Fifteen questions about running a panel
Operational questions, answered short. These are the things people ask once the form makes sense and the run is about to start, or has just stopped in a way they did not expect.
None of these repeat what the walkthroughs and field guides cover. They are the questions that arrive after those pages have been read: not what a field means, but what happens when the practical world gets in the way of it. Where an honest answer is that it depends on the tool, the answer says so and tells you how to find out for your own.
Do I need to install anything to use a browser panel?
Usually one thing: a wallet extension in your browser, or a wallet app on the device you are using. The panel itself is a web page and needs no download. Anything that asks you to install a desktop application, a browser add-on it supplies itself, or a signed executable to make a run work should be treated as a separate decision entirely, and one that a hosted panel has no reason to require.
Can I close the browser tab while a run is going?
It depends on where the work executes. If the panel runs the schedule on its own servers, closing the tab is harmless and the run continues. If the schedule executes in the page, closing the tab ends it, sometimes mid-cycle. There is no way to tell from the interface, so find the answer in the documentation before you walk away rather than by experiment during a run you care about.
Can I change a setting while a run is live?
Most panels lock the structural fields once a run starts, because changing the token or the venue mid-run would mean a different job entirely. Pacing and sometimes size are occasionally editable. Where an edit is allowed, it usually applies to trades not yet built rather than to anything already sent. Treat any live edit as starting a slightly different run, and note it, because the report will blend both halves.
Can I pause a run and resume it later?
Pause is less common than stop, and the difference matters. A pause holds the schedule and keeps worker wallets funded, so resuming costs nothing extra. A stop usually ends the job, and starting again means new distribution and possibly new wallets, which means paying the setup overhead a second time. If your panel offers only stop, plan the window so you do not need to interrupt it.
Can I run two tokens at the same time from one panel?
Some panels allow parallel jobs, some queue them, and a few silently share one worker pool between both. The last case is the one to check for, because two jobs drawing on the same wallets will interleave and the per-wallet section of each report becomes hard to read. Where budget is limited, sequential runs are easier to interpret and easier to stop cleanly.
Does the panel need my exchange account or an API key?
No. A volume run happens on chain through a wallet, and nothing about it requires access to a centralised exchange account. A request for exchange credentials, an exchange API key, or a withdrawal password has nothing to do with executing swaps and should end the interaction. The only credential anything legitimately needs is a signature from a wallet you control, granted one transaction at a time.
Do I need my own RPC endpoint?
Usually not: hosted panels supply their own connection to the network. Where a panel lets you enter one, it is because a dedicated endpoint often lands transactions more reliably than a shared public one during busy periods. If you have no reason to change it, the default is fine, and a poor custom endpoint is easier to create than a good one.
Can I do all of this from a phone?
Filling the form is possible in a mobile wallet browser, and connecting works the same way. The problem is supervision: the first minutes of a run are when configuration mistakes show up, and reading a dense log on a small screen is genuinely harder. Set up on a desktop where you can see the whole form and the log at once, then check progress from a phone afterwards if you need to.
What timezone are the timestamps in a report?
Sometimes your local time, sometimes UTC, occasionally the server timezone with no label at all. It matters when you compare a report against a block explorer, since explorers normally display in UTC or in your browser locale. Establish which convention a report uses by matching one transaction against its explorer entry, and note the offset before you try to line up two sets of timestamps.
Why does my wallet balance differ from the panel total?
Several ordinary reasons stack up. Rent deposits are held in token accounts rather than spent. Unswept remainders sit in worker wallets. Transactions in flight at the moment you looked have not settled. And a panel may quote spend while your wallet shows balance, which differ by anything still circulating as working capital. Compare after the run has fully stopped and after sweeping, not during.
Can I reuse worker wallets from a previous run?
If the panel keeps them and you can see their addresses, reusing them saves the account creation cost, because token accounts already exist for that mint. The trade is that the addresses have a history tied to your earlier activity, which is visible to anyone who looks. For a different token the saving mostly disappears, since a new mint needs a new token account in each wallet.
What happens if the panel becomes unreachable mid-run?
Transactions already sent to the network resolve on their own; nothing about a website going down reverses them. What stops is the scheduler, so no new trades are built. The risk is not lost funds but an unfinished state: workers holding tokens, accounts open, nothing swept. When access returns, read the report before restarting anything, and sweep before you fund a second run.
Should I test on devnet first?
You can, and it teaches you the interface without spending anything, but it will not teach you what a run costs. Devnet has no real liquidity, no competition for block space and no meaningful pricing, so slippage and priority fees behave nothing like they do on mainnet. A tiny mainnet run with a low cap is a better rehearsal than a large devnet one.
What if the token has a transfer fee or a freeze authority?
Both change the arithmetic. A transfer fee takes a cut on every movement, so a schedule of many small trades pays it many times, and your cost estimate needs that percentage added on each leg. A live freeze authority means an account can be frozen by whoever holds it, which is a risk worth knowing about before funding thirty wallets. Check both on an explorer before configuring anything.
How long does a first setup take?
Preparing a funding wallet and copying the mint takes a few minutes. Filling the form takes a few more once you know what the fields mean. The part that genuinely takes time is the first ten minutes of the run itself, which you should spend watching the log rather than doing something else. Budget half an hour in total and do not start one when you are about to leave.
If your question is not here, the desk would rather hear it than guess at it. Anything that turns out to be common gets added to this page, and anything that is really a correction to another page gets fixed there instead.