How to start trading on Pacifica

1. Create an account

1. Connect a Solana-compatible wallet to Pacifica. Supported wallets include Phantom, Solflare, Backpack, Ledger (via browser extension) and other WalletConnect-compatible wallets. source ↗
2. Pacifica says access to trading is blocked from restricted jurisdictions, including the United States, and that IP addresses from those places are restricted automatically. source ↗

2. Deposit collateral

1. Fund the account with USDC from your connected Solana wallet. The minimum deposit is $10 and the only cost is network gas. source ↗
2. Supported spot assets can also be deposited. They are credited after on-chain confirmation, have a minimum of about $10, and count as cross-margin collateral according to each asset's LTV. source ↗
3. Account equity is capped at $500,000 during Closed Beta, and each spot asset has a daily deposit cap of $50,000 per user. source ↗

3. Open your first position

1. Classic order types are Market, Limit, Stop Market, Stop Limit, TWAP and Scale. More advanced strategies such as Chase, OCO and Trailing Stop are also available. source ↗
2. A market order fills against the order book up to your Max Slippage setting (3% by default), and any part that cannot fill within that limit is cancelled. You can attach take-profit and stop-loss orders with TP/SL. source ↗
3. You pick cross or isolated margin for each trading pair, and cross is the default. Leverage runs from 3x to 50x depending on the market. source ↗
4. Placing an order reserves initial margin equal to position size times entry price divided by leverage. source ↗

4. Know how liquidation works

1. Liquidation starts when account equity falls below maintenance margin, which is half the initial margin requirement at the market's maximum leverage. Open orders are cancelled and positions are closed with market orders. If equity falls below two-thirds of maintenance margin, positions go to a backstop liquidator. source ↗
2. Liquidations, margin requirements and unrealized PnL use the Mark Price. It is the median of the oracle price, Pacifica's own book/last-trade price, and perp prices on major exchanges. source ↗

5. Withdraw

1. USDC withdrawals have a $1 minimum and a $1 fee (gas). During Closed Beta each account can withdraw at most $500,000 every 24 hours. source ↗
2. Spot asset withdrawals cost network gas plus a fee of about $1 worth of the asset. Each asset has a daily cap of $500,000 per user, and requests above it wait for the next reset. source ↗

6. Common mistakes

1. Once a symbol has an open position you cannot change its margin mode. You can raise leverage on that position but cannot lower it until the position is closed. source ↗
2. How much you can withdraw is limited by a 10% initial-margin floor on your open positions. If your USDC balance is negative because of a money-market borrow, you cannot withdraw USDC until that debt is repaid. source ↗
3. The backstop liquidator does not take positions in some markets, including GOLD, SILVER, CL, EURUSD, USDJPY, NVDA, TSLA, SP500 and others listed in the docs. source ↗

Before you trade

Perpetual futures use leverage: a small price move against you can liquidate your collateral. Start with a small amount and low leverage, and read the venue’s current fee and margin pages, which can change after this guide was checked.