Challenges

Create and manage every product configuration your firm offers - the blueprint every account inherits.

The Challenges tab is where you create and manage every product configuration your firm offers. A challenge is the complete blueprint for a kind of account - its balance, drawdown rules, data entitlements, tradable symbols, broker/OMS, and phases. Every account created under a challenge inherits its settings.

Where it lives: Sidebar → Proptech Configuration → Challenges.

The Challenges grid - every challenge, with the ability to add new ones.

Open a challenge (or click Add new) to edit it. The editor has two sub-tabs: Settings (below) and Challenge phases.

Challenge Settings - Settings, Balances, Commercial Rules, Flags, and Configuration.

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Settings

Core challenge details.

Field	What to enter
Title	A descriptive name so your team instantly knows the account type - this is the firm’s challenge name.
Short code	A suffix appended to every account number (about a 15-character limit). Make it descriptive, e.g. 50K-EOD-P1.
Description	The challenge rules, or any notes your team should remember.
Swap mode	Normal (overnight fees apply) or Swap free (no overnight fees). Most prop firms run swap-free.
Product ID	Optional - leave blank, or set it if you are mapping the challenge to your checkout.
Broker type	With Tickblaze you get the Tickblaze OMS - select TickblazeOMS.

Why the short code matters: most trading platforms only show an account number, not the challenge type. A descriptive short code (e.g. 50K-EOD-P1) rides along on the account so your team and your traders can pick the right account in the platform’s dropdown and avoid trading the wrong one.

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Balances

Initial balance and drawdown references.

Field	What to enter
Initial balance	The default starting balance for accounts under this challenge. A phase can set its own Initial balance, and the phase value is the one the account actually gets - see Challenge phases.
Max trailing drawdown	The challenge-level default for the same value the phase calls Global DD threshold - the most an account may lose before it fails, measured down from the account’s anchor. Which anchor, and whether it moves at all, is decided by the Global drawdown type set on the phase - the initial balance, fixed forever (Static); the highest equity ever reached, including unrealized P&L (Trailing); or the highest closing balance (End of day). It never moves back down. This is the challenge-level default; the per-phase drawdown settings on Challenge phases take precedence. See The three types.
Default max order size	Optional cap on a single order across the account.
Max position size account	The cap on total open positions across the account. On futures, enter the mini value - 5 means 5 minis = 50 micros (a 1:10 ratio). On stocks, the value is the maximum number of shares the trader may hold at one time.

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Commercial Rules

Activation fees are not live yet. Neither No activation fee nor Activation fee product ID does anything on the Tickblaze side today - switching the toggle either way, or filling in a product ID, changes nothing about whether a trader can trade. Set them to record what you want, and treat the behaviour described below as what will happen once the payment gate ships. If your firm needs to gate an account behind a payment right now, handle it on your own checkout and tell the Tickblaze team.

Fees, profit, and payout settings.

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No activation fee

Read the name carefully - this toggle is stated in the negative.

Toggle	Meaning
On - “No activation fee”	There is no fee. A trader who passes a phase moves straight to the next one and can trade it immediately.
Off	There is an activation fee. The trader must pay before they can trade.

Once the payment gate ships, turning it off will mean the firm collects the fee on its own checkout and trading opens after that payment is confirmed. Two shapes:

• Between phases. A trader passes Step 1. Step 2 is gated, so they pay the activation fee first; once payment is confirmed, they can trade the Step 2 account.
• On a single-phase challenge. The trader must purchase before they can trade the only account on that challenge.

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Minimum profit

The profit a day must produce for that day to count as a trading day. It does not change P&L; it changes the day count.

With Minimum profit set to 200, a session must make $200 or more to count toward Minimum trading days:

The day made	Counts as a trading day?	Counted in the account’s P&L?
+$250	Yes	Yes
+$150	No - under the minimum	Yes
A loss	No	Yes

So a trader on a five-trading-day phase needs five profitable enough days, not just five days with a trade. Losing days and thin winning days still move the balance - they simply do not advance the count. Minimum profit type sets how the number is read (for example Absolute for a dollar amount).

Leave it blank and every day with an opening trade counts, whatever it made.

The remaining Commercial Rules fields:

Activation fee product ID

The checkout product the activation fee will be billed against. Your Tickblaze contact configures this with you during setup. Like the toggle above, it is recorded but not yet acted on.

Profit split

The share paid to the trader on a payout - e.g. 0.8 = 80% to the trader, 20% to the firm. Used for payout accounts.

The payout system is still being built - profit split is not usable yet. We’ll let you know when the payout features go live on the CRM.

Maximum profit

A cap on how much profit a single trade may make. Leave it blank for no cap. Maximum profit type sets how the number is read.

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Flags

Availability and trading state.

Of the three flags, only Archived works today - it retires a challenge from the active list. Is free trial and News trading enabled are not functional yet (they’re part of features still in development). Leave them off for now.

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Configuration

Entitlements, exchanges, and symbol limits. Click Edit configuration to set them.

Configuration - Market data entitlements, Tradable exchanges, and Individual tradable symbols.

In the Configuration section, click Add to attach a market data entitlement.

Selecting a market data entitlement.

1. Add a market data entitlement. Click Edit configuration, then Add, and choose an entitlement from the dropdown - CBOT L1/L2, CME L1/L2, COMEX L1/L2, NYMEX L1/L2, or Nasdaq L1/L2.
   • Futures challenge: add the L1 data for CME, CBOT, COMEX, and NYMEX (the basic data most futures traders need).
   • Stocks challenge: add Nasdaq L1 (or L2). Choosing Nasdaq makes this a stock challenge.
2. Save and apply changes to the challenge configuration.
3. Add tradable exchanges - the matching exchanges (CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX, and CME for a futures challenge; Nasdaq for a stocks challenge).
4. Add individual tradable symbols. Manually add the exact symbols this challenge allows. Even if a symbol is enabled firm-wide, you can exclude it here - and set a per-symbol max position size that overrides the account-level cap.

Per-symbol override example: say the account’s max position size is 5 (5 minis / 50 micros). For GC (gold) you may want less - set 2 on GC, and trades on GC are capped at 2 minis / 20 micros while the rest of the challenge keeps the account-level limit.

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One challenge with phases, or separate challenges?

Both work - it depends on your checkout:

• One challenge, multiple phases - the phases live under a single challenge. Each phase also has a phase ID exposed via the API, which you can map to checkout products.
• Separate challenges per phase - create one challenge (each with its own phase) per stage. Useful when each phase is a distinct checkout product, and required if you charge separately to advance (see Commercial Rules).

When we onboard your firm, we set the first challenges up with you - and you can create your own afterward. Every challenge should have at least one phase.