How it works.
How it works
Every merc starts with 10,000 paper USDG and trade the same eight Robinhood Stock Tokens: AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, MSFT, AMZN, META, GOOGL and COIN. At the close of every 15-minute bar of the US session, each one reads the prices and acts on its one fixed rule. Long only, a 0.05% fee on every fill, no peeking at future bars.
The record
Before launch day the record is the same code replayed over real 15-minute market prices since July 9, so every merc arrives with a history. From launch on, the arena runs live on every new bar and nothing is ever rewritten. Win rate counts closed trades only. Drawdown is the deepest fall from a previous high.
The roster
Jumps on a big name the moment it clears its high of the last five hours on rising volume. Trails a 3% stop and moves it to breakeven once it is 2% up.
Reads hourly bars. Buys when the 12-hour average crosses above the 26-hour one with MACD agreeing, and rides it with a 5% trailing stop until the trend turns.
The steady one. Follows the six largest names on 15-minute bars, in when the 20 crosses over the 50, out on the cross back or a 3% trailing stop.
Waits for NVDA, TSLA, COIN or META to close a day 1.5% down or worse, buys the close, takes 4% when it comes, and is out after three sessions either way.
Rarely fires. Only buys a volatile name after a day down 3.5% or more, aims for 4% and gives it five sessions. Few trades, most of them winners.
Bought all eight stocks on day one and never trades. If a merc can't beat Monk, you are better off just holding.
Trades on dice rolls. Shows what a lucky streak looks like, so you can tell skill from it.
Faces: “55 Robots for your awesome projects” by Dmitry Shmailov (Figma Community), CC BY 4.0.
Renting
Hiring costs nothing upfront. You pick a stake and a contract of 7 to 90 days, and your USDG goes onto the merc's desk. When the contract ends you take it back whenever you like, and the merc keeps its profit share (set by its creator, 10% to 20% for house mercs) out of any profit it made you. On a loss you pay nothing. Of every share, 80% goes to the merc's creator and 20% to Mercs. The keeper's gas is paid by the trades themselves: each trade on a desk pays it 0.05 USDG from the desk's cash, and each hire carries 0.0001 ETH so the first trades can start. The hire panel shows what a stake would have kept over the record after the share, next to simply holding the stocks.
On chain
Every merc that takes renters has a desk in the Mercs vault on Robinhood Chain. Renters' USDG sits there, and a keeper copies the merc's paper book onto it after every bar: when the merc buys a stock, the desk buys the same share of its value on Uniswap; when the merc sells, the desk sells.
The keeper can do nothing else. It can only swap a desk's own USDG into the eight Stock Tokens and back, along routes fixed in the contract, and every swap must fill within 1% of the Chainlink price or it fails. It cannot send funds anywhere. Desk values are read from Chainlink, so new renters buy in at the current value and never take a slice of someone else's gain.
Leaving sells your slice of the desk's stocks in the same transaction and pays you in USDG. If a pool is thin or prices cannot be read, you can leave with your slice of every stock as it is instead. Withdrawals stay open even if the vault is paused. Real fills cost pool fees and slippage that the paper record does not show, so a desk trails its merc a little.
The builder
Anyone can build a merc. It decides on the close of 15-minute, hourly or daily bars, buys when all (or any) of its entry conditions hold, and sells on a target, a stop, a trailing stop, a breakeven stop, a time limit, the closing bell or its own exit conditions. Sizing, a cap on open positions, a cool-down after each sell, a daily loss brake and a drawdown brake complete it. The conditions:
A published merc is tracked live from the moment it is published. Its backtest stays on its page, labelled as a backtest.
Risks
Past results say little about the next week. Every merc can lose, and several do. Strategies that look good over two months can be luck, which is why the coin flipper and the buy-and-hold benchmark are on the board. The vault is tested, including against a copy of mainnet with its real pools, but it has not had an outside audit. Stock Tokens are not offered to US persons. Nothing here is financial advice.
The token
$MRCS is a community token for the project. It does not unlock features, pay yield or give any claim on the arena, and the site works the same without it.