Core concepts

Every page in these docs uses the same small set of words. This page explains each one, shows how they fit together, and says which key reaches what. Read it once before you build, and come back when a word on another page isn’t clear.

How the pieces fit

A firm on trdrs runs a venue. The venue holds the firm’s brand, its keys and the providers its accounts trade through. Every provider says how it’s signed into: some use the trader’s own login, some an API key or a wallet key, and the paper book needs no login at all. The trader has one way in: they sign in to trdrs, and the accounts the firm attached are in their list. On top of that, a venue can turn on venue rules: its own order limits, stages that judge each account, and analytics. Venue rules are optional. Here’s how that looks for two kinds of firm:

A prop firm running evaluations issues evaluation accounts on the paper book, turns venue rules on, and sets a stage for each evaluation. You issue the account, the trader signs in and finds it in their list, every fill is measured against your stage rule, and you advance the account when it passes.
A firm whose traders already hold accounts at a provider gets a tile in Connect that opens that provider. Its traders sign in with their own login, and the firm keeps its own back office.

The trader never sees how an account was attached. They sign in and it’s there, and a provider that needs its own login asks for it once.

The words

These are the words every page uses, one word for each thing.

Word	What it means
Venue	A firm’s whole setup on trdrs: its brand, listing, keys, providers, groups and accounts.
Group	A set of accounts with one route and one set of rules. A prop firm or a broker is a group.
Route	Where a group’s orders go: the venue’s own book, or a named account at a provider.
Provider	A market that a venue’s accounts trade through.
Built-in provider	A provider trdrs wrote, such as the trdrs paper book. Providers lists them all.
Public provider	A provider someone else wrote against the published provider contract, which passed the self-check.
Login style	How a provider is signed into: the trader’s own login, OAuth, an API key, a wallet key, the firm’s credentials, or none.
Paper book	trdrs’s own simulated market, priced from live data. It holds a trader’s Demo and every account a firm issues.
Evaluation account	An account a firm issues to a trader on the paper book, judged by the firm’s stage rule.
Stage	The rule an account is judged by: a profit target, a number of trading days, a drawdown rule and the breaches that end it.
Demo	A trader’s own practice account on the paper book, and nothing else. A firm’s issued account is never called a Demo.
Connect	The account picker a trader opens in the trading app.
Listed	A venue that’s approved to appear in Connect.
Venue rules	The venue applying its own order limits, stages and analytics to its accounts. They’re optional, and on once the venue has its first group.
Venue key	The key your venue’s backend uses. You create and revoke it in your trdrs profile, and it never goes in a browser.
Trading API key	The key a trader uses for programmatic trading: market data, orders and account state.
Back office	An optional tool for running one venue by hand. It uses the same operations your backend calls.
Legacy Partner API	The firm routes that came before venues. Venue routes replace them; Connect pre-registration stays on the Partner key.

You may know some of these by other names. Many firms say “challenge” where these docs say evaluation account, and “phase” where these docs say stage. The words mean the same things.

What a venue can do

This table shows what a venue can do today and where. “Applied” means an order from the trading app goes through it in the sandbox and the trader sees the result. “Preview” means it works in the sandbox and may still change.

