Article Submission

It is an unprecedented yet promising experiment to apply tokenomics to the peer-reviewed publishing domain, academic study or pop science. Our success relies upon the contributions from our COMMunity, particularly high-quality articles and successful authors. The applicability of our COMM token lies heavily in the quality of our publications. All authors will benefit from the tokens they hold as our ecosystem grows.

  1. Compensation around 1600, 1000, 600 COMMs a piece for 'Beta for Pros', 'Beta for Fun' and 'Crypto Insights' columns, respectively. The final amount depends on the quality scores from editors/reviewers, number of downloads, reader feedback, etc. You can fill out this form now and submit your work as source files (pdf, tex) in a zipped attachment. A step-by-step instruction for submission will be offered along your submission. We reserve the right to edit your work lightly, mostly for typesetting purposes.
  2. Our 'Beta for Pros' column aims for the readers with advanced quantitative backgrounds. It publishes heavyweight research papers intended for professionals with advanced quantitative backgrounds. The scope of the paper covers smart beta / alpha investigation, factor /risk premium analysis, ETF construction, pair arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, exchange arbitrage, high frequency trading, risk management, automatic investment, market making, and the applications of portfolio management techniques that improve simple trading methods. This is the column where all publications require peer review.
  3. Our 'Beta for Fun' column is intended for college level readers and largely serves as educational resources. They are preferred to be concise and clear. Simple formulas are encouraged only if/when they are necessary to explain the qualitative nature of the problem.  We favor fun and clear articles with nice plots. Please try NOT to go over 3000 words or 10 plots unless utterly necessary, but we expect them beyond 1000 words and 2-3 plots or tables in general. Please merge similar plots if you can. We encourage every effort to bring complex quantitative crypto analysis into pop science. Articles or strategies in this column have equal likelihood to get referenced, possibly more.
  4. The 'Crypto Insights' column publishes non-quantitative, novel articles in the blockchain domain. We welcome well-written, original articles including but not limited to crypto overviews, in-depth and distinguished research on the blockchain, IoT, big data, token mechanism / algorithm, macro visions, blockchain techniques, follow-up analysis on hot topics, interview / presentations of industry leaders, etc. Over 2000 words preferred. Note: since most articles on the internet are non-quantitative, the caliber we required of the authors will be high. A history of publications in your blogs or social media accounts with good insights will enhance your acceptance rate significantly.
  5. We give original articles highest priority. Please do include the sources if you reference other people's work.
  6. Articles of the following subjects will have priority: smart beta / alpha investigation, factor / risk premium analysis, ETF construction, pair arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, exchange arbitrage, high frequency trading, risk management, automatic investment, market making, and the applications of portfolio management techniques that improve simple trading methods.
  7. All quantitative crypto analysis are welcome, including but not limited to: rate of return statistics, market cyclicity, timing, market sentiment, sector analysis, liquidity study, exchange data analysis, token/consensus economics, etc.
  8. Many articles in finance journals are readily applicable to cryptos with minimal or minor adaptations. We encourage and publish works, insights, principles or theories on generic financial instruments too, with the only requirement that they are applicable to cryptos.
  9. We favor analysis applicable to multiple or all cryptos in all columns. Normally we don't accept single project analysis on any crypto except those among the top 20 cap or the subject of the article is widely applicable and of novel economical, financial value / phenomenal technical nature.
  10. Naive technical analysis will not be accepted in quantitative columns. Quantitative articles are intended for professional investors and rational readers. College math is to be exercised in all quantitative publications at least. It might publish in our 'Crypto Insights' column, though.
  11. We will do our best not to publish any similar articles. If you have good and novel ideas, please submit early. Trivial generalizations such as trading universe expansion are categorized as the same subject in general. Read our columns carefully and come up with new topics. Articles of a similar nature and quality will compete on a first-come-first-serve basis.
  12. All submissions to 'Beta for Pros' and 'Beta for Fun' must be quantitative in a way, with limited exceptions such as high-quality, self-contained and excellent token economics or consensus philosophy.
  13. We welcome rewritten and improved crypto analysis at the pop science level. If so, please include the original link to the source (OK if it's not yours). Such articles can be published twice in both ‘beta for pros’ and ‘beta for fun’ columns after reasonable adaptation if you wish or vice versa, provided they come from the same author(s) and offer references properly. This is the only exception to our article correlation check, otherwise we don't publish similar works. The compensations of adapted articles are decided separately and independently, but they share the same referencing benefits in terms of management fee. We offer review and publication priority if your other article is published with us previously.
  14. For now, we accept PDF submissions only. No format requirements as long as it is an amusement to read, but we strongly recommend to use our template. Please see here for a user manual.
  15. Please allow 2-3 weeks for us to finish the peer review process, and collect / forward feedback if modifications are recommended.
