From decision to confirmation: the trade lifecycle

4. Dashboard, Portfolio and Activity to trace an order and its fees.

A Surge trade goes through six stages: decided → built → signed → submitted → open → filled (or cancelled). The stages up to "submitted" happen in seconds; "open" normally lasts 1–2 minutes; "filled" is detected, not returned.

The stages

Stage	What happens	Where you see it
1. Decided	A strategy's conditions are met (a grid line crossed, a spread appeared, a rule level reached, a DCA interval elapsed in your browser), or you clicked Swap	Strategy activity feed
2. Built	Surge builds the exact transaction: the order with its minimum-received floor, the DEX deposit, the Surge fee output, change back to you. A manual swap or send build is valid for 5 minutes; strategy builds are re-offered by the strategy if unsigned	"Building" / "Rung built" steps
3. Signed	Your browser signs it (see Signing and approvals)	Signing Approval window
4. Submitted	Surge verifies the signed transaction matches what it built, then broadcasts it. You now have a transaction hash	Status Submitted
5. Open	The transaction is in a block. Your order sits at the DEX waiting for the batcher	Status Open
6. Filled / Cancelled	The batcher spent your order and paid you (Filled), or refunded it / you cancelled it (Cancelled)	Status Filled or Cancelled

Statuses you will see

The Activity page, dashboard and strategy trade logs use one set of statuses for every order:

Status	Meaning
Submitted	Broadcast, not yet seen in a block. Usually under a minute
Open	On chain, waiting for the batcher. Normal for 1–2 minutes. After 3 minutes Surge labels it stuck and offers diagnosis and cancel
Filled	The batcher executed it and paid your wallet. The received amount and effective price are recorded
Cancelled	Your funds came back — either the DEX refunded an unfillable order (Minswap) or you cancelled it. Both show as Cancelled
Dropped	The transaction never made it into a block (the network dropped it). Nothing was spent; the strategy can retry
Unknown	Surge could not identify the order's position in the transaction, so it cannot track the fill automatically. Rare; check the transaction on Cardanoscan

Strategy-specific pages add finer steps (for example a grid rung's "pending sign" or an arbitrage opportunity's "sell ready"); those are explained on each strategy page.

How Surge knows an order filled

Surge cannot ask the DEX. It watches the blockchain for the transaction that spends your order. Two watchers run: a live feed from Surge's chain indexer (fastest) and a backstop that re-checks every open order every 30 seconds. Whichever sees it first wins. Surge then looks at what that transaction paid to your address:

• proceeds arrived → Filled;

• nothing arrived, or (for a sell) your tokens came back → Cancelled (refund);

• the same batcher transaction consumed two or more of your orders at once → Surge cannot tell which proceeds belong to which order and marks the outcome ambiguous; it retries up to 5 times and then leaves the order Open for you to check.

A fill is treated as final after 10 further blocks. If the chain reorganises after that, Surge flags the fill for review rather than silently changing history.

Timing you can expect

From	To	Typical
Decided	Signing prompt in your browser	seconds [VERIFY: approximate]
Signed	Submitted	seconds
Submitted	Open (in a block)	one or two blocks (~20–60 seconds)
Open	Filled	1–2 minutes
Filled on chain	Shown as Filled in Surge	seconds via the live feed; up to 30 seconds via the backstop

An order still Open after 3 minutes is shown as stuck. An order that no batcher has touched after 24 hours stops being watched; it is still yours to cancel. See Cancelling stuck orders.

What can go wrong at each stage

Stage	Failure	What Surge does
Built	The wallet cannot cover the order (not enough ADA, or funds fragmented into many small coins)	Shows an "insufficient funds" error; strategies retry with backoff and pause or disable the level after repeated failures
Built	Manual swap or send build older than 5 minutes when you sign	"Invalid or expired trade identifier" — click Swap/Send again to rebuild
Signed	Transaction guard refuses	Not signed; logged; trade skipped
Submitted	Network rejects the transaction (for example a coin was already spent by another order)	Marked failed; strategies rebuild against fresh coins
Open	Price moved past your minimum	Minswap refunds; other DEXes park until cancelled
Filled	Received less than half the expected minimum	Surge refuses to count it as a fill and stops watching; the order shows Open — check it manually