Connect Your Wallet

Vela uses Ethereum-compatible wallets. No private keys are ever shared.

Vela is currently in public beta. Deposits are trust-based and not settled on-chain. Do not deposit real funds you cannot afford to lose.

Supported Wallets

Any Ethereum-compatible wallet that supports the personal_sign method (EIP-191) works with Vela. MetaMask is the primary tested wallet. WalletConnect-compatible wallets should also work but are not yet officially supported.

Connection Flow

Click Connect Wallet in the top navigation bar.
Your browser wallet (e.g. MetaMask) will prompt you to approve the connection to the Vela origin. Approve the connection.
Vela requests a challenge nonce from the server — a short random hex string unique to your session.
Your wallet is asked to sign the nonce using personal_sign. The signed message is:
```
"vela:auth:{nonce}"
```
The personal_sign method automatically prepends the Ethereum message prefix (\x19Ethereum Signed Message:\n{len}), making it distinct from a transaction signature.
Vela's server receives your signature, recovers the signer address using secp256k1 ECDSA recovery, and verifies it matches the address you claimed.
A session is established. Your wallet address is displayed in the navigation bar, truncated for readability (e.g. 0x1234…abcd).

What Gets Signed

The connection flow only asks you to sign a short challenge string — not a transaction. No ETH or tokens leave your wallet during connection. The signature proves that you control the private key for the claimed address, nothing more.

Every subsequent order you place will also require a signature. Order signatures commit to the specific market, side, price, quantity, order type, and a nonce that prevents replay attacks. See ECDSA Authentication for full details on the signing scheme.

Sessions

Sessions are per-browser and are not persisted to a server-side database in the current beta. If you close the tab and return, you will need to reconnect your wallet. The reconnection flow is identical to the initial connection and takes only a few seconds.

If MetaMask shows a pending signature request but the Vela UI seems stuck, try refreshing the page and connecting again. Pending signature requests from prior sessions can occasionally block new ones.

Disconnecting

Click Disconnect in the navigation bar to end your session. This clears your session state from the browser. Your wallet extension itself remains connected to the Vela origin — to fully revoke access, use your wallet's "Connected sites" settings.