For two years, “funded trading” lived almost entirely in the crypto world. Retail traders proved their edge in evaluation challenges and, once funded, traded the exchange’s capital instead of their own. On July 20, 2026, Kraken pushed that model past its own borders: Kraken Prop, the company’s funded-account program, added the Nasdaq 100 as its first market outside crypto (Kraken’s announcement). Funded trading is sometimes called “capital as a service,” and the model has grown sharply since 2023 as retail interest in active trading met firms eager to monetize that interest without taking market risk themselves. Kraken is not inventing the category; it is importing a proven crypto-native version of it into equities.
Image: Kraken
What “funded trading” actually means
A funded-account program — often called a prop or proprietary-trading program — separates two things that are usually fused: the skill of finding an edge, and the capital to trade it. You pay a relatively small evaluation fee, demonstrate you can trade within a set of risk rules, and if you pass, the firm hands you a funded wallet to trade with its money. Profits are split; losses are capped at the program’s limits, not your savings account.
Kraken Prop has run this way for its crypto markets. The Nasdaq 100 addition applies the same rulebook to an index most equity traders already know cold — the second most-traded equity index future in the world, per Kraken’s own write-up.
The part traders care about: 24/7, no rollover
Traditional index-futures prop firms wrap trading in constraints that have nothing to do with your strategy. Sessions open and close on a schedule. Contracts expire and must be rolled. Positions get force-closed before the weekend. Kraken is explicitly marketing the absence of all three.
On Kraken Prop, the Nasdaq 100 trades 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no 4 p.m. ET cutoff and no pre-market or after-hours distinction to track. There is no contract to roll and no expiration date to manage — you can hold a position as long as your account rules allow, including straight through the weekend. For a trader whose edge was built around a specific index, the pitch is simple: the friction goes away, the market you understand stays.
How the evaluation works
Nasdaq 100 evaluations run on Prop’s existing structure. You choose a tier — Starter, Intermediate, or Advanced — with funded wallet sizes ranging from $5,000 to $200,000 and entry fees starting at $20. From there, the rules are:
- No consistency rules. There is no minimum win rate or required trading pattern you have to hit.
- No time limit. Trade at your own pace; there is no clock running out on your evaluation.
- A 3% max daily loss. Your risk limit is defined up front, so you always know the line you cannot cross.
- 2x leverage, sized for the instrument.
- An 80–90% profit split once funded, with payouts withdrawable to your Kraken wallet within 24 hours.
- A maximum position size of $100,000 in notional value per trader.
The economic logic is the same as any funded program: the firm rents you its risk capital in exchange for most of the upside, and it protects itself with hard daily-loss and leverage limits rather than by watching your every trade.
Who this is actually for
Kraken is blunt about the target user. “Skilled index traders don’t need a new market to learn,” the announcement notes. “They need capital to trade the one they already understand.” If you have built an edge on the Nasdaq 100 through a traditional futures-prop firm, that edge does not change on Kraken — what changes is the friction: no session windows, no rollovers, and a regulated name behind the capital.
That last point is the differentiator Kraken leans on. A funded program is only as trustworthy as the entity backing it; Kraken is a regulated exchange, and it is betting that a known, regulated venue lowers the hesitation a trader might feel handing evaluation fees to a less familiar prop firm.
How it compares to a traditional futures prop firm
The cleanest way to see the difference is to list what disappears. A typical equity-index futures prop firm gives you fixed trading sessions, requires you to roll expiring contracts, and force-closes positions before the weekend to avoid gap risk. Kraken Prop removes all three. What you do not get in exchange is the deep liquidity and tight spreads of the front-month CME E-mini or Nasdaq-100 future; you are trading Kraken’s venue, not the exchange where the underlying index futures clear. For a trader whose edge is directional and holds for more than a session, the 24/7 structure is a genuine advantage. For a scalper who lives on exchange-native spread and depth, the traditional route may still win.
Two numbers to watch: 2x leverage and the $100k cap
The program’s risk knobs are worth internalizing before you fund an evaluation. The 2x leverage is built for the instrument — enough to express a view without turning a normal down-day into a blown account, but still enough that a 3% daily-loss limit can arrive faster than with no leverage. The $100,000 maximum notional position size per trader is the ceiling on how large a single bet can get, and it sits well below the notional a funded wallet of $200,000 might tempt you to deploy. Respecting both is the difference between a sustainable funded account and a quick, expensive lesson.
The caveats you should read before paying
This is not a casual side bet, and Kraken says so plainly. The Nasdaq 100 program is described as an unregulated service, operated by Payward Oceanic Ltd. Most applicants do not pass on their first attempt, and there is no guarantee your performance improves or that you pass future evaluations. Evaluation fees are non-refundable for each attempt once trading begins, regardless of outcome.
The standard risk warning applies in full: don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose the money you put in, and this is a high-risk activity with no expectation of protection if something goes wrong. None of this is unique to Kraken — it is the standard anatomy of funded trading — but it bears repeating because the low $20 entry fee can mask how rigorous the evaluation is.
Why a crypto exchange is moving into equity indices
Step back and the strategic logic is clear. Crypto-native prop trading proved there is durable demand for “trade our capital, keep most of the profit” structures. Extending that to a marquee traditional index lets Kraken capture traders who would never touch spot crypto but are happy to trade the Nasdaq 100 — and pulls them onto a Kraken wallet in the process. It is customer acquisition dressed as product expansion.
Getting started
The Nasdaq 100 is live on Kraken Prop now. The path is the same as the crypto side: pick an evaluation tier, prove your risk management, and trade the index you already know on your terms (Kraken Prop overview). Treat the evaluation fee as tuition, size to the 3% daily-loss limit, and only commit capital you can afford to lose. As with any funded program, the edge you bring is the only thing the firm cannot supply for you.
