How to Read a Competition Page Before You Enter

A competition page is a contract written as a UI. Every number on it changes what you should do, and a few of them decide whether you should be there at all. This is a walkthrough of the fields, in roughly the order they matter.

Prize pool, and what is left of it

The headline number is the total configured rewards. It is not the number the leaderboard splits.

If the competition runs a raffle, some of that pool is reserved for draws — the prize per draw multiplied by the number of draws the competition will run. Good pages show three lines: total configured rewards, reserved for lottery draws, and main competition pool. The third is what the leaderboard actually divides.

Do this subtraction first, because every projection you look at afterwards is computed against the main pool, and a page that projects from the headline number is over-promising by exactly the reserve.

If the pool is denominated in a token rather than dollars, the dollar figures beside it are live conversions and will be different tomorrow. Token-denominated prize pools covers what that hands you.

Reward structure

Two modes cover almost everything.

Pro rata splits the main pool in proportion to counted points across everyone who qualifies. Smooth, low variance, pays a wide field. Your expected share is close to your share of the field's counted volume.

Leaderboard tiers pay fixed percentages to fixed finishing positions and nothing below the last paying rank. High variance, winner-concentrated, suited to small fields and specialists.

The mode is the single biggest determinant of whether an ordinary account should enter. Leaderboard tiers versus pro rata compares them properly.

Minimum volume to qualify

Labelled "min volume to qualify for rewards", and it is a hard gate rather than a soft preference. Below the floor, your projected reward is zero and stays zero regardless of rank.

Two things to check. It is measured in counted volume, not raw — so apply the daily cap to each day you plan to trade before deciding you can clear it. And it filters the field before the split, meaning traders below the floor do not dilute the pool for those above it. A high floor on a large field is good news for anyone who clears it.

Max counted volume per day

The daily cap. Volume above it on a given day is tracked and displayed but scores nothing.

The cap is the field-compression mechanism: it prevents a single large account ending the contest on day one, and it means consistency beats size. Practically, it tells you to spread volume across days rather than concentrate it — same score, lower fee bill, and more raffle draws entered along the way.

Some competitions also show a "max VXP per day", the same ceiling expressed in points. Where both are present, whichever binds first is the one that bites.

When you are registered and connected, the page shows how much counted volume you have left today and when the allowance resets. Check it before placing size.

Eligible trading pairs

A scoped competition counts volume only on the markets it lists. Everything else earns nothing, and there is no partial credit.

This field deserves more attention than it usually gets. A competition scoped to 67 markets on a venue with hundreds is buying attention on those 67 specifically. If they are markets you have no view on, the competition is asking you to trade unfamiliar instruments to farm a leaderboard, which is how competition participation turns into a real trading loss.

Also check the market type. Perpetual volume converts to points at a tenth the rate of spot, because leverage makes notional cheap to manufacture.

Extra requirements

Below the headline fields sits a requirements block. Any of these may be set:

• Minimum trades — a trade-count floor as well as a volume floor.
• Minimum trade size — small fills do not count.
• Minimum deposit — a balance requirement on the venue.
• Min hold duration — positions must be held for a period.
• Twitter required — a connected social account as an eligibility condition.

The first two of these are worth reading carefully because they change how you would place the same volume. And note a display quirk with honest reasoning behind it: when a competition sets requirements that cannot be verified live from leaderboard data — minimum trade size, minimum deposit, hold duration — the projections stay at zero rather than showing a number settlement might not pay. A page of dashes is not a broken page; it is a page refusing to guess.

Participants and total volume

Field size against pool size is your expected value in one glance. A $10,000 pool with 40 participants is a very different proposition from the same pool with 4,000.

Total volume is the campaign's raw turnover, uncapped. Divide the main pool by it and you get the pool paid per dollar of field volume — the number to compare against your own round-trip execution cost. If the competition pays less per dollar than it costs you to trade a dollar, manufacturing volume for it is a loss.

Projected rewards

The leaderboard's projection column shows what each rank would earn if the competition ended right now, using the current distribution split on the main pool, with the lottery reserve already removed.

Read it as a marginal-value gauge rather than a forecast. It answers "what is the next dollar of volume worth to me" better than anything else on the page, because you can watch it move as you and the field trade. It is not a promise — the field grows, the split moves, and a dash means an eligibility filter is currently excluding that row. How projected rewards are calculated has the full derivation.

The two volume columns

Capped competitions show raw and counted volume separately. Raw is your total turnover; counted is what remains after the daily cap. Only counted volume feeds points, and only points determine rank. A large gap between the two means you are burning fees on volume that scores nothing. Counted volume versus raw volume explains the gap.

The raffle tab

If a raffle is active, the page carries its own tab with the prize per draw, the draw frequency, the qualifying volume per day, the current count of eligible traders, a countdown to the next draw, and the history of past draws.

The number that decides whether the raffle is worth targeting is the ratio of the prize per draw to the eligible-trader count — that is your expected value per draw, and odds are flat regardless of your size. Daily lotteries and raffles explained works it through.

Dates, status and data freshness

Start and end times are absolute and the competition's day windows are anchored to the start, not to UTC midnight. A competition starting at 12:00 UTC rolls its day at 12:00 UTC — which is the window the daily cap and the raffle both use.

Register before you trade. On venues tracked from a cumulative counter your baseline is taken at registration, so earlier volume never counts; on fill-tracked venues the window does the bucketing. Registering early costs nothing either way, which makes it the cheapest edge on any competition page.

The leaderboard also shows when the venue was last read and counts down to the next sync. That countdown reflects the actual job schedule, so a leaderboard that has not moved is usually a leaderboard waiting for its next tick, not a broken one.

The order to read it in

Structure, minimum, cap, eligible markets, field size, projection. If the structure is tiered and you are not going to place, or the minimum is out of reach, nothing else on the page matters. If you clear those, the cap tells you how to pace, and the projection tells you whether to keep going.

Browse live competitions, or read how to win your first trading competition.