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Everything on this page happens in the app at continuum.markets, on Solana devnet with test tokens. It takes about five minutes and needs no code. For the programmatic flow, see Mint and redeem example.
Mint and redeem need a price that the keeper pushed in the last 300 s. The keeper stops pushing a market’s price while its underlying market is closed. For stocks and ETFs that means outside regular US trading hours; for FX and metals, mainly at weekends. Trades on the bin books keep working at those times.
1

Connect a devnet wallet

Open continuum.markets/faucet. The app runs on devnet, and the header says so.Set your wallet’s network to Devnet (not Testnet or Mainnet), then click Select Wallet in the top bar. Any wallet that supports the Wallet Standard works, such as Phantom, Solflare or Backpack.Your wallet needs a little devnet SOL for transaction fees. If it has none, use Get devnet SOL on the faucet card, which opens faucet.solana.com.
2

Get 1,000 cUSDC

Click Get 1000 cUSDC and approve the transaction. Your wallet receives 1,000 cUSDC, Continuum’s devnet collateral: a test token with 6 decimals, mint B1c5xBYkp7AAemYhcu4VuH4CU4sPJDDuG2iuv6ts38uE.Each wallet can drip once every 24 hours. Until then, the button shows the time left until the next drip.
3

Mint a paired position

Open a market page, for example /pools/QQQ, and choose the Pairs tab next to the Trade ticket (or open https://continuum.markets/pools/QQQ?panel=pairs directly). Pairs uses the page’s market, so there is no market selector. Enter an amount of cUSDC: at least 10, so try 100. The preview shows how many long and short tokens you will receive and the mint fee.For example, at QQQ’s last price on 9 Oct 2026 ($751.27), 100 cUSDC mints about 0.0664 QQQL and 0.1637 QQQS. The fee is 0.27%: QQQ’s posted fee of 18 bps, times 1.5 because every devnet market runs in ProxyMode.Click Mint paired tokens and approve. Your wallet now holds both legs, paid for in full, with no margin and no liquidation. If the preview says Minting needs a fresh price, the market is closed; come back when it reopens.
4

See it in your portfolio

Open /portfolio. Under Open Positions, each market you hold shows its long and short balances and their value at NAV. The cards at the top show your total value and your collateral balance.The legs are SPL tokens in your wallet, so they also appear in your wallet app and stay there across sessions.
5

Try a trade

Open the market page, for example /pools/QQQ. It shows a price chart, the depth of each leg’s bin book, and the trade panel.In the trade panel, choose Long (QQQL) or Short (QQQS), then Buy or Sell. Sell appears only when you hold that leg. Enter an amount and submit. Selling your QQQS leaves you long QQQ (QQQL plus cUSDC); selling your QQQL leaves you short.While the market is open, a market order is a committed order. It fills at NAV ± the posted commit spread, at the next price pushed after you submit, unless traders’ orders on the order book fill all of it now for less when you buy, or for more when you sell. If a committed order can’t fill within 3 minutes, the keeper returns your input automatically, and a Refund now button appears if it hasn’t come back a minute after the deadline. While the market is closed, the panel says Market closed. You can still trade. The leg’s bin book, which quotes from the last price up to a small size, and traders’ orders then form one book: a market order takes the cheapest offers first when you buy, and the highest bids first when you sell.
6

Redeem

To exit at NAV, go back to the Pairs tab on the market page and choose Redeem (or add &mode=redeem to the Pairs URL). Redeem burns both legs together, so you need some of each. The form previews and burns a balanced pair: all of the leg worth less, and the same value of the other. Max redeems the largest balanced pair. If you hold more of one leg, the form shows what is left and offers a button to sell it in Trade. The pair must be worth at least 10 cUSDC. If you sold one leg, buy some back first, or sell the remaining leg instead.Click Redeem paired tokens. You receive cUSDC at NAV, less the redeem fee (also 0.27% on QQQ as of 10 Oct 2026). A round trip at an unchanged price costs about the two fees combined.

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What else is in the app

/earn redirects to /pools.

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Watching the keeper work

On any market page you can see the protocol’s book management:
  • The reference price updates with each keeper price push.
  • Each book re-centres once its inventory-shifted centre drifts past the reposition gate (20 bps by default).
  • The depth chart shows the asks and bids each book has posted.
While the underlying market is closed, the keeper stops pushing prices and mint and redeem pause. The books switch to a smaller free-float book held at the last price. All the liquidity you see comes from the protocol; there are no outside LPs.

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Wallet metadata

Long and short mints carry Metaplex metadata (name, symbol and image). Wallets show them by name, for example “Continuum QQQ Long” (QQQL), rather than as bare addresses. cUSDC has metadata too. Some wallets cache token metadata, so a new icon can take a while to appear.

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When to use the app vs the SDK

The app covers what most users need:
  • One-off mints and redeems
  • Trading either leg, instantly or by committed order
  • Watching prices and books
  • Portfolio balances
  • Voluntary burn of a single leg (advanced)
Use the programs directly when you need to:
  • Automate flows (bots, schedulers, structured products)
  • Build a custom UI on top of Continuum
  • Integrate by CPI from another on-chain program
  • Run a trading bot
The app is one client of the same on-chain programs.

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Where next

Concepts

Why paired tokens, what NAV means, how the keeper works.

Devnet info

Cluster, RPCs, addresses, gotchas.

Build on Continuum

TypeScript SDK setup, IDLs, end-to-end script examples.

Composability

Long-only wrappers, arb bots, structured products, CPI integrations.