Trading on a DEX

  1. First, navigate to the ‘Trade’ tab on your Coinbase account

  2. Select the cryptocurrency that you want to trade and click the ‘Trade’ button.

  3. A pop up message will appear introducing you to our integrated DEX feature and your newly created web3 wallet which you can use to execute this trade.

4. Select ‘Continue’ and ‘Let’s go’ to proceed to the next steps

5. Enter the amount of ETH you wish to trade with your selected token, then select ‘Preview DEX trade’.

6. On the preview page you should see the following; 

  • Payment method (‘Pay with Ethereum’)

  • Exchange rate

  • The fees charged by the Ethereum network to process your transaction

  • The fees charged by Coinbase 

  • The total cost of the transaction.   

Select ‘Trade now’ to proceed. 

7. If you currently do not have any ETH in your primary Coinbase account, you will be prompted to ‘buy ETH with cash’ or to ‘receive ETH from another wallet’.

8. If you already have ETH in your wallet, you will simply be asked to transfer ETH from your primary wallet to your newly created web3 wallet.  On the ‘Transfer Ethereum’ page, enter the amount of ETH you wish to transfer to your web3 wallet and then select ‘Preview transfer’ 

9. After reviewing the details on the transfer preview page, select ‘Transfer now’. 

10. Once you have taken this action, select ‘Return to DEX’ to complete your trade. It may take a few minutes for the transfer to be fully completed. 

11. Once the transfer has been completed, the DEX will then ask you to approve spending of ETH in your web3 wallet. Approving a cryptocurrency or token means that you are authorizing the DEXs smart contract to spend those tokens from your wallet. This action can only be conducted by the person who owns the wallets private keys. Approving a token costs a small network fee.

12. After approving your ETH to be spent, you can proceed to complete the trade by selecting ‘Trade now’ on the final order preview page.

At this time DEX trading is only available on the Ethereum mainnet network. If you’d like to trade on other networks like Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche and more then please use our Coinbase Wallet product. For more information, visit our help center article -  Trade on decentralized exchanges.


Most ERC-20 tokens will be available for trading but there will be some which are restricted. If you don’t see a token that you’d like to trade, please use the browser within your dapp wallet to navigate to the DEX of your choice (for example, Uniswap) and trade the token there.

If you already have a web3 wallet, you can immediately trade on a DEX.  

To trade on a DEX using an existing web3 wallet: 

  1. Navigate to the ‘Trade’ tab on your Coinbase account, select the cryptocurrency you want to trade and click ‘Trade on DEX’.

  2. A screen will appear informing you that the asset is only available to trade on a decentralized exchange. Click ‘Continue’ to proceed. 

  3. On the next screen, select which cryptocurrency you wish to use to pay for the trade. 

4. Once you have made a selection, the DEX will ask you to approve the cryptocurrency for trading. Approving a cryptocurrency or token means that you are authorizing the DEXs smart contract to spend that token from your wallet. This action can only be conducted by the person who owns the wallets private keys. Approving a token will cost a network fee.

5. After approving the transaction, you can enter the amount you wish to trade and proceed to conversion. 

Trades from Trade on DEX and within the web3 browser both require the use of a web3 wallet. If a new web3 wallet was created for you to execute your first DEX trade from your main Coinbase account, that web3 wallet can also be used to execute other trades within the web3 browser.

If you already have a web3 wallet, you can immediately trade on a DEX.  

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