Core Concepts

This section builds the mental model. Read it once and the rest of the platform makes sense. The single most important thing to understand up front is that The Desk uses three different scores, each with a different job. Keeping them straight is the key to understanding everything else.

2.1 The membership tiers: Open → Junior → Pro → Elite → Master → Legend

Your membership tier determines what you can access and how you get paid. There are six tiers, and the model is consistent: your Rating qualifies you for a tier, your membership fee claims the seat, and the funded capital, Floor access, growth mechanic, and community come with the seat.

Open is the free entry tier. It comes with your free $10,000 qualification account (your test-drive account). On Open you build your Rating and you can earn through paid Daily Funded Sessions and Trading Rooms , but the free account's own PnL is not withdrawable.

Junior through Master are funded tiers you qualify into and pay a monthly membership for. Legend is the apex , not purchasable at any price, earned by sustained excellence and committee invitation. When you're on a funded tier, your account is genuinely funded and your profit share is settled to your Wallet at the end of each monthly capital cycle (5.3).

The ladder, in brief (full table with prices, sizes, and Rating thresholds is in 10.2):

• Open , free · $10K test-drive account
• Junior , $49.95/mo · $25K → $50K
• Pro , $129.95/mo · $100K → $200K
• Elite , $249.95/mo · $250K → $500K
• Master , $499.95/mo · $1M → $2M
• Legend , earned (not for sale) · $5M → $10M

The growth mechanic , every funded tier: while you hold the tier and your Rating holds its threshold, your funded capital grows by 10% of the tier floor every month, automatically, with no requalification , reaching the tier ceiling in exactly 10 months. (Junior's $25K grows $2,500/month to $50K; Pro's $100K grows $10,000/month to $200K; and so on.) This automatic monthly capital growth is unusual in the industry.

How you move between tiers: two things work together , Rating (your progression score, 2.2) qualifies you, and your membership claims the seat. The most common first step into a funded career is Junior at $49.95/mo (requires Rating ≥ 1400 and 3 closed trades).

2.2 Your Rating: the score that unlocks tiers

Your Rating is your progression score. Its single job is to measure how good and how consistent a trader you are over time, and to unlock membership tiers as you improve.

Think of Rating as your standing on The Desk , it is earned primarily through competitive play in Rooms, where you are measured against other Rating-matched traders, and it climbs as you compete and perform well. As your Rating rises, it opens the door to higher tiers and larger funded capital.

What moves your Rating , two forces, one big and one small:

• Competing in Rooms (the main driver). This works like a chess rating. After every Room closes, your Rating moves based on where you finished versus the strength of the field: beat traders rated above you and you gain more; losing to lower-rated traders costs you. Two things scale how much a single Room moves you , the type of Room (longer, higher-stakes formats carry far more weight than a quick one), and how new you are (new traders' results count extra so the system can find your level quickly). To keep it honest, only your first few Rooms each day carry full weight; piling on more after that has a reduced effect.
• Your trading results (a smaller effect). Each funded cycle, your Meritix Quality Score is compared against what is expected for a trader at your Rating. Beat that expectation and your Rating ticks up a little; fall short and it eases down a little. There is also a tiny daily nudge in the same direction. This is a gentle secondary pull , it rewards trading that is better than your Rating implies, but it will never move you the way competing in Rooms does.

Two more things can lower it: serious integrity violations carry a Rating penalty, and long inactivity slowly decays it (after a grace period), though decay never drops you below your current tier floor.

Rating is deliberately separate from the two payout scores below. Rating answers "how far can this trader be trusted to climb?" The payout scores answer "for this specific profit, what share has the trader earned?" Different questions, different scores.

2.3 Funded capital: from the free $10K to the top

"Funded" means you are trading the house's capital on real markets , and you keep a share of the profit you make with it.

The crucial distinction every new trader must internalize:

• The free $10,000 qualification account is NOT funded capital in the withdrawable sense. It is your test-drive account. You trade it to build your Rating, and you activate it for withdrawable earning by paying for a Daily Funded Session or by entering Rooms. Traded on its own, its profit is not withdrawable.
• A funded account (Junior tier and above, or a live Daily Funded Session) is real, withdrawable funded capital. Profit you make , subject to the relevant Quality Score , becomes withdrawable cash in your Wallet.

So there are two ways the same $10,000 account becomes "live, withdrawable" capital even while you're still on the free Open tier: you rent it funded for a day (a Daily Funded Session), or you put it to work competing (a Room). And there is the longer path , upgrading to a funded tier, where the account is funded on an ongoing basis and settled monthly.