A venue can	Where	Standing
Set its brand (name, logo and blurb) and get Listed so it appears in Connect	Back office, Overview	Applied
Hold a Venue key for its backend, and a Partner key for pre-registering traders	Profile, API access	Applied
Read its usage and the receipt of a balance operation, read and set each account’s five risk controls, and register webhooks, all with its Venue key	Venue API	Applied
Choose a provider its accounts trade through, from the built-in providers its Providers tab offers	Providers tab	Applied
Plug in a public provider: register it, connect, validate, and find and bind accounts	Providers tab	Preview
Show or hide a plugged-in provider to its own traders	Providers tab	Applied, and off until you turn it on
Issue accounts on the paper book into a group, bound to its published risk policy, then list, credit, debit, reset, halt and resume them and read their analytics	Accounts tab, Venue API	Applied
Run groups, each with one route and one set of rules	Groups and routes	Applied
Choose which instruments its accounts may trade, and turn each one on or off	Instruments tab	Applied when an order is placed
Set limits on order size, position size, notional and the instrument list, and halt new entries	Conditions tab	Applied when an order is placed
Set its markup, its route’s collar and its commission	Conditions and Routes tabs	Applied at the fill
Publish its own risk policy: margin, stop-out, recovery, valuation, settlement and posting terms	Venue API	Preview. Publishing puts a version in force for every account bound to the policy
Charge financing on CFDs	Its published risk policy	Applied at each rollover, under the policy version the account is bound to
Run stages with a profit target, trading days, disqualifying rules and a drawdown rule (static or trailing, daily or total)	Stages tab	Applied. A breach flattens and locks the account
Advance an account that passed a stage into a new account in the next group	Stages tab, Venue API	Applied
Turn venue rules on or off	Overview	Applied. Creating the first group turns them on
Hedge its customers’ net exposure in a provider account it owns	Venue API	Preview
Read the balance, equity, positions and orders of accounts held at a provider	Accounts tab	Applied. Stages don’t judge these accounts yet, so their eligibility read is refused as `stage_version_unrecorded`
Apply its order limits, markup and commission to an account held at a provider		Not built

Margin and financing come only from your published risk policy. A margin or financing figure sent with your conditions is refused, so there’s one place that says what an account must hold.

What a provider can do

A provider can	Built-in providers	Public providers
Say how it’s signed into	Each declares its login style, which Providers lists	In its declaration, or the firm’s credentials when it says nothing
Be a tile a trader connects through in Connect	Each one with a login of its own	Once it’s Listed
Be the market a venue’s accounts trade through	The ones a venue’s Providers tab offers	Once it passes the self-check
Hold a firm’s issued accounts and a trader’s own Demo	The paper book	No
Take an order the venue’s conditions admitted, with the venue’s markup, collar and commission	The paper book	Yes, over the provider contract
Report the fills, positions and account state the venue reads	The paper book, and the others through their own account view	Yes, over the provider contract

A company can play several of these parts at once. A built-in provider can be a tile in Connect and also a provider a venue plugs in, and a firm that runs a venue is also a tile once it’s Listed.

Where each key fits

Key	Held by	Reaches
Venue key (`trdrs_vk_…`)	Your venue’s backend	`/api/partner/venues/{venueId}/…`: the venue’s configuration, its accounts and their risk controls, usage, balance receipts and webhooks, each behind a named scope
Trading API key (`trdrs_sk_…`)	A trader who trades programmatically, or your trading app’s server	Market data, news, trading, account state and risk controls for the accounts the key’s owner holds
Partner key (`trdrs_sk_…`)	A firm’s backend, for Connect pre-registration and the Legacy Partner API	`/api/partner/` outside the venue routes
Session	A person signed in to the trading app or the back office	The trading app, and the back office’s own calls

One Venue key is enough for most firms. Add a Partner key only if you pre-register traders for Connect. A Trading API key and a Partner key look the same, because nothing in the trdrs_sk_ string says which scope it has, so store them under different names. You manage all three in profile API access. A browser never uses a secret key to call trdrs. The installed back office keeps its Venue key on its own server, and the hosted back office uses your signed-in session.

Next steps

Quickstart

Create a Venue key and issue your first evaluation account in the sandbox.

Sandbox

Learn what the sandbox holds and how you move to production.

Keys and authentication

See which key reaches which routes, and how to keep keys safe.

Get started

Using the API

Check your integration

How the pieces fit

The words

What a venue can do

What a provider can do

Where each key fits

Next steps

Quickstart

Sandbox

Keys and authentication

​How the pieces fit

​The words

​What a venue can do

​What a provider can do

​Where each key fits

​Next steps

Quickstart

Sandbox

Keys and authentication

How the pieces fit

The words

What a venue can do

What a provider can do

Where each key fits

Next steps