open, an add_collateral and a request_close carry no quote, so a person can approve each one
in a wallet. A session key removes the prompt on every trade: the trader authorises a
short-lived, scoped, revocable key once, and that key then signs locally. This page says who can
sign a trade, and documents the session key the program provides.
The instructions that carry a quote are set_take_profit, and any settle, stamp_book or
prove_price a client sends itself. A quote ages out in slots, so a person reading a wallet dialog
cannot land one of those: sign it locally. Read quotes for the age rule.
Who can sign a trade
Who signs is an integration decision, and there is more than one reasonable answer. Weigh them for your own product; this documentation does not prescribe one.Your service signs
Your own backend holds, or is delegated, the authority to sign and signs each trade
programmatically with no per-trade prompt. You choose the custody model and where the key lives.
The trade-off is that whatever signs holds that authority for as long as it holds the key.
A scoped delegate
The program provides a session-key delegate: the trader authorises a short-lived, scoped,
revocable key once, and that key then signs locally with no dialog. The rest of this page is its
reference — it is one option, not a requirement.
The trader signs each
The trader approves every open, add and close request in their wallet. None of them carries a
quote, so each is a single attempt and no clock runs against the prompt. The cost is a prompt on
every trade.
Whichever you choose, the downstream facts are the same: the program checks the signer. The pages
on opening, orders and closes and reading gates do not
assume a particular signing model. Gas is a separate decision — see
who pays the fee below.
Who pays the fee
A separate consideration, and also yours to decide. A Solana transaction has a fee payer, and the fee payer signs. That gives you a second axis, independent of who signs the trade:- The user pays their own fee. Simplest, but the user needs lamports on the key that pays, and in the delegate model below that is the delegate key, not the wallet.
- You sponsor the fee. A fee payer you control is added to the transaction so the user needs no SOL. What sponsoring costs you, and how you fund it, is an operational choice this documentation does not make for you.
The program’s option: a session-key delegate
The program ships aTradeDelegate — a short-lived, scoped, rate-limited key that the trader
authorises once and that then signs locally, in microseconds, with no dialog. If you take this
route, the human is out of the trading path. The rest of this page is its reference.
Four properties, and each one is load-bearing:
It never holds funds
The money stays in the trader’s own token account. The session spends against an SPL allowance
the trader grants, and that allowance is the ceiling on what a leaked key can take — the
number you choose.It is not the ceiling on what a leak can cost. A key that cannot take more than the
allowance can still close a position at a moment of its choosing, or move a target; the section
below sets out that harm.
Its trading has a hard deadline
An absolute expiry on the
TradeDelegate, 24 hours by default, after which the key can neither
open nor close here. The SPL allowance has no clock and does not expire with it. Revoke;
do not wait.Its trading has a spend rate
A decaying budget per window on what the key may OPEN here, metered on the open’s
budget — the
fee-inclusive total, the money actually at risk, not the resolved collateral. It
does not meter the SPL allowance — and it is set equal to that allowance by default, so it is not
what bounds a leak.It is revocable, with one exception
One instruction, effective in the same slot, and it returns the account’s rent.The exception is the case you would reach for it in. If the USDC account the allowance was
granted over is frozen, closed, or has been handed to somebody else, the program cannot clear
the approval — it ends the session and the allowance survives, and comes back the moment the
account works again. Clearing it then takes its own signature against that account.The token account is a required account on the revoke: pass
TradeDelegate.tokenAccount,
read off the chain.Using the delegate, step by step
If you take this route, it is four moves. The funding step is the one most often skipped — a session that authorises correctly and then cannot send anything.1
Generate a session key in the client
An ordinary keypair, created where the trades will be signed. It is not the trader’s wallet and
must never be derived from it.
session.ts
2
Authorise it — one transaction, one wallet prompt, ever
authorizeSession builds the authorisation. One instruction sets all three limits: the
expiry, the spend window, and the SPL token allowance — the program performs the SPL approve
itself, so the half the token program enforces cannot go missing.authorise.ts
Show the trader what they are signing: the expiry, the per-window ceiling and the allowance,
in dollars. This transaction is the whole of the authority they are handing over, and it is
the only moment they get to look at it.
3
Fund it — the session pays its own fee
A Solana transaction is paid for by a signer, and the fee payer must sign. If the owner pays,
the owner signs, and the wallet prompt is back on every trade — put there by an accounting
detail. So on this route the fee is paid by a key that is not the
human: the session key itself (shown here), or a separate sponsoring fee payer you add to the
transaction (see who pays the fee). Either way it needs lamports. The
simplest shape funds the session key in the same moment you authorise it.
fund.ts
4
Sign every trade with the session key
The session signs and pays. The book, the token account and the money all stay the owner’s:
authority is whoever signs, and delegate names the session’s account so the program can
check it.trade-with-session.ts
5
Revoke on logout
endSession closes the delegate account and drops the SPL allowance, in one instruction
signed by the trader. It takes effect in the same slot and returns the account’s rent, so
revoking costs less than nothing.revoke.ts
Revoke on logout, on wallet disconnect, and on tab close if you can reach it. Also revoke
when the trader asks — put the control somewhere they can find it, showing the expiry and the
remaining allowance, not buried in a settings page.
