrase, you install the wallet somewhere else, type the phrase, and everything is back.
Never type your recovery phrase into a website, never photograph it, never put it in a password manager you access from an unlocked phone, and never send it to anyone claiming to be support. No genuine support person from any company will ever ask for it. This site will never ask for it, and there is no screen anywhere on the platform where entering it would make sense.
Once the phrase is saved, set a password on the wallet itself. That password unlocks the extension on that one device, which is a different thing from the recovery phrase and much lower stakes.
Switching to devnet
The protocol runs on devnet today, so your wallet needs to be looking at the same network.
In Phantom: open Settings, then Developer Settings, turn on Testnet Mode, and pick Solana Devnet. In Solflare it is under Settings, then General, then Network. Both changes are instant and reversible.
If your balance suddenly reads zero after switching, nothing is wrong. Devnet and mainnet are separate networks with separate balances, and you are now looking at the empty one. Getting SOL fills it.
Signing in
Open any firm's storefront and choose to connect. Your wallet pops up and asks you to approve the connection, then asks you to sign a short message. Signing that message is your login.
The message is plain text and costs nothing. It is not a transaction, it does not move funds, and approving it does not give the site permission to spend anything. If you are ever asked to approve something that looks like a transaction when you only meant to sign in, reject it and check the address in your browser bar.
Because there is no password and no email on file, there is nothing on our side for an attacker to steal or for a support agent to be socially engineered into resetting. That is the upside of the design. The downside is in the next section.
What we can and cannot do
| Can | Cannot | |
|---|---|---|
| Move funds out of your wallet | ✓ cannot | |
| See your recovery phrase | ✓ cannot | |
| Reset your access if you lose the phrase | ✓ cannot | |
| See your public wallet address and your trading record | ✓ can | |
| Freeze a payout while an integrity check runs | ✓ can, with limits |
That last row is the one real exception and it is bounded rather than open-ended. Trader protections covers what a hold is and is not.
Common first-time worries
Is my wallet address secret? No, and it is not meant to be. It is closer to an account number than a password. Your address is what your payouts are sent to, and it is what your cross-firm reputation is attached to.
Can someone drain my wallet just by knowing my address? No. Moving funds requires the key, and the address does not reveal it.
Do I need one wallet per firm? No. One wallet works everywhere on the protocol, and using one is better: your standing and your record build up across every firm you trade at rather than starting over each time.
What if I already have a wallet with real funds in it? Many people make a second wallet for a new platform and keep the main one separate. That is a reasonable habit and nothing here requires you to break it.
Next: Getting SOL.