The capital ladder scales upward from there as your Rating and tier grow.

2.4 The two Quality Scores: how your profit share is decided

This is the centerpiece. When you make a profit on funded capital, The Desk pays you a share of it , and that share is set by a Quality Score, because The Desk rewards how you trade, not merely the dollar outcome.

There are two Quality Scores, for two different earning contexts. They are not the same score, and they don't use the same metrics.

The Meritix Quality Score , 23 metrics , for FUNDED TIERS (monthly)

When you're on a funded tier (Junior and above), your monthly profit share is determined by the Meritix Quality Score, computed from 23 metrics across five families:

• F1 · Risk & Sizing , is the account being risked safely? (position sizing,

leverage, exposure discipline)

• F2 · Engagement & Consistency , is this real, sustained activity rather than a

one-off?

• F3 · Performance Quality , is the profit well-earned (clean, repeatable)?
• F4 · Concentration , is the profit broad and consistent, or a single lucky

spike?

• F5 · Behavioral , proprietary emotional/edge signals (e.g. how you behave

after a loss or under stress).

These 23 metrics fold into your Meritix Quality Score, which sets the share of your cycle profit you keep , settled to your Wallet at the end of each capital cycle (2.6, 5.3).

The Snap Quality Score , 8 metrics , for DAILY FUNDED SESSIONS

When you run a Daily Funded Session (the short, 24-hour funded window), your profit share for that session is set by the Snap Quality Score, computed from 8 factors:

1. Sample / trade count , enough real trades, not a single click.
2. Top-trade concentration , no one trade dominating your profit.
3. Symbol concentration , profit spread across instruments, not one lucky

symbol.

1. Exposure , position sizes kept sane, not oversized notional.
2. Windfall compression , extreme one-off spikes are smoothed (payout still

rises with profit, just sub-linearly on outliers).

1. Drawdown , how far equity fell from its peak during the session.
2. News proximity , profit not overly concentrated around news spikes.
3. Scalp , profit not overly dependent on ultra-short scalping.

How drawdown works , a smooth fade, not a cliff. Drawdown is the single biggest lever on your session share, but it is not a hard gate. As your session drawdown grows toward the limit, the drawdown factor fades smoothly toward zero , so a high-drawdown session simply earns very little share, with no sudden "breach" or disqualification. The deeper your drawdown, the smaller your slice; trade well within your risk and the factor stays high. (A few separate conditions , such as placing too few trades to be a real sample , can gate a session toward zero on their own, but drawdown itself is a smooth taper.)

What "keep up to 100%" means

Both scores are designed so that excellent, disciplined trading can earn you a very high share , up to 100% of your profit. The share scales with quality: the cleaner your process, the larger your slice. Reckless trading , oversized bets, single-symbol gambles, ignoring drawdown , shrinks the share, even if the dollar profit is the same.

You see it live

You don't have to guess. While you trade a funded session, your live Snap Quality and projected share update as you go, so you can see in real time how your decisions are affecting your payout.

2.5 Meritix: the scoring engine

Meritix is the engine behind the Meritix Quality Score on funded tiers. It is the system that turns your raw trading , every fill, size, symbol, and drawdown , into the 23 metrics that produce your monthly Quality Score. (Meritix does not compute your Rating , Rating is earned through Room competition, a separate system.)

The core philosophy, by example:

Meritix is why "how you trade" is not a slogan here , it is literally computed, across 23 metrics, and turned into money.

2.6 The Wallet and getting paid

Your Wallet is where your money lives on The Desk. It holds two kinds of value:

• Withdrawable cash , real money you've earned (Session profit shares, Room

winnings, funded-tier monthly settlements). This can be withdrawn after KYC.

• Desk Credit , non-withdrawable promotional credit (e.g. a giveaway prize that

covers a session fee). It can be used on The Desk but not cashed out.

Money arrives in your Wallet from four places:

1. Daily Funded Session profit shares (your Snap-Quality-scored slice).
2. Trading Room winnings (prize-pool payouts).
3. Funded-tier monthly settlements , at the close of each capital cycle, your

Meritix-Quality-scored share of that cycle's profit is automatically deposited to your Wallet (see 5.3 for the full mechanics).

1. Giveaways/promotions , typically as Desk Credit.

Getting it out: withdrawing requires KYC verification (a one-time identity check). KYC is required before any withdrawal. The full money mechanics , balances, KYC, withdrawal process, limits , are in Section 6.