The ELO System

Proovly tracks every trader’s verified performance with an ELO rating. It works the same way ELO works in chess, poker, and competitive gaming: your rating goes up when you perform better than expected, and adjusts down when you don’t.

The entire point of the rating is that it lives on-chain, on Base, against your wallet address. It’s not a database row you lose when the platform changes. It’s a credential.

Why ELO specifically

Three reasons:

1. It’s comparative. ELO rates you against the population of verified traders, not against an arbitrary benchmark. A rising-tide market doesn’t inflate everyone’s rating the same way raw PnL would.
2. It’s well-understood. Chess has used it for 60 years. Competitive gaming uses it everywhere. People intuitively understand what “1500 ELO” means relative to “1000 ELO.”
3. It normalises across asset classes. A forex trader and a crypto trader can be compared on the same scale, even though the underlying markets behave differently.

How performance affects your ELO

Your ELO updates every time Proovly syncs your connected accounts and calculates your performance for the period. The factors:

Trading performance (primary)

The biggest driver. Calculated from your verified stats:

• PnL relative to account size. A 5% gain on a $10k account and a 5% gain on a $100k account are weighted the same — it’s about percentage performance, not absolute dollars.
• Risk-adjusted returns. Gains achieved with lower drawdown are worth more ELO than the same gains with higher drawdown. A trader who makes 8% with 3% max drawdown gains more than one who makes 8% with 9% max drawdown.
• Consistency. Steady performance over many periods is worth more than a single massive win followed by losses. The system rewards repeatability.

Cross-asset weighting

Traders with verified accounts across multiple asset classes get a composite ELO that reflects all of them:

Asset class	Weight in composite
Forex (MT4/MT5)	40%
Crypto (CEX)	35%
DeFi	25%

These weights reflect the depth of data available and the verification strength of each asset class. A trader who only has forex connected gets their ELO entirely from forex performance. A trader with all three gets the weighted composite.

Profile activity

Secondary factor. Active profiles with continuous data get a small ELO stability bonus over time. This isn’t about trading more — it’s about maintaining a consistent, verified presence.

Challenge passes (Proovly Funded)

When Proovly Funded launches, passing a prop firm challenge will also contribute to ELO, weighted by challenge difficulty and tier.

The ELO formula

Each period, the rating update follows:

expected_score = 1 / (1 + 10^((population_avg_elo - current_elo) / 400))
actual_score = normalized_performance  // 0 to 1 based on percentile rank
elo_change = K * (actual_score - expected_score)
new_elo = current_elo + elo_change

Where:

• K = 40 for new traders (under 30 days verified), dropping to K = 20 for established traders. Same K-factor schedule chess uses for provisional vs established players.
• normalized_performance is a 0-to-1 score based on where your risk-adjusted return lands relative to all active traders for that period.
• population_avg_elo is the average ELO of all active verified traders.

Starting ELO

Every new wallet starts at 1000 ELO. Low enough that early strong performance gains meaningful points, high enough that early underperformance doesn’t bottom out immediately.

Floor and ceiling

• Floor: 500. Your ELO never drops below 500. This keeps the rating meaningful and prevents dead wallets from accumulating extreme negative values.
• Ceiling: None. In practice, sustained top-decile performance across multiple asset classes over many months would push a trader into the 1800-2200 range.

Leaderboard ranking

The public leaderboard ranks all verified traders by ELO. You can filter by:

• Overall (composite ELO)
• Forex only
• Crypto only
• DeFi only
• Time period (30 days, 90 days, all-time)

Leaderboard eligibility requires the Verified tier ($19/mo) or higher.

What ELO does not measure

• ELO does not predict future performance. A 1600-rated trader can still have a terrible month. The rating says “their verified track record is X,” not “they will certainly perform well next month.”
• ELO does not measure total wealth. A trader with $500 in a broker account can have a higher ELO than one with $500k if they perform better on a risk-adjusted basis.
• ELO is not a recommendation. A high-ELO trader is not automatically a good signal to follow. ELO measures verified performance, not suitability for your risk profile.

Can I reset my ELO?

No. That’s the point. The on-chain record is permanent. You can use a new wallet and start fresh, but your old wallet’s history stays visible forever. A portable reputation that can be reset isn’t a reputation at all.

Why the formula is on-chain

Nothing about this math requires a blockchain. We could calculate ELO in a database and publish it as a number. The reason it lives on Base is verifiability:

• Anyone can read EloRegistry.sol and confirm your current rating
• Anyone can read the full event log and trace your rating history
• Third-party tools can use your ELO as a gate without asking us for permission

The blockchain doesn’t make the math better. It makes the math permanent and portable.