  16. During the submission, you are welcome to suggest that certain parts of your article, which either contains original ideas or detailed trading strategies, are not to be revealed to generic readers but only to subscribers. Otherwise, we might publish a random, limited part of your article after a certain point, and hide the rest unless readers pay the subscription fee. The fee is to be paid in COMMs, an important use case of the token. If you prefer to publish your article with us in full without any contents hidden, please indicate as such explicitly upon submission as well.
  17. We share half of subscription proceeds with all published authors annually. Submit the work, share your insights and grow with us. Your cut will be proportional to your cumulative score of all publications on our site this year.
  18. To protect your rights and to avoid others faking your identity for benefit claims, we must verify your ID (KYC) before publishing your article. It is however waived if
    • you are an invited author (feel free to send us a request to invite you here);
    • the article is submitted from a publicly verifiable (e.g. the one listed on your institution webpage) affiliation email address such as xxx@harvard.edu, xxx@bnl.gov, etc.;
    • the article is submitted from an email address that is verifiable through publications or CV online.
  19. We will email every author upon article acceptance. If you fail to respond or pass the KYC in two weeks, you are deemed not interested to publish with us. Those fail to verify his/her true identity consistently in claims will lose the case and all future benefits by default.
  20. You are responsible to ensure originality of your work. Though we do our best to resolve claims and decide benefit attributions, we are NOT legally responsible for copyright disputes.
  21. After being referenced in any allocated strategy, you automatically qualify as a partner and enjoy all partner benefits as outlined for all future publications. If your article is about a strategy, we very likely will invite you to co-manage the book with us and share a portion of management or incentive fees with you. The terms for loss of partnership apply if you stop contributing - at least one submission every two months, or actively co-manage the book if invited.
  22. We will contact you if your article is accepted, and issue the COMMs two weeks after publication on our website and social media accounts. However, if plagiarism is reported and confirmed by our COMMunity over this period, we will cancel the compensation, announce it and permanently blacklist your submission.
  23. Compensation for original submissions starts at 1600/1000/600 for three columns, contingent on article quality and reader feedback. We issue 50% more for every multilingual submission up to 200%. If your article is referenced by our strategy pool, we triple your reward and offer you a cut up to 50% of management or incentive fee (if applicable) earned by your strategy, contingent on the transparency, the importance and the quality of your publication and your participation in co-management. The multilingual bonus doesn't count as base in tripling.
  24. For strategy related publications, we offer 25% more COMMs for every out-of-sample performance update. We expect the frequency of updates between every two weeks to every two months, until six months after first submission or the strategy enters production pool, whichever is earlier. Update often and you will have a higher chance to get your strategy allocated or a higher percentage cut. If your strategy turns over faster than every two weeks, let us know upon submission and we will decide the best update frequency and compensation case by case. However, apply honor code and update the raw data only, no other changes allowed. If you revise or improve your published strategy, that's perfectly fine, we will accept and update the article on our website with same 25% remuneration in addition, but it is critical to tell us the nature of the update - is the strategy revised or not? Send us your updated submissions as titled 'submission update to Beta for Pros/Fun from [your name]: [article title] [publication link]. Strategy revised / NOT revised'.
  25. The token reward is NOT intended to purchase the copyright, but only the right to publish and advertise your article on our website and on our social media accounts, and the right to support your research, which we cherish dearly and consider an honor. Distribution of knowledge is the highest form of neg-entropy production, as it aims to benefit the most. Your name or the original link on our site will be always provided along dissemination. The plots might be lightly watermarked with article link in protection of your copyright. If you publish the same work elsewhere later, all we require is to add this sentence to the beginning - 'This article is published on cryptosmartbeta.com'. We value your work and would like to endorse your effort if you authorize us the right to publish.
  26. Please do indicate upon submission explicitly if you elect to publish with us exclusively. We will compensate you 50% more COMMs (out of base, i.e. excluding multi-lingual versions or any other bonus) as exclusiveness bonus. If you indicate as such but still publish the same article elsewhere, we reserve the right to cancel your future benefits.
  27. Upon submission, please indicate if you are willing to supply data resulting from your strategy or analysis to our marketplace for subscription and the frequency to do so. We recommend weekly, monthly or quarterly. The subscription fee is low at the beginning and may increase as the number of subscribers grows. The data will be charged in COMMs. All subscription fees pass through to the authors after 10% service charge. In the early phase, we may use a mailing list to distribute periodic data subscriptions. If needed, we will seek to automate the process in user accounts. This way our investors can verify the out-of-sample performances themselves by point-in-time signal updates if they wish. It will be a strong track record for strategy quality.
  28. In summary, please submit this form, or send your real name, position, title, account ID and web link (if adapted from your early posts/publications), along with
    • the column to submit (Beta for Pros or Fun)
    • if the article is exclusive for our website to publish
    • subscription-only sections (optional)
    • keywords, a short abstract and personal ERC20 wallet address with the article. No exchange wallet address please.
  29. If you submit by email, please send to admin@cryptosmartbeta.com , with email titled 'submission to Beta for Fun from [your name]: [article title]'.

