Why 5 tiers?
Ktkarena is used by very different players:
- The beginner who tests with 1,000 KTK to see how it works.
- The recreational player who stakes from 10,000 to less than 50,000 KTK regularly.
- The enthusiast who starts challenges of 100,000-500,000 KTK.
- The expert who stakes several million KTK.
Without tiers, a beginner could get matched against an expert staking 500x more. That would create a brutal imbalance.
With 5 tiers, players are matched with opponents in their “category”, while keeping the option to move up.
The 5 tiers
| Tier | Stake range (KTK) | FCFA equivalent | Commission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | from 1,000 to less than 10,000 | from 1,500 to less than 15,000 | 5% |
| Standard | from 10,000 to less than 50,000 | from 15,000 to less than 75,000 | 4% |
| Premium | from 50,000 to less than 200,000 | from 75,000 to less than 300,000 | 3% |
| Elite | from 200,000 to less than 1,000,000 | from 300,000 to less than 1,500,000 | 2% |
| Institutional | from 1,000,000 to 20,000,000 | from 1.5M to 30M | 1.5% |
Why does the commission decrease with the tier?
It's standard business logic:
- Discovery: high commission (5%) because it's the majority of the volume. It's also a “discovery” tier where the service is expensive in user support.
- Standard and Premium: intermediate commissions (4% and 3%) matching regular players.
- Elite and Institutional: low commissions (2% and 1.5%) because these players stake a lot and the absolute commission remains significant.
Example. A 5,000 KTK pot in Discovery generates a 250 KTK commission. A 5,000,000 KTK pot in Institutional generates 75,000 KTK in commission. The proportion is lower but the absolute value is much higher.
The system prevents bad matchups
Imagine you stake 20,000 KTK (Standard tier). The system searches within your tier or the adjacent tiers (Discovery and Premium), not among 5-million challenges.
This is what we call the matching engine, organized in two phases:
- Direct matching: first within your exact tier (matching-direct-intra-palier), then cascading to neighboring tiers (cascade-inter-paliers).
- Pool phase: if no direct opponent is found by the end of the event, your challenge is absorbed by the mutualized pool (pool-phase-fin-event) or stays in the matching loop (matching-loop-pendant-event) until resolution.
Learn more about the matching cascade.
How do I move up to a higher tier?
Just start a challenge within the range of the tier you want to reach. No manual validation, no special procedure.
Example:
- You start 10 challenges in Discovery (from 1,000 to less than 10,000 KTK).
- You decide to start a 30,000 KTK challenge → you move to the Standard tier automatically.
- The commission applied to THIS specific challenge will be the Standard tier rate (4%).
You can change tier from one challenge to the next, with no constraints.
Why not below or above?
Why not below 1,000 KTK?
For an economic reason: below that, infrastructure costs (matching, escrow, verification) outweigh the value of the challenge. It's also to prevent spam from tiny challenges that could overload the system.
Why not above 20 million?
Because at that level, the amounts require specific oversight (enhanced anti-money-laundering, source-of-funds verification). If you want to stake above 20 million, contact our Institutional team directly at partnerships@ktkarena.com to set up a dedicated account.