Lethean Trade User Guide

Lethean Trade is a decentralised exchange (DEX) for trading native LTHN and all Confidential Assets launched on the Lethean ecosystem. It requires no user registration and uses an on-chain order matching system to facilitate Ionic Swaps between native Lethean and Confidential Assets. It is impossible for outside observers to see what asset type, amount, or address was involved in a transaction.

Prerequisites

Lethean Companion -- Lethean Trade is a non-custodial dApp that communicates with your wallet through Lethean Companion. Set up Companion if you have not already.
Desktop wallet -- Your Lethean desktop wallet must be open and unlocked before connecting.

Connecting Your Wallet

Open your Lethean desktop wallet and ensure it is unlocked.
Navigate to trade.lethean.io and click Connect Wallet.
On first connection, a pop-up appears in Lethean Companion asking you to authorise the connection. Click Accept.

Your wallet is now connected and you can begin trading.

Selecting a Trading Pair

Use the search bar to find the trading pair you want (e.g. LTHN/ZNOOP).
If multiple tokens share the same or similar name, verify the correct one by checking its unique Asset ID.

Creating an Order

To post a new order to the order book:

Select either Buy or Sell depending on the direction of your trade.
Fill in the order details:
- Price -- How much of the base pair (e.g. LTHN) you want to pay or receive per unit of the target asset.
- Amount -- How many units of the target asset you want to trade at this price.
Click the Buy or Sell button to submit your order.

Your order is now visible in the order book and in your "My Orders" list.

Taking an Existing Order

Instead of posting your own order, you can match against an existing one:

Scroll down to view the Order Book.
Find an order with a price you are happy with.
Click Take Order next to it.
The order form above will auto-populate with the matching details. Click Buy or Sell to submit.

Completing a Trade

Once your order has a match:

Scroll down to your My Orders list to see pending orders.
When a matching order appears, click Apply.
Lethean Companion will open a confirmation pop-up for the Ionic Swap. Review the details and confirm.
Wait for the counterparty to apply your order in the same way.
Once both sides have confirmed, the Ionic Swap executes on-chain. The trade completes in approximately 1 confirmation (~1 minute).

Both wallets will show the completed swap in their transaction history.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do trades work?

When users publish orders to Lethean Trade, the DEX coordinator combines matching buy and sell orders into an Ionic Swap transaction. This transaction is relayed by the app and executed by the users involved. Its content is only visible to the parties in the swap.

Is Lethean Trade decentralised?

Lethean Trade is a forum for users to discover each other's orders. It never holds custody of funds at any point.

You can also perform trades without the site by using the Swap function available in the official Lethean wallets, in a fully self-hosted manner.

Why is there no traditional order book or liquidity pool?

While a traditional order book is technically possible by building a list of half-filled ionic swap transactions, this approach sacrifices the privacy of the maker side, contradicting one of Lethean's core features.

If there is demand and users are willing to opt in, such an application could be built by a third party.

Which currencies can I trade?

All Confidential Assets issued on or bridged to the Lethean network are tradeable.

How long does a transaction take?

An Ionic Swap takes 1 block confirmation to complete, which on average is approximately 1 minute.

Why do I need Lethean Companion?

Since Lethean Trade is non-custodial, it uses Lethean Companion as a secure interface to your wallet. Your funds always remain under your control -- the DEX never has access to your private keys.

Support

Trade support chat: @lethean_trade_support
Critical network updates: @lethean_critical