Contest Rules

Basic Information

Prize Settings

Total prize pool

50,000 USD

Maximum allocation

50,000,000 USD

Groups and Eligibility

• All groups share the same eligibility: Submit complete contest materials and pass platform eligibility review. Review results are delivered via in-platform notification.
• One email / account per entry. Using multiple accounts to register the same team or individual more than once is grounds for disqualification.

Strategy categories and advancement

Contest groups govern eligibility, supporting-material review, and paper capital. Leaderboards and advancement slots are calculated separately by strategy category, not by individual or institution group.

Ranked independently by strategy category · 30 entrants advance to the live final

Advancing entrants must complete identity verification within the confirmation window. Anyone who does not, or whose identity does not match their registration, loses the place, which passes to the next-ranked entrant in the same category.

Entrants declare their track when binding a strategy. It can be changed on the entry card until the contest starts; after that it is fixed, and a change has to be requested and is reviewed by staff. Each track is ranked on its own, and pre-screening applies the drawdown cap of the declared track.

Scoring and Ranking

This edition uses composite scoring. The core criteria include return, risk (maximum drawdown), trading volume and turnover — ranking is not by return alone — and the individual and institutional groups are assessed against the same standard, while the weight given to each criterion is set separately for each strategy category.

Judge scoring dimensions (100 pts total)

Ties are broken in order: Lower max drawdown first, then Earlier registration first.

Leaderboards rank entrants within their strategy category; the top 10 in each of Arbitrage, Market neutral, and Other advance to the live final.

Schedule Timeline

1. 2026-08-01Registration opensParticipants complete registration, submit materials, and pass eligibility review.
2. 2026-10-31Registration closesNew registrations close; submitted materials continue through review.
3. 2026-11-01Qualifier starts (paper trading)Strategies run in the platform paper trading environment, with daily performance and leaderboard updates.
4. 2026-12-01Qualifier endsQualifier scoring ends and its performance is frozen.
5. 2026-12-16Live Finals QualificationThe top ten of each of the three strategy categories — thirty in all — go through to the live final.
6. 2026-12-19Winner Announcement
7. After paper tradingLive-stage advancementAfter paper trading, the top 10 in each of the Arbitrage, Market neutral, and Other strategy categories advance to the live final, for 30 entrants total; live-stage rules and allocation sizes will be announced separately.

How to Enter

After registering and passing eligibility review, create a strategy on the platform, complete a backtest, and bind a saved strategy version as your contest entry.

1. 01Register and pass reviewSubmit your entry, choose a group, and provide the materials requested on the registration page.
2. 02Create and validate a strategyCreate a strategy on the platform and confirm it runs correctly via backtest.
3. 03Bind your contest versionPick one of your saved strategy versions as the contest entry; you may rebind freely until it locks.
4. 04Unified run and judgingOnce your version locks, the platform computes performance under this edition's run rules and feeds ranking and review.

Pre-screening

Binding a contest strategy has no pre-screening gate in the preview period: no qualifying backtest is needed first. Pre-screening is judged before the contest formally starts, against the maximum drawdown cap of the track you declared. Institutions entering with their own exchange account are not pre-screened.

The platform runs pre-screening itself, under this edition's unified run parameters, over the window the contest publishes; the result usually arrives within minutes of binding and shows on your contest entry.

Qualification window 2026-03-12 to 2026-09-11

Maximum drawdown cap by strategy category

Pre-screening applies the maximum drawdown cap of the track you declared. The tracks themselves are defined under Strategy categories and advancement above.

When the pre-screening run finishes, a "pre-screening complete" message arrives in the strategy conversation. It means the backtest has finished running, not that it passed: whether it passed is decided by the rules on this page, and the verdict is shown on your contest entry.

If it does not pass

Binding and rebinding close before the contest starts; the exact cutoff is shown on your entry card. Until then you can publish a new version and bind another one in its place, or change the track on your entry card, and pre-screening is judged again for the new version or track. After the cutoff neither is possible, and only a manual judgment by the operators can change the result: an entry that has not passed when the contest starts cannot take part in this edition's qualifier.

Shared run parameters

Contest strategies that run on the platform share one set of parameters, configured by the organizer. Entrants on the institution API channel trade their own exchange account and settle on its real fills, so the figures below do not apply to them.

The warm-up period is not scored.

A backtest you run yourself before binding is charged the platform's default fee rate, not the shared rate in the table above, so its result will differ slightly. Once the entry is bound, its backtests are charged at the shared rate.

Institution API channel

Institution entrants may compete with their own exchange account. We read the results through a read-only API key and rank them on the same board as everyone else. Rows produced this way are marked on the leaderboard.

• Institution group only. It is not available to individual entrants.
• Read-only keys only. A key carrying trade, withdrawal or transfer permission is refused at binding; if the permissions change afterwards the entry is suspended for a human to look at.
• One exchange account per contest, and it cannot be changed once bound. The same exchange account cannot enter the same contest twice.
• We read equity and fills once a day. We never place orders, move funds, or change anything in your account.
• The equity read covers everything you hold at that exchange, but traded volume and trade count currently cover spot, USD-M futures and COIN-M futures only — on a day when funds traded in any other market, that day's volume is left out.
• The starting line is read when trading opens, not when you bind — binding early in the registration window is neither an advantage nor a penalty.
• Starting equity must be at least 1,000 USD: an account below that amount cannot be bound, and an entry whose starting line read at contest open is below it stays on the board but is not ranked.
• Results are scored as a time-weighted return: deposits and withdrawals during the contest are netted out and do not count as performance.
• Several days without a successful read triggers a notice; a sustained failure to read is treated as abandoning the entry.
• The key is stored encrypted and used only for the daily read. We delete it when the contest ends, and you can revoke it at the exchange at any time.

Execution and Fairness

Every contest strategy runs in the same environment, on the same live market feed. Results come only from market moves after the contest starts, so a strategy cannot be fitted to history it already knows. Settlement rules are fixed — the same market data always produces the same result — and every trade can be recomputed and checked.

• Each contest strategy holds a single directional position (long or short) at a time, settled and advanced bar by bar at the close; an opposite signal closes the current position before opening a new one.
• A fee is charged on both opening and closing a position, at the configured rate, and is reflected in the equity calculation.
• Equity hitting zero force-closes the position (a liquidation flag); the strategy opens no further positions for the remainder of this edition.
• The trading symbol and interval declared in your bound version are that strategy's run parameters and freeze with the version at lock.

Awards and Verification

• Winners must complete verification by the deadline communicated to them in their award notice.
• A slot whose verification fails or lapses moves, in rank order, to the next candidate within the same strategy category.

Discipline and Anti-Cheating

Contest Agreements