Validation methodology
Five validation families
A candidate must pass every applicable common and strategy-family-specific gate declared prospectively by its Validation Standard:
- Deflated Sharpe. Adjust apparent significance for selection across multiple trials using the registered trial accounting and distributional assumptions.
- Walk-forward out-of-sample testing. Fit on one chronological window, test on the next, and assess the family-appropriate persistence measure outside the fitting data.
- Multi-regime durability. Test whether the result is concentrated in one favorable regime rather than surviving the coverage required for its strategy family.
- Cost realism. Replay against the required bid, ask, depth, latency, liquidity, fee, slippage, and funding-rate evidence without counting the same execution effect twice.
- Adversarial refutation. Search prospectively for regimes, costs, assumptions, or implementation conditions that invalidate the claimed behavior.
The public Validation Standard specifies which tests apply and the corresponding numeric thresholds. A revised standard applies only to future evaluations and cannot rewrite an earlier result.
The registered denominator
Every admitted evaluation retains a required current or final Index record. A completed evaluation produces GO, NO_GO, or INSUFFICIENT; a late, invalid, withdrawn, interrupted, unresolved, or unrevealed attempt retains its applicable status and does not disappear merely because it is unfavorable.
Denominator reporting identifies the registered stream, admission rules, standard version, observation period, eligible record types, and treatment of every non-final state. The NO-GO Archive is a focused public view, while the Evaluation and Decision Index supplies the admitted-record denominator and displays whether that denominator has reached registered-stream completeness verified.
Historical verdict and continuing evidence
A GO is a historical verdict for one strategy version under one Validation Standard. It may satisfy one gate for forward-stream eligibility, but it never activates that stream or authorizes paper or live order routing. Stream activation and the applicable execution mandate are separate registered events. A separate forward paper record uses newly settled outcomes to show whether the evidence remains current. Deployment or Marketplace eligibility may later change because of performance decay, evidence quality, capacity, or availability while the original verdict remains intact. A material strategy-version change requires a new authorization decision and cannot inherit an earlier mandate silently.
Next: Execution covers routing authority and the Safety Vault.