Gate before you send
Three separate clocks can stop a session, and only two of them belong to this program. Check all three before you build a transaction — a refusal predicted costs nothing, and a refusal discovered costs a fee and a confusing failure.session-gates.ts
The three clocks
renew.ts
The byte wall
A session open costs about 128 bytes more than an owner-signed one — theTradeDelegate
account (32 B), the session’s own signature (64 B) and its pubkey in the account list (32 B). An
order carries no quote, so it still fits Solana’s 1,232-byte packet with room to spare. A wrapped open
names Minute’s accounts as well as the venue’s, and an instruction that carries a quote (a keeper’s
settle) carries the quote too: those compose a v0 message with the market’s address lookup table.
Measure your real byte count with a signed transaction before you send it.
Choose the lookup table with chooseMarketTable (Rust: lookup_table::choose_market_table). It
tries the market’s own table when the SDK names one, then the shared table SHARED_KIND2_TABLE,
and returns the first one that passes the SDK’s check. It never skips a market for want of a table,
so a market listed after your SDK version still gets one. You do not need a new release.
Every table is frozen: authority = NONE, so nobody, including us, can change what it resolves.
No table is ever extended. A new table address reaches you only in an SDK release: either an
optional table of a market’s own, or a new shared table when a protocol-wide change adds an account to
open or settle. chooseMarketTable picks up either one. Read a table’s
contents once and cache them by address for the life of your process.
Pass as required the protocol accounts your transaction names: config and vault (from the SDK’s
configPda() and vaultPda()) and, if you read it, vault_token. Pass protocol_token
(config.treasury) as rotatable, never in required: the treasury can change after a table is
frozen, and a table that lacks it costs 31 bytes and a warning, never the table. Never pass a trader’s
or a position’s account.
lookup-table.ts
The two kinds of table are checked differently. A market’s own table must contain that market
and every
required account, so a table address copied from another market is refused. The shared
table does not contain the markets it serves, so it is checked against
SHARED_TABLE_PROTOCOL_ACCOUNTS instead, and a required account that it lacks composes as a static
key (+31 B). A rotatable account that the chosen table lacks is a static key (+31 B) on either
kind. When a market’s own table is refused, the shared table stands in for it (chosen.standIn
says why). The shared-table rules apply only when shared: true is passed for SHARED_KIND2_TABLE:
chooseMarketTable does this for you, and marketTableRefusal and marketTableRefusalSized never
do, so they refuse the shared address for any market it does not hold.submitBenchmarkQuoted, the sender for instructions that carry a quote, refuses a lookup table on a
legacy message rather than dropping it silently, so “I passed a table” and “the table was used”
cannot come apart. Measure your real byte count with dryRun: true — it builds and signs exactly
what would be sent, and sends nothing.If you check a table yourself instead of calling
chooseMarketTable, hold each table to its OWN
size. Call marketTableCheckSized({ market, address, table, required, shared }) (Rust:
lookup_table::market_table_check_sized) on each of marketTableCandidates(market), passing that
candidate’s shared, and keep protocol_token out of required. It looks up the size and refuses a
table the SDK has no size for. Tables differ
in size, so if you pass one minimum for every table (such as MAINNET_MARKET_TABLE_ADDRESSES) to
marketTableRefusal, it refuses a good table, and you compose legacy without knowing why.Closing: a session key can do it
What a session key costs you if it leaks
State this to yourself plainly before you ship, because the arrangement is deliberately weaker than signing each trade with the wallet:-
The exposure is the SPL allowance, and the allowance is spendable to any destination. A
leaked key can open positions until the allowance, the window budget or the expiry stops it — and
it can skip the window and the expiry, because those are this program’s and the approval is
the token program’s grant: one
Transfersigned by the key moves up to the remaining allowance wherever the holder likes, without touching this program at all. It cannot skip the allowance. That one is the token program’s own ceiling and it binds every transfer — measured rather than argued: with 250 moved, and with the approval removed the identical instruction moved nothing. SPL Token scopes an approval to an amount and a delegate key, never to a program, so revoking one is a separate act from letting a session expire. -
It CAN close a position and CAN move a take-profit target — unless you withhold that. Both go
through the same authoriser as a session-signed close. A leaked key can therefore close a trader
out at a moment of the attacker’s choosing, or cap a winning position’s upside by lowering its
target to just above the current price. That is real harm and you should size the session for it.
