Paper Trading Competition

The first ever BULK Trading Competition is live. Paper trading only. $50,000 prize pool. Free and open to all. Trade from early.bulk.trade.

At a Glance

Prize Pool

$50,000 total, paid to the Top 50 finishers.

Metric

Skill Score = Realized PnL × √(Effective Capital).

Window

19 May 2026 to 28 May 2026 13:00 UTC snapshot.

Cost

Free. Paper trading. Just claim the faucet and trade.

How to Enter

Connect

Head to early.bulk.trade and connect your wallet.

Claim the faucet (master account only)

Your master account can claim 1,000 of paper quote currency every 72 hours. Sub-accounts cannot claim the faucet directly. Fund them by transferring margin from your master.

Trade across your 10 accounts

You get 1 main account + up to 9 sub-accounts = 10 leaderboard slots per wallet. Spin them up from the app.

Realize your PnL

Only realized PnL counts. Open positions update unrealized PnL but do not move you on the leaderboard until you close.

How Ranking Works

Each account is ranked by Skill Score, defined as:

Skill Score = Realized PnL × sqrt(Effective Capital)

The score rewards two things at once: how much you actually earned (Realized PnL) and the size you were trading at (Effective Capital). The square root softens the size component so a trader at one tenth the bankroll is not crushed.

Realized PnL

The numerator is your net realized PnL since competition start.

Included	Excluded
Voluntary position closes	Unrealized PnL on open positions
Liquidation fills (typically negative)	Funding payments (settle on account, ignored by leaderboard)
ADL fills (positive on the winning side, negative on the deleveraged side)	Faucet claims and account transfers (these are not trading PnL)
Trading fees actually paid are subtracted from PnL

In other words: only what came from closing positions counts, with the actual fees you paid deducted. Funding sits outside the metric.

Effective Capital

The multiplier is the size you were actually trading at, not the size of your bankroll. It is defined as the smaller of two numbers:

Effective Capital = min(
  p95(notional in open positions),
  peak equity
)

Term	What it captures
Notional in open positions	The sum of `	qty	× price` across all your open positions, sampled every minute while you have at least one position open, plus one sample at every position close. We then take the 95th percentile of those samples. This is the position size you sustained, not a brief spike.
Peak equity	The highest your account value (`margin balance + unrealized PnL`) ever reached during the comp. This is what your account was actually worth at its best moment.

The min() is the important part. Whichever of the two is smaller is the one that counts.

Why two caps. The 95th-percentile of notional rejects “I leveraged to 50x for 30 seconds to inflate my multiplier” stunts. The peak-equity cap rejects “I claimed faucet 4 times to inflate my Capital Deposited” stunts and also bounds how much leverage can carry a small bankroll. Together they make the metric robust without filtering anyone off the board.

Why this design

Behaviour	Score outcome
Trade $1k bankroll into$ 10k peak position size, book $25k PnL	Effective Capital = $10k (the deployed size). Score = 25,000 × √10,000 = ~2.5M. Compounding your own winnings into bigger size is rewarded.
Hold a $10 sub-account, scalp it sustained, book$ 490 PnL	Effective Capital = $10. Score = 490 × √10 = ~1,549. Visible on the leaderboard, ranked honestly for what it is.
Claim faucet 4 times, never open a position	Effective Capital = 0 (no positions = no notional samples). Score = 0. Faucet stacking does nothing.
$1k bankroll, open a$ 50k notional spike for 30 seconds, no real PnL	Effective Capital ≤ $1k (peak equity caps the multiplier at the bankroll you actually had). Score collapses on its own.
$50k bankroll, deploy$ 40k notional, book $25k PnL	Effective Capital = $40k. Score = 25,000 × √40,000 = ~5M. Bigger real capital deployed beats smaller real capital deployed for the same PnL.

Worked example: compounding from a small seed

A trader deposits $1,000** of faucet, trades it into open profits that grow the account to **$ 26,000 in equity over the comp, with $10,000 of notional in open positions at peak.

