Gifting and trading will also help increase your 'friendship level', which will give you boosts when you play together.
So, if there has been one feature that any person who's played Pokemon Go wanted, it was the ability to trade players (probably closely followed by battling against other players).
I've never been a Pokemon fan, but my son is. Even though he doesn't quite understand the card game (tho' he thinks he's a master) he and his friends are always trading cards. Plus, whenever we go out to play together he'll see that I have a ... whatever that flaming bird is ... and he doesn't so he wants to trade me for it.
Well, according to Niantic the feature that folks have been waiting for will be coming by the end of the week.
The way it will apparently work is that every trainer (player) will get a 'code'. You can request to be a 'friend' of another trainer by sending a request to their code. When they accept, you're friends and then you can begin trading (it doesn't say if you have to be physically near them to do the trade tho', I think that might be something they should look into otherwise they'll start to be a little 'trading economy' like there is in Ingress).
Trading will cost stardust, so stock up, but you gain a candy for that pokemon, like you would if you transferred it to the professor.
The 'friends' list will give you a bit of a list of who you're connected to and what their most recent catch was (if you wanted to trade for it).
When you have friends you'll also start getting 'gifts' from Pokestops that you can't use, but you'll be able to gift it to a friend (it'll be gear and/or eggs).For more details you can check the post on the Niantic site below.
Source: https://pokemongolive.com/en/post/friendsandtrading/