Trading crypto decentralized through 0x's Radar Relay ERC20 exchange - How to guide

A while ago I wrote about Radar Relay going live, and how it may replace Etherdelta as the go-to place for decentralized trading. Now that I've tried the platform out and actually traded there some, I can say that I quite like it! Getting started may be daunting however, so I wrote this guide to explain to you how it works.

WHAT TO KNOW FIRST

Radar Relay is an exchange based off of the 0x protocol (ZRX token). This is a protocol that allows decentralized trading, and I believe that all exchanges built on top of 0x will share eachother's liquidity. I'm not sure if that functionality is in, but there seems to be plenty of liquidity on Radar Relay so far - so I am assuming the pools of other DEXes built on top of it are added to it (like Ethfinex).

Trading decentralized works differently than trading through a regular exchange! That's one thing you have to keep in mind. Since the platform runs on 0x, for most actions you pay a fee for the miners who run the network. This is not a trading fee per se, it is actually a fee to run the computational processes to perform the actions you want to do - basically the transaction fee.

On top of that, sometimes decentralized exchanges have some kind of trading fee so they themselves earn a little as well. For Etherdelta, for example, there are fees if you fill an existing order (but not if you place a new one). Radar Relay currently has the trading fees disabled and trading there is free, but you do still pay the miners.

How much you pay the miners is up to you! Just like with other transactions, your actions get put in the mempool and if you increase the transaction fee your transaction will go through faster. This means that if you want to trade fast you will have to pay a premium to do so, but if you are patient and are okay with waiting a minute or two before your order goes through, you can get by with paying a smaller fee.

I myself like to keep the fees to a minimum. During CryptoKitties it wasn't possible for me to trade on decentralized exchanges therefore, as the price for an ETH transaction shot up to above $1. Now, I'm glad to report that the transaction fee for Ethereum is back to the 2-4 gwei price to get it done in a minute or two, which equates to about $0.10. That means that every action you take, wether it's putting something up for sale or making a buy will cost this much. Cancelling a sell order you have on, also costs this much.

The big benefits of trading this way is that 1) you can trade securely and directly out of your own wallet and do not need to keep funds on an exchange and 2) because your funds are not on the exchange you do not face the huge withdrawal fees (often $15 per crypto that you withdraw).

These two reasons are why I am happy to accept a slower trading interface.

TOOLS

Trading on Ethereum well requires you to use some tools. Much like on Steemit, actually! Here's a list of things you will want to bookmark and use while trading on exchanges such as Radar Relax:

• https://etherscan.io/chart/pendingtx
  You use this above link to check on how many pending tx are currently in the Ethereum mempool. In this chart you can see how busy the network is. If it spikes up and is very busy, you may want to keep this in mind when deciding how much gwei you spend for the transaction fees.
• https://ethgasstation.info/
  Another handy site which helps you deciding the ideal gwei gas cost. By adjusting the slider you can adjust the price and see it's effects on how quickly it will be processed. It also shows a recommended gwei price.
• https://etherscan.io
  The same site where you can see the pending tx, you can also enter in your own Ethereum wallet address to show all the transactions. This is handy for when you deposit or withdraw funds, or otherwise, and you're unsure if the transaction went through or not. It will show that here.

Don't underestimate these tools! When the Ethereum network works quickly everything is fine, but when it's clogged up you really do want to keep these tools in mind lest your transaction goes into the backlog for hours/days at a time. This is no disaster as you can overwrite transactions, but doing so requires more technical knowhow (and you wouldn't be reading this if you were at that level).

TRADING ON RADAR RELAY

I use a Ledger Nano S myself so I can't attest or describe the Metamask process. I wrote about this in my earlier post too but will go into a little bit more detail now.

First, as the site is set up for Metamask by default, you have to open the side tab to open up your wallet. It's the orange one on the side here with the padlock icon:

After that the tab will slide open, and you can select what type of wallet you want to use. You can select the Ledger here.

Of course your Ledger Nano S needs to be connected to your pc for this to work. Enter your pincode and open the Ethereum app. Once that's done and you've selected the Ledger wallet on Radar Relay it should automatically refresh and show your wallet's contents.

Your screen will look something like this. I made a screenshot whilst I was buying a tiny bit of ZRX to send to Binance to get rid of some dust there, which was good chance to try this exchange out and show others how to use it. I censored some stuff for privacy reasons obviously.

On the left your funds in your wallet are shown. At first it seems self explanatory, but then you may start to notice something called WETH:

This needs some explanation. WETH stands for 'wrapped ETH'. It's essentially an ERC20 token, which holds the ETH you trade. This is because, oddly enough, ETH itself is not an ERC20 token and still needs to be upgraded to become compatible with it's own standard. In the meantime until that happens, wrapped ETH is a way to trade ETH that is locked up in a smart contract and which essentially is an ERC20 token which 'holds' your ETH.

In order to trade ETH on Radar Relay first you need to 'wrap' it into WETH. This sounds confusing but it's easy as pie. Just enter how much ETH you want to wrap and hit the 'WRAP' button. It takes 1 transaction to wrap ETH into WETH, so keep that in mind. After you've converted it to WETH, you've got some funds to trade on Radar Relay.

There is one more thing we must do, however. You may notice that next to the red arrow, there are some sliders which you can move up and down. This is how you enable a token for trading. You have to change these sliders individually for each coin you want to trade, or else Radar Relay will not have permission to access these tokens. Pulling these on/off switches, costs another Ethereum transaction. If the switch is green, it's 'on' and if it is grey it is 'off'.

Once you've enabled the token you want for trading, and also have some WETH, it's time to trade!

I myself am trading some ZRX, like I said, to top off some dust I have on Binance so I can finally unstuck the ZRX I have on there. In my case I simply selected an order from the orderbook and entered the amount I wanted to buy, 0.01, and then I hit 'Buy ZRX'

After that, a screen will show up again where you enter the amount of gwei you want to pay in gas cost again. Enter the desired amount once more and make the transaction. Afterwards a screen will show up like below:

It contains a link to etherscan, showing you the pending tx of the transaction. Don't worry if it says it cannot find it! You probably entered a low gwei amount, and this makes it a little slower to be picked up by the miners and etherscan cannot find it because of that. Give it a minute or so, and refresh the page to make the transaction show up.

Once you're done trading you can unwrap the excess WETH you have, or just keep it for next time you want to trade.

What's interesting is that other than using Radar Relay as an exchange, you can also simply use it as your wallet provider! Instead of logging into myetherwallet.com you can simply use Radar Relay as well to send and receive funds. Your address is the same you've always used, but the Radar Relay also allows you to send tokens from their interface. For example, I sent my 0.01 ZRX to Binance straight out of the interface. Pretty handy!

>> Click here to go to Radar Relay's exchange! <<

(Art by Roy Lichtenstein)