Challenges Update: Now Live!

Good Morning, Prosers, 

Challenges have been updated! New options are available and you can now attach prizes and entry fees, in the form of Prose Coins to your challenges. Winners take home the purse, and entry fees serve to either increase the prize pool, or reward you for writing a great prompt.

Entry Limits: You can now specify the minimum and maximum number of allowed entries. Minimum entries determines the minimum number of entries required, before the end date is reached, for a winner to be declared. If the minimum number is not reached, challenge entry fees and prizes will be refunded, and the challenge will be marked "expired." Maximum entries determines the maximum number of entries allowed. If the number of entries reaches the maximum before time runs out, the challenge will be resolved early and applicable prizes will be distributed.

Judgement: Winners can be chosen in one of two ways. 

Democracy challenges automatically choose the post with the most likes at the time of the challenge resolution, either when the end date or the maximum entry limit is reached. 

Monarchy challenges require the creator (you) to select a winner when the challenge ends. You will be notified by email when it's time to make a selection, and can select a winner by pasting the URL of the winning post on this page. 

*Premium challenges (challenges with prizes), require the winner to be selected by the monarchy rule, and for the selection to be confirmed by Prose.

** You can now check out the winners of previous challenges from this day forward by visiting the following link theprose.com/challenges/archive. The winners will only be displayed for challenges created from this point onwards.

Prize Rule: The prize rule determines how entry fees and winner prizes are used. 

Flat Prize challenges require the creator to provide the prize purse up front. If the challenge does not reach the required number of entries in time, that prize will be returned to the challenge creator. If it resolves successfully, the winner takes the prize. Entry fees for flat prize challenges go 100% to the creator until the prize is fully reimbursed, at which point the creator splits entry fees with Prose 50/50. 10% of the prize is charged as a non-refundable posting fee when the challenge is created. 

Compound Prize challenges add 70% of each entry fee to the purse, 20% goes to the challenge creator, and 10% to Prose. Compound prize challenges cost 100 coins ($1) to create.

Prize: The prize only applies to challenges with the prize rule set to "flat" or "compound." For flat prizes, the prize you enter is the prize the winner receives. For compound prizes, the prize you set is just a starting point. 70% of each entry fee is added to the prize until the challenge resolves.

Entry Fee: Entry fees are paid by participants to enter the challenge. Entry fees are optional for flat prize challenges, but are required for compound prize challenges. For flat prize challenges, the entry fee is used to reimburse the challenge creator. For compound prize challenges, 70% of the entry fee is added to the total prize purse, with 20% going to the creator