Points are for real trading. Wash trades, extra accounts and scripts earn nothing.
These rules decide which points count on the leaderboard and toward Season 1 rewards. They are here so that a trader who trades for real is never out-ranked by someone using tricks. Before any Season 1 reward is paid, every account is checked against them.
Extra accounts of yours never add to your place on the leaderboard.
Held points wait for review. If they are cleared, they count from the moment you earned them.
What ARC checks every time
These checks run on every point, for every account, today.
- Points come from ARC's own records. A trade is counted from the exchange's own fills, never from your browser.
- Only signed-in accounts earn, and only from trades on a real exchange account.
- One trading wallet, one account. A wallet that trades on one ARC account cannot be added to another.
- One X account, one ARC account. An X account that is unlinked has to wait before it can link to another ARC account.
- Your own invite code does not work for you.
Wash trading
Wash trading means opening and closing trades to make volume or points, without really taking a position in the market. It earns nothing on ARC. When ARC sees these patterns, it holds the points on that market for review:
| Pattern | What we look for |
|---|---|
| Quick round trips | Trades on one market that open and close within minutes, while the price barely moves. |
| Slow churn | Many round trips on one market where the price hardly moved across all of them. |
| Mirror trades | Two accounts that keep taking opposite sides of the same market at about the same time and about the same size. Points are held on both accounts. |
| Splitting for points | Many small positions opened only to collect points, with no real view on the market. |
Trading the same market many times in a day is fine. What gets held is trading where the price risk cancels out or never existed.
One person, one ranked account
Extra accounts made to collect points earn nothing. Only one account per person appears on the leaderboard and receives Season 1 rewards.
ARC treats accounts as belonging to one person when, for example, they:
- send withdrawals to the same address,
- move money between each other on the exchange,
- connect the same exchange account,
- are funded from the same wallet, or
- trade against each other, as in mirror trades above.
If you really do use two accounts, for example a wallet sign-in on your laptop and an email sign-in on your phone, nothing is lost: the points stay where they were earned, and one of the accounts is ranked.
Invite codes and referral rings
- Redeeming your own code from a second account is the same as using your own code.
- When several accounts on one code are linked to its owner or to each other, the points and any referral pay on those accounts are held.
- ARC already reviews every month's referral pay before it goes out.
Scripts and bots
Points are for a person using ARC. Points from scripts that click through the app instead of a person are held and do not count. Trading bots that place real, held trades on your own account are judged by the same rules as anyone else's trades.
When points are held
- The points are held, not deleted.Held points do not count on the leaderboard or toward rewards while they wait.
- A person at ARC reviews them.The review looks at the trades themselves: the prices, the times and the accounts on the other side.
- Cleared points count from the start.They count from the moment you earned them, so the wait costs you no place on the leaderboard.
- Confirmed cheating never counts.Points from wash trades, linked accounts or scripts stay out of your total for good.
Think ARC got it wrong? Message @TheARCTERMINAL on X with your ARC name and what you were doing, and someone will look again.
Also good to know
- ARC's own accounts are not eligible. The team's accounts and ARC's test accounts receive no Season 1 rewards.
- Rules can tighten during Season 1. When ARC spots a new trick, it adds a check and says so on this page. A new rule never takes away points earned by trading honestly.