authorize_delegateandrenew_delegatetake(duration_s, window_seconds, window_limit, allowance, restrictions). ReadTradeDelegate.restrictionsback after every authorisation and every renewal;sessionStandingreturns it asrestrictions. Passrestrictions: DELEGATE_NO_CLOSEtoauthorizeSessionand the session can neither close nor retarget (DelegateMayNotClose, 6156). Passing0grants close and retarget only — NOT LP. LP is opt-IN: OR inDELEGATE_ALLOW_LPto let the session key triggerrequestRedeemandarmRedeem, and leave it out — the default — to keep the key clear of the trader’s pool stake.restrictionsis required — there is no default, onauthorizeSessionand onrenewSessionalike; omitting it is a build error, and with the types erased it throws. A renewal re-states the byte rather than keeping it — renew a session with0and you have granted it a Close button and stripped any LP grant. Read the current value offTradeDelegate.restrictionsand pass it in. A bit the program does not know is refused (DelegateRestrictionUnknown, 6157), so checkDELEGATE_RESTRICTIONS_KNOWNbefore you send. The owner is never restricted by this: a trader signing with their own wallet can close, unless a guardian stop is set (config.settlesDisabled, orconfig.oracleFrozen, which leaves a priced close no price). - It CAN spend the SPL allowance you granted it, to any destination. Authorising a session approves the session key as an SPL delegate over the trader’s USDC account for the amount you choose. That approval is a token-program grant: a holder of the key can transfer up to the remaining allowance without this program being involved, so none of the venue’s own limits — the spend window, the session expiry — apply to it. The allowance is the ceiling on what a leaked key can take. Size it for one session.
-
Revoking clears both halves.
revokeDelegateends the session and withdraws the SPL approval in the same instruction, so revoke rather than waiting for expiry — expiry ends the trading rights and does not withdraw the approval. If the trader’s token account was frozen or closed when you revoked, send a bare SPLrevokeagainst it once it is usable again. - Settlement proceeds cannot be redirected. A settle pays the destination recorded on the book, and no session key can change that record.
-
LP actions are opt-IN, and even when granted the value stays the owner’s. By default a session
key cannot touch the trader’s pool stake at all. Grant
DELEGATE_ALLOW_LPand it may TRIGGERrequestRedeemandarmRedeem— but the shares and every payout stay the owner’s, pinned by the account structs, so nothing reaches the session key. The bounded harm of a leaked LP-enabled key is that it can request a redemption at a value trough and arm it, forfeiting the owner’s unbonding-window yield to the other LPs and trapping the owner at the trough until the ticket matures — bounded by the expiry, the unbonding window, this opt-in, and your revoke. Authorising another delegate still needs the owner. -
Size the allowance for the session, not for the year. The SDK’s default is
DEFAULT_DELEGATE_WINDOW_LIMIT, $1,000 (allowance ?? terms.windowLimit). Granting a large allowance to save a renewal prompt is trading the trader’s money for your convenience. A small allowance has a cost too: a trader who exhausts it meets a wallet prompt at exactly the moment the session existed to remove one. Passallowanceexplicitly. Omitting it takes a decision you have not made. And note the two quantities are not the same thing. “One window’s worth” is a per-window rate ceiling used as a lifetime total — a coincidence of construction, not a design. The three-clocks table above is the authority: the allowance is a total that draws down and never refills. - Revoke on logout. It is one instruction, it is instant, and it refunds rent.
Tell what state a session is in, from the chain
Two accounts, and one call.1
Read the delegate PDA
delegatePda(owner) — seeds [b"delegate", owner], one per trader. decodeTradeDelegate
gives you expiresAt, delegate, windowLimit, windowSpent, windowSince, restrictions
and tokenAccount.2
Read TradeDelegate.tokenAccount, and never a guess
revokeDelegate pins its trader_token to that exact address and refuses any other with
WrongDelegateTokenAccount (6122). decodeTokenDelegate reads the SPL side of it: the
account’s state, its delegate slot, and the allowance still standing.3
Ask for the standing
sessionStanding names the combination, because the combination is what decides what to do.sessions-state.ts
The four pathways
- A renewal resets the spend meter and re-states
restrictions. Read the current byte offTradeDelegate.restrictionsand pass it back;0is not unchanged, it is this session may close positions. - A renewal re-approves the SPL allowance in the same instruction, so it is the fix for an exhausted or displaced approval as well as for an expiry.
- Rotating a leaked key is a renewal, not a reopen.
renewSessiontakes a differentdelegateKey, and the approval moves to it in the same instruction. endSessionis safe on a session that already expired, and safe to send twice. Revoking a token account that holds no delegate is a no-op in the token program.
What breaks loudly, and what breaks silently
Monitor the silent column. React to the loud one.A token account holds one delegate slot. SPL Token’s
approve writes it unconditionally, so
any other program the trader approves takes it from this session, with nothing emitted. The
session keeps passing every gate this program can check and fails inside the token program on the
next open. sessionStanding reports it as displaced; a renewal takes the slot back.The refusals a session meets
None of these appear inopenGates — they are checked by the program very early, before the other
gates in that report. delegateGates predicts the first
four; read it.
And one that is not this program’s at all:
InsufficientFunds from the SPL Token program, when the
allowance is exhausted. sessionAllowanceGates is the only thing that predicts it.
Where to go next
Quotes and freshness
What a quote is, why a settle can be refused with
6007, and what to do about it.Opening a position
The transaction shape, the two hard walls, and building the instruction.
Reading gates
Every protocol refusal, before you send, with its measured value.
Error handling
The full catalogue, and whether retrying can ever help.
