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Reef
Early-build stage. Local control-plane and run gates exist; public submissions and hosted scale are not open yet.

Bot Arena Overview

Bot Arena is the game layer on top of Reef. Bots compete in deterministic simulated markets, but their orders still enter the same venue as everyone else. That keeps the arena more interesting than a backtest: bot behavior can change liquidity, fills, and outcomes for other bots.

The Idea

Section titled “The Idea”

Each bot starts with capital, risk limits, visible market data, and an allowed action set. The simulator drives seeded market conditions and background participants. Bots observe the public snapshot, choose orders, and compete under a scoring mode.

Competitor bots are not passive observers. Their orders enter the simulated venue, affect liquidity and price formation, and influence other bots’ outcomes. Alongside them:

  • operator-controlled market-maker bots (public behavior)
  • operator-controlled background-traffic bots
  • optional built-in benchmark bots for calibration

Current local modes cover equity-sprint-style runs and multi-instrument liquidity/provider tuning. Planned modes include a momentum challenge, market-making trial, low-drawdown/survival league, execution-quality challenge, and an aggregate season across modes.

Pipeline

Section titled “Pipeline”
bot artifact -> sandbox runtime -> Bot SDK interface -> arena runtime protocol
  -> arena adapter/orchestrator -> schema validation -> arena risk gate
  -> venue command gateway -> platform runtime -> matching engine
  -> events, read models, analytics, leaderboard

The matching engine does not need special arena behavior. The arena adapter turns bot actions into normal venue commands with actor identity, command IDs, idempotency keys, trace/causation IDs, run ID, and bot version metadata.

Where Things Stand

Section titled “Where Things Stand”

Built:

  • ReefBotV1 SDK contract and TypeScript authoring model (see Bot SDK Quickstart)
  • Registration/qualification harness, deterministic tick runner, SES-compatible hosted runner, and opt-in live read clients for market data, bars, own orders, and data availability
  • Arena control-plane registry: bot identity, bot versions, artifact hashes, approval lifecycle (draft → submitted → checks_passed → approved → active / suspended / quarantined / banned / archived), operator decisions, run records
  • Bot-originated orders can flow through the real venue command boundary with bot client identity and pre-acceptance risk checks (a quarantined bot version is rejected before order acceptance)
  • Local positive/negative persisted smoke gates, static operator report rendering, report-index rendering, hosted/local report readMode evidence, and a shared-time multi-instrument simulation proof with 5 active symbols and 18 bots

Not yet built:

  • Sandboxed execution at scale connected to a dedicated arena runtime protocol (gRPC/protobuf)
  • Production-grade modular game-mode loading, scoring policies, and leaderboard service
  • Public bot submission flow, public leaderboard, replay UI, and a named hosted/backbone smoke gate for public-submission claims

Learn More

Section titled “Learn More”
  • docs/BOT_ARENA_PLAN.md and docs/BOT_ARENA_DO_SIMULATION_SOAK_CHECKLIST.md — full product concept, rollout phases, and latest local gate evidence
  • docs/BOT_SDK_DESIGN.md — SDK contract detail
  • How The Game Works — architecture/pipeline detail on this site
  • How To Play — player-facing walkthrough