# Paper and live

> Every project starts on paper, with realistic fills and no real money. How paper works, what changes when a project goes live, and the switches that keep real money behind your say-so.

## Paper

A project trades on **paper** unless you switch it to live.

- Paper fills are quoted at the same live routes and prices a real trade would get, with the pool's fee, slippage and (on perps) funding, so paper P&L is a fair preview.
- Nothing is sent on chain. Paper wallets start with play ETH from your paper balance, which you can top up at any time.
- Strategies, workflows, scripts, vaults and dashboards all work on paper exactly as they do live.

## Live

A **live** project sends real transactions from its wallets, with keys ftw.trade holds for you in an isolated signer. When a project goes live, everything on it trades for real: shortcuts, the order ticket, resting orders, workflows and every strategy running against it, at the sizes they already had.

To go live:

```steps
### Earn it on paper first
Backtest over more than one window, then run it on paper for at least a day and check it decides the way its backtest did.
### Stop the paper runs
Stop or remove the project's paper strategy runs. A project going live takes its running strategies with it.
### Switch the project to live
Open the project and set it to live. Only you can do this: an AI connection needs your permission to trade live first.
### Fund its wallets
Send ETH (or SOL, or USDC) to the wallets it trades from. See [Fund your account](https://docs.ftw.trade/start/fund).
### Turn on perps mainnet if it trades perps
Each wallet's account on Hyperliquid or Lighter is off for real money until you turn it on.
```

The full checklist, with the mistakes the first real-money runs made, is [Take a strategy to real money](https://docs.ftw.trade/strategies/real-money).

## The switches that guard real money

| Switch | What it guards | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Project mode | Whether anything on the project trades real money | The project's settings |
| Live trading per AI connection | Whether Claude, ChatGPT, an API key or the CLI may send or arm a live trade | AI & API, or the consent page when you connect |
| Perps mainnet per wallet and venue | Whether a wallet's orders reach Hyperliquid's or Lighter's real exchange | The project's perps accounts |
| Script policy | Which wallets a script may trade, how much per trade and per day, which hosts it may call | Approved when you deploy the script |
| Vault scope | What a vault's wallets may trade | The vault's terms |

Without permission, a live trade from an AI connection is refused with a message saying where to allow it. Reading, paper trading, stopping and cancelling always work.

> [!WARNING] Every answer says which mode
> Every trade the site, the API or your AI makes reports `mode: paper` or `mode: live`. If you're not sure where something ran, check that first.