Realized PnL                           = $25,000  (after subtracting fees actually paid)
p95 of notional-while-positioned       = $10,000  (sustained peak size)
Peak equity                            = $26,000
Effective Capital = min($10k, $26k)    = $10,000
Skill Score = 25,000 × sqrt(10,000)    = 2,500,000

The seed of $1k does not bound the score. The trader compounded their own winnings back into risk and the metric credits them for the size they actually traded at.

Leaderboard Rules

What counts

Only closed positions contribute to your Skill Score. Unrealized PnL on open positions does not move you on the leaderboard.
Trading fees actually paid are deducted from your Realized PnL. Funding payments are excluded from the metric (they still settle on your account).
Liquidation and ADL fills count as realized PnL. The deleveraged side takes the loss; the winning counterparty books the realised gain.
Each sub-account is ranked independently during the competition. You can see all of your accounts on the live leaderboard.
Every wallet is ranked. There is no minimum-activity floor. Wallets with no realized fills land at Skill Score = 0 at the bottom.
Updates run on a 15-minute delay and only refresh after a realized fill on the account.

Top-50 dedup (applied at snapshot)

Only the single highest-ranked account per wallet counts toward final rankings. Your other accounts are removed from the snapshot, and lower-ranked traders move up to fill the freed slots. Example 1. You finish with 3 accounts inside the live Top 50. Your highest placement stays; the other 2 are removed. Two traders below the cut move into the Top 50. Example 2. You finish 60th on the live board. 13 duplicate accounts ahead of you get removed during dedup. You move up to 47th, inside the prize-paying Top 50.

Snapshot

Snapshot time: 28 May 2026, 13:00 UTC.
Positions are not auto-closed at snapshot.
The leaderboard runs on a 15-minute delay, so close any trades you want counted by 12:30 UTC to be safe.
Final, deduped rankings are posted to Discord and Telegram after the snapshot.

Fair play

We have not found evidence of exploits so far, but any account caught gaming loopholes will be removed from the leaderboard at our discretion. Wash trading, collusion, and manipulation of the realized-PnL metric all qualify for removal.

Prize Breakdown

Total prize pool: $50,000.

Place	Prize	Place	Prize
1st	$15,000	11th to 19th	$500 each
2nd	$10,000	20th to 29th	$300 each
3rd	$5,000	30th to 39th	$150 each
4th	$2,500	40th to 50th	$100 each
5th	$2,000
6th	$1,500
7th	$1,200
8th	$1,000
9th	$900
10th	$800

Eligibility

Open to everyone. No KYC, no entry fee.
One wallet, ten accounts, one final placement (after dedup).
Accounts created after the snapshot do not qualify.

Useful Links

Trade Now

The competition runs on early.bulk.trade.

Announcement

Original BULK X (Twitter) announcement.

Getting Started

BULK Net

Trading

Points

Referral

BULK Improvement Proposals (BIPs)

Validators

Miscellaneous

At a Glance

Prize Pool

Metric

Window

Cost

How to Enter

How Ranking Works

Realized PnL

Effective Capital

Why this design

Worked example: compounding from a small seed

Leaderboard Rules

What counts

Top-50 dedup (applied at snapshot)

Snapshot

Fair play

Prize Breakdown

Eligibility

Useful Links

Trade Now

Announcement

​At a Glance

Prize Pool

Metric

Window

Cost

​How to Enter

​How Ranking Works

​Realized PnL

​Effective Capital

​Why this design

​Worked example: compounding from a small seed

​Leaderboard Rules

​What counts

​Top-50 dedup (applied at snapshot)

​Snapshot

​Fair play

​Prize Breakdown

​Eligibility

​Useful Links

Trade Now

Announcement

At a Glance

How to Enter

How Ranking Works

Realized PnL

Effective Capital

Why this design

Worked example: compounding from a small seed

Leaderboard Rules

What counts

Top-50 dedup (applied at snapshot)

Snapshot

Fair play

Prize Breakdown

Eligibility

Useful Links