Authors publish an autonomous trading strategy; copiers subscribe and run it on their own wallet. The leaderboard ranks strategies by profit their copiers actually realized, not by author self-reports.
Fees are performance-only and high-water-mark accounted: an author earns a share of a copier's realized profit above that copier's previous peak, so a losing period is never billed and the same gain is never charged twice.
The ledger is pure accounting — it records what is owed and never moves funds. Publishing, subscribing and every fee record require a signed proof of wallet ownership.