How to use Serum DEX: A step by step Guide

During August 2021, users for sure have seen the boom in the price of Serum (SRM) tokens. In this article, Coin98 will guide you how to use Serum DEX in detail, including: what you need to start using Serum DEX, how to trade on Serum, some upcoming features and FAQ about Serum. Let's get started!

Serum Overview

Serum is a decentralized exchange built on Solana. It aims to bring unprecedented speed and low transaction costs to decentralized finance and increase user scalability through faster transaction settlement times.

Serum offers a few key advantages:

• Serum offers extremely low cost and high liquidity. Serum’s liquidity is supported by one of the largest market makers - Alameda. Serum (SRM) token holders will benefit when projects add liquidity and volume, it has been stated on Serum website that 80% of DEX fees go to Serum (SRM) buy/burns and 20% of DEX fees go to SRM stakers.
• Fully Decentralized: Serum (SRM) offers a fast DEX without the need for oracles.
• Stablecoins: Serum (SRM) is developing SerumBTC and SerumUSD. Those stablecoins have no dependence on bank reserves to maintain their price stability (low volatility).
• Orderbook: Different from available decentralized exchanges in the market, Serum Orderbook allows users to make transactions at prices they want to.
• Cross-Chain Swaps: Serum enables trustless transactions between blockchains. For example, users will be able to trade native  ERC-20 ETH for native SPL SRM.

Preparation for trading on Serum

What are the prerequisites for trading on Serum?

First, users need to have a Solana wallet. In this article, we will use sollet.io wallet. Users can learn how to create and use Sollet Wallet as well as to add SPL Tokens, ERC20 tokens to it.

 Other non-custodial and exchange wallets Serum also interact with include:

• Phantom Wallet - phantom.app
• Ledger - www.ledger.com
• Solflare - solflare.com

To change the wallet, users can click on Change Wallet at the top right corner of the trading interface and then pick the preferred wallet.

Preparing Solana (SOL) for the gas fee

To swap tokens on Serum, users must have some Solana tokens (SOL). Users can buy Solana on a centralized exchange such as Binance and send them to the Sollet Wallet.

Connecting Serum with Sollet Wallet

Step 1: Visit the Serum trading interface at https://dex.projectserum.com/#/. Click Connect at the top right corner of the screen.

Step 2: a Sollet Wallet window will appear. Insert the Password and Click Unlock and then Connect on the following screen. Users will successfully connect Serum with Sollet Wallet and can start trading.

How to use Serum 

Serum (SRM) is a decentralized exchange allowing users to make transactions in similar ways they do on centralized exchanges (Binance, FTX, etc.). Serum supports more than 40 trading pairs currently. In this article, we have chosen SOL-USDT as an example. Users can choose any pair as they please on the top left corner of the trading interface.

Step 1: Enter the amount of SOL tokens users want to sell and click Sell SOL. 

Then click Approve to confirm the transaction. At the bottom left of the trading interface, a Trading Confirmation will show up, verifying the successful transaction.

Step 2: When users cancel Open Orders or have any trade successfully matched, their funds will sit in an intermediary account and require users to settle them back to their own Sollet Wallet.

• Go to the Balances tab located at the bottom of the trading screen.
• The token amounts which are sitting in an intermediary account will be shown  at the Unsettled column.
• Click Settle to start moving those tokens to users’ wallet - then Approve. Users will see the completed transaction on the displayed notification.

What about the upcoming features of Serum?

For now, Serum is under its Phase 3 in which its team is focusing on building protocols of Borrow/lending; Yield; More cross-chain bridges, AMMs, etc. The bigger community Serum is, the more liquidity it can attract through those new projects/ protocols and the more benefits Serum holders will definitely earn. 

Coin98 Insights will definitely update users with any new features of this Protocol when they are launched. Do not forget to visit our website regularly to stay up-to-date!

FAQ with Serum DEX

How much are the gas fee on Serum? And how long will it take Serum to settle transactions?

The Solana-based Serum (SRM) will have the speed and cost similar to Solana (~1 second settlement, ~$0.00002 gas fee).

What are Serum’s tokens use cases?

Utility: Holding Serum tokens allows users to reduce fees on Serum, receive staking rewards and specialized governance.

Governance: SRM is anticipated to have specialized on-chain governance. It will be responsible for setting some important parameters (e.g. fees).

Where can I buy Serum tokens?

Users can buy Serum (SRM) tokens on Coin98 Exchange.

Besides, Serum can be traded on top exchanges, such as Binance, OKEx, FTX, BitMax (ERC20 only).

Summary

DeFi is slow and expensive. It costs dollars to do a trade, and minutes for it to go through. This is fine in certain cases–but many users prefer the fast, cheap execution of centralized exchanges. Hopefully with all the improvements and new projects coming up, Serum will keep flourishing and successfully create a pure DeFi ecosystem for DeFi users!

If there are any questions, please feel free to comment below for further discussions.