 

Article Translation

  • The compensation around 300 COMMs a piece, stackable on any different language. However, please contact us first with an ETA, and make sure nobody else is working on it.
  • If you feel an existing article need be polished in wording, please do let us know and we will compensate your work accordingly.

 

Co-authorship

  1. We have good insights on the crypto market and will publish as the articles finish. However, our time is quite limited. We invite you to coauthor with us. In general, we expect your contribution beyond 75%. Also, as our resources are limited, we can only collaborate with a limited number of authors at a time. The openings are competitive,  limited and per-article based.
  2. There are benefits to co-author with us. We own a professional, industrial grade crypto simulator and are capable to do most heavy-liftings in smart beta and alpha construction. The only constraint - our library is proprietary, and we can't share the code with you. But the performance numbers are easy to reproduce and we are happy to offer consultancy and assistance if needed.
  3. We are happy to offer help in data acquisition and universal access/instructions to crypto knowledge. Please do feel free to ask us anything. If needed, we will open up a new FAQ session on our website for pedagogical purposes.
  4. We will offer time series data (OHLCV, cap) over thousands of cryptos in one zipped file upon request. As for data analysis, the recommended programming languages is Python, Root or C++ if you wish. We will do our best to help if technical assistance is requested.
  5. If you are a junior in this area, we could help you decide a subject that aligns with your background and interests, and guide you throughout the composition process, including but not limited to title, word flow, plotting, programming, data analysis and quantitative research. This may only happen in the early phase of the project.
  6. The coauthored articles have higher chances to publishing or referencing. The attribution in co-authorship benefits (remuneration, management fee cuts, etc.) will be discussed case by case based on contributions.
  7. To improve the publication rate and maximize efficiency, please feel free to tell us the subject you are going to study if you wish. We will let you know if there is a potential conflict, or suggest collaborators to co-author as appropriate. We do not publish articles that are highly correlated on site.
  8. Please fill out the contact form, attach your CV and propose a few concrete subjects you are good at if you are interested to co-author. If you reach us by email directly, please title it as 'applying for co-authorship from [your name]'.

 

Article Review

  1. Compensation around 400, 240 and 160 COMMs for each successful publication in 'Beta for Pros', 'Beta for Fun' and 'Crypto Insights' columns, respectively. 
  2. The review committee consists of experts in coding, data analysis and quantitative disciplines including math, physics, statistics, finance, etc. Please apply here if you'd like to join the committee.
  3. A committee member is responsible to confirm the originality, review and suggest 0-10 quantitative articles to be published weekly per column, with a quality score (0-100), confidence score (0-100) and comments. Please normalize your quality score, as they are expected to be relative and roughly satisfy the Gaussian distribution. The revision suggestions are not required. If you don't recommended an article and feel the quality score and confidence score fully state your opinions, feel free to do so.
  4. Should any copyright claims arise, the committee is responsible to decide an appropriate resolution.
  5. Please fill the contact form with your CV attached, or send an email to admin@cryptosmartbeta.com to apply. If you apply by email, please use the title 'applying for reviewer from [your name]'.

 

Editor Openings

  1. We are actively looking to form an editorial board, whose key responsibility is to promote scholarship in crypto analysis associated with cryptosmartbeta.com, whilst also promoting our website as the best site to publish in. The openings are limited and highly competitive. You may increase your chance by reviewing a few articles with us before you apply.
  2. An editor is responsible to select 3 reviewers for each article worthy of review, collect feedback, communicate with the authors and make the final decision.
  3. The compensation is around 400 / 240 / 160 for three columns, respectively, the same as article review. We publish 0-2 articles per column per business day.
  4. Please fill out the contact form or send your CV to admin@cryptosmartbeta.com to apply, with email titling 'applying for editor from [your name]'.

 

Partnership Program

The partnership program is our peculiar way to look for partners. We can never overemphasize the importance of independent thinking, knowledge distribution and publication. We want to hear your insights on the market. We are looking for quantitative people alike. The best way to communicate with the brightest minds in this world is to publish and let your voice be heard.

  1. All our partners will receive an additional percentage of tokens from the foundation, to be decided on a discretionary basis depending on the nature of your contribution. The natures of partnership include but are not limited to: administrator, publisher, reviewer, researcher, trader and portfolio manager. Bonus rewards in each category only applies within that scope. However, one can obtain partnerships of multiple natures. Long-term, high-quality contributors will enjoy higher cuts.
  2. All tokens acquired from the partnership program will lock within the foundation pool and release 20% per year. To qualify for the partnership program, please keep contributing to our project and document all accomplishments and timestamps.Your efforts will be recognized and compensated.
  3. We will open up the partnership application in two months after program commencement. We cordially invite you to participate in quests actively and apply. We do review all applications, but the availability will be highly limited, please lower your expectations. Your existing contributions are retroactive and qualify for the partnership bonus too.
  4. Loss of partner status: if a partner stops contributing to the project for over 2 months of certain nature, he/she will lose the partner status therein automatically. Any further contributions will not receive the partnership bonus, unless you reapply and are deemed qualified again. However, the locked tokens remain unaffected and will still be released as planned.
  5. We will invite some referenced authors and partners to co-author the whitepaper with us when we are ready to launch the first token sale.

 

Crypto Book Co-management

  1. If your strategy is referenced, selected into production and allocated, we will invite you to co-manage the book with us. If you accept, your main responsibilities are to generate quantitative signals, update the positions and P&Ls in a timely, predefined manner, and possibly to execute orders if you want more impact. You can elect not to expose your positions to the public, but the investors may likely favor more transparency when they allocate assets. However, we as co-manager need your positions to confirm your P&L. Your P&Ls shall be public and updated on a weekly basis.
  2. We will observe your paper trade results out-of-sample routinely.  If they pass our criteria, we will open up asset allocation to your book, and possibly let you execute trades if the strategy is simple and you are available, in which case we will allocate you a trading account without withdrawal privileges. The only way to earn 50% cut in management fee is to participate fully along our investment processes.

 

Website Development

  1. The compensation is in COMMs and negotiable.
  2. We are looking for developers to construct a subscription / voting system for articles, strategy allocation system (using COMM or BTC), and possibly a lightweight marketplace for COMM and BTC conversion, either OTC or exchange API, with account management and order book support.
  3. Please fill out the contact form and attach your CV or email admin@cryptosmartbeta.com to apply, titling 'applying for developer from [your name]'.