A copy trading strategy is more than a wallet to follow. It's the full set of rules around that wallet: which of its trades you take, how big each copy is, and when you get out. The Soltrace strategy builder is where you set those rules — either by describing what you want in plain English and letting an AI assemble it, or by tuning every control by hand.
This guide walks through what the builder does, the difference between its Simple and Advanced modes, and the sizing and exit controls that decide how a strategy actually behaves. If you're still deciding which wallet to follow, read how to find profitable Solana wallets first; this is about what you do once you have one.
Describe a strategy in plain English
The fastest way to start is to say what you want. The AI builder takes a plain-English description — something like "copy this wallet, risk a fixed 2% of my vault per trade, take profit at +80%, and stop out at -30%" — and turns it into a concrete strategy with the matching entry, sizing and exit rules filled in.
It's a starting point, not a black box. Everything the builder generates is laid out as editable controls, so you can read exactly what it decided and change anything that doesn't match your intent. The plain-English step saves you from a blank form; it doesn't hide the rules from you.
Simple vs Advanced
The builder has two modes, and you can move between them:
- Simple keeps the surface small. You pick a wallet, a sizing mode, and a couple of exit rules, and you're done. It's the right mode when you want a clean copy of a wallet without over-engineering it.
- Advanced exposes the full rule set — entry care levels, every sizing mode, and the complete range of exits, layered however you like. It's for when you want fine control over which trades you take and how each position is managed.
Most people start in Simple to get a strategy live, then switch to Advanced once they know what they want to adjust.
Entry care levels
Not every trade a wallet makes is one you want to copy. Entry care levels let you decide how selective to be about what you mirror — from copying nearly everything the target does to only taking entries that clear stricter conditions on the token and the trade. Turning entry care up means fewer, more filtered copies; turning it down means you track the wallet more closely, junk trades and all. It's the dial between "shadow this wallet" and "shadow this wallet, but skip the obvious mistakes."
Four ways to size a copy
Sizing is the control that most changes your results, and the builder gives you four modes:
- Fixed amount — every copy uses the same set amount, regardless of what the target spent. Easy to reason about and the simplest to start with.
- Proportional to the target's trade — your copy scales with how much the target put in, keeping your exposure roughly in step with theirs.
- Proportional to your portfolio — each copy is sized relative to your total vault, so your risk stays consistent as your balance grows or shrinks.
- Fixed percentage of vault — each copy takes a set percent of your vault balance at the time of the trade.
Every mode is capped at your vault balance, so a strategy can't try to spend money that isn't there. Which one is right depends on how you think about risk — fixed amount for predictability, the proportional modes for exposure that tracks the target or your own balance.
Exit rules
Entries get the attention, but exits are where strategies are won or lost. The builder lets you set exits per rule and the keeper enforces them automatically:
- Take-profit — close a position once it's up by a target you set.
- Stop-loss — cut a position that falls past a level you're not willing to hold through.
- Trailing stop — lock in gains by following the price up and exiting when it pulls back by a set amount.
- Scale-out — take profit in stages rather than all at once, trimming into strength.
- Time-based — close a position after it's been open for a set duration, regardless of price.
- Exit when the target exits — mirror the wallet's own sell, so you follow it out the same way you followed it in.
You can combine these — a take-profit and a stop-loss and a time cap on the same position — and the first condition to trigger closes the trade. That's what turns "copy a wallet" into a managed strategy rather than a hope.
Non-custodial the whole time
However you build a strategy, it runs on funds that never leave your control. Your capital sits in a Solana PDA vault you own; Soltrace holds a trade-only authority, which means the keeper can place and exit copies but can never withdraw your money — only you can. If you want the detail on why that distinction matters, see custodial vs non-custodial trading bots.
Execution is keeper-signed across the Jito, Nozomi, Astralane and AllenHark relays, with optimistic execution on the Pro and Elite plans, and every trade costs a flat 0.85% with no profit share on any plan.
Test before you commit
Building a strategy is easy; knowing it would have worked is the harder part. Before you fund it, replay it against real wallet history and 1-second price data to see the fills, exits and drawdown it would have produced — the whole process is covered in how to backtest a Solana copy trading strategy. Build it, test it, then let the keeper run it forward.
Ready to design one? Open the Soltrace strategy designer and describe your strategy in plain English or tune it by hand.
Copy trading does not guarantee profit, and crypto trading carries substantial risk of loss. A well-built strategy manages risk; it does not remove it. Nothing here is financial advice.