Contest rules

What it is

A skill contest in paper trading (fake money). Every 3 days is one round. Winners are decided only by the Trench Score they earn during the round, which rewards careful trading: checking a coin before buying, keeping positions under the size cap and avoiding high-risk coins. Paper profit or luck doesn't decide it. No real trades are made on this site.

Who can enter

You must be 18 or older and allowed to take part in contests where you live. You sign in with a Solana wallet; one wallet is one entry. Trench Academy staff can't enter.

To be in a round, the signed-in wallet must hold at least $20 (US dollars, at the current price) of the Trench Academy coin. The balance is checked when you enter, at random times during the round and at the end. If a check finds less than $20, you're out for the rest of that round.

Scoring

Only trades made during the round count. For each coin, only your first buy in the round earns points (repeat buys of the same coin don't). To qualify you need buys in at least 3 different coins and a score of at least 90. Trades brought in from a browser before signing in never count.

The prize pot

The pot is paid in SOL from a public Prize Wallet. Trench Academy intends to move 20% of each round's creator fees into it, and the pot for a round is capped at 5 SOL. Money already owed to earlier winners isn't part of the pot. If the pot is under 0.25 SOL, that round doesn't pay and the money carries over. Prizes depend on creator fees and are never guaranteed.

At the end of a round the pot is split between the top 20 qualifying players, in proportion to score × multiplier. Ties go to whoever entered the round first.

Claim or roll

Claim: your winnings (plus anything banked) are paid to your signed-in wallet after review, and your multiplier goes back to 1x.

Roll: your winnings stay banked and your multiplier goes up (1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x maximum), increasing your share of the next pot. After 5 rolls in a row, everything banked is paid out. If you don't choose by the end of the next round, your winnings are rolled for you.

If a balance check finds less than $20, your multiplier and roll streak reset to the start. Banked winnings are never taken away for this.

Review and fair play

Every payout is reviewed by hand before it's sent. Using several wallets to enter, copying another player's trades, automated trading, passing coins between entrants to pass balance checks, or any other attempt to game the contest can lead to a payout being rejected and the wallet being banned from the contest and leaderboard. Rejected payouts go back into the pot. Decisions in review are final.

Other

Payouts are made in SOL to the winning wallet; network fees are covered by Trench Academy. You're responsible for any taxes on what you win. We may change, pause or end the contest; changes apply from the next round and are posted here. Nothing here is financial advice, and the coin itself can lose value.