# Trading during Solana network congestion: how to trade on ripr when the network is busy > How to trade during Solana congestion on ripr: read the live data, set slippage for a fast market, size down, keep SOL spare and send once. - URL: https://ripr.trade/blog/trading-during-solana-network-congestion - Publisher: ripr (https://ripr.trade) - Author: ripr Editorial Team - Published: 2026-11-13 - Category: Guides Solana gets busy. When it does, two things change for you: the quote drifts while you are still looking at it, and a trade you have already sent sits unconfirmed longer than usual. Trading during Solana network congestion on ripr comes down to five things you control — the slippage ceiling, the trade size, the SOL you keep spare, how you read the live data, and what you do while a trade is still in flight. ## What Solana network congestion does to your trade Network congestion means more transactions are being sent to Solana than the network can fit into blocks, so some wait their turn and some expire before they land. Nothing about your coin has changed. The queue in front of it has. ripr's prices, charts and trade feeds update over a persistent streaming connection rather than waiting for you to pull down and refresh, and the figures behind them are decoded from Solana transactions by ripr's in-house data layer rather than bought from an aggregator. The recent-trades list on a coin page updates the same way. In a busy market, that list is the honest read on how hard a coin is actually moving. It helps to know what busy looks like as a number. One heavily traded coin in ripr's market data took about 57,000 buys and sells in a single day, from roughly 3,400 different wallets. That is a trade every second or two, on one coin. Your transaction joins that stream. ## How to trade during Solana congestion on ripr Trading during Solana congestion on ripr is a five-step routine inside the buy sheet you already use. 1. Open the coin page and check that the prices are live rather than paused. 2. Leave Auto slippage on, or set your own ceiling to match how hard the coin is moving. 3. Cut your size, and keep the number of attempts low. 4. Keep enough SOL in your wallet for the network fee and the refundable deposit a first buy opens. 5. Send once, then let the app follow the status. Re-quote before you try again. Step one matters most, because a screen that has stopped updating misleads you in a way a busy network never does. On Android, ripr shows a "Live prices paused" banner when the live connection has been down for more than a few seconds, and the apps reconnect on their own and reload the latest prices and lists. Read the banner before you read the price. ## Set your slippage for a fast market, or leave Auto slippage on Slippage is the gap between the price you were quoted and the price you actually get, and on ripr your slippage setting is the most of that gap you are willing to accept. Set it too tight in a fast market and the trade never goes through, over a price move you would have been happy with. Set it too wide and you accept a fill well below what you had in mind. ripr's Auto slippage sets that ceiling from how much the coin moved over the last five minutes, between 3% and 15%, and it is on by default. That behaviour is what you want when the network is under load: the ceiling widens on a coin that is swinging and stays tight on one that is calm. You can set the number yourself instead, and the help centre explains [what slippage is and how to set it](https://ripr.trade/support/what-is-slippage-and-how-should-i-set-it). One more thing happens before the trade goes out. If the price moves between your quote and your signature, ripr asks you to accept the new price rather than sending the old one. Read that prompt instead of tapping through it. During congestion it is the app telling you the market moved while you were deciding. ## Trade smaller and keep SOL aside for the network fee Trading smaller is the easiest thing to change when the network is under load. Larger orders move the quoted price more than small ones, especially in a thin market, so a wider slippage ceiling is not a reason to trade bigger. The help centre gives the counter: [start with a small test order](https://ripr.trade/support/how-do-my-buy-size-and-sell-size-affect-price), watch what the quote does, and re-check the estimate each time. Keep your attempts few as well, because every attempt is another transaction in the same queue. If you are unsure what small means for your account, [how much to invest in meme coins](https://ripr.trade/blog/how-much-to-invest-in-meme-coins-position-sizing) works through sizing. Then there is the SOL itself. On iOS and Android, the trade sheet lists the network fee, any router fee and the refundable account deposit before you confirm. Your first buy of any coin opens a token account with a small refundable deposit, which comes back when that account is closed. Keep a little SOL spare beyond the trade and the question never arises; ripr's help centre covers [depositing SOL into your app wallet](https://ripr.trade/support/how-do-i-deposit-sol-into-my-app-wallet). Congestion changes none of what makes a coin risky. Before you buy, ripr shows warnings for known rug patterns on the coin page, such as a creator holding unlocked liquidity or liquidity that has already been pulled, and it says plainly that not seeing a warning never means a coin is safe. [How to spot a risky meme coin](https://ripr.trade/blog/how-to-spot-a-risky-meme-coin) is the longer version of that habit. ## Send once, then watch the trade's status Send once on ripr: each trade is prepared on the server, checked on your device, signed by your own wallet, and then watched by the app rather than by you. The execution service runs next to ripr's in-house Solana node, so your app receives a ready, simulated transaction in a single request instead of making a pile of network reads itself. Before your wallet signs, the app checks that prepared transaction against the amount, slippage and fee limits you set and refuses it if anything differs — including a prepared trade whose network fee sits above the app's own ceiling. If the in-house node is slow to answer, standard requests fail over to a commercial provider automatically, so the app carries on working while the network is loaded. Then comes the part congestion makes visible. After you send, ripr keeps your signed trade in flight for up to about a minute and follows its status over a live connection until it either confirms or provably expires. It is one signature for that whole window, so the trade can fill once and only once. Tapping buy again while you wait does not help the first attempt. It starts a second trade. If that window passes with nothing confirmed, work through these in order. 1. Check your SOL balance. A trade with nothing left for the fee cannot land. 2. Re-quote, rather than sending a stale estimate again. 3. Try a smaller amount. 4. Look at your position before you retry, so you don't end up buying twice. The iOS and Android apps show your realised and open profit and loss over the last 7 or 30 days, computed from your indexed trades. 5. Check the chain itself if you want its own record. Every ripr account is a Solana wallet, so your address reads back on [Solana's block explorer](https://explorer.solana.com/). The help centre also lists the usual reasons a swap doesn't go through, in [why did my swap fail](https://ripr.trade/support/why-did-my-swap-fail). ## Frequently asked questions ### Why is my quote different from the price I saw a few seconds ago? Quotes on ripr follow the market, so trades that land before yours change what your order can get. If the price moves before you sign, ripr asks you to accept the new price. The help-centre page on [why your quote changes](https://ripr.trade/support/why-is-my-quote-different-from-what-i-saw-moments-ago) suggests confirming soon after you review and refreshing the quote when the screen feels stale. ### Can I set a stop-loss on ripr while Solana is congested? Yes. ripr's charts carry take-profit and stop-loss lines, draggable on iOS and Android, that sell automatically while the app or, on desktop web, the coin page is open. On a busy network, treat a line as an instruction that still has to go out as a trade: it sends when the price reaches your line, so the fill you get can differ from the line you drew. ### Does congestion affect selling as well as buying? A sell is a Solana transaction like any other, so the same habits apply: check your slippage, keep a little SOL for the fee, and send once. The steps do not change when the network is loaded. ripr's guide to [selling a Solana meme coin](https://ripr.trade/blog/how-to-sell-a-solana-meme-coin) walks through the sell sheet itself. ## Your next trade on a busy network Your next trade on a busy network needs nothing exotic. It is the same buy sheet you always use, with the live data read first, Auto slippage left on, a smaller size, a little SOL kept spare, and one send instead of four. Open the coin you are watching in ripr, check that its prices are live, and put the next trade through that way. --- *Last verified 3 November 2026. This article is published by ripr, which builds an app for trading Solana coins. Nothing here is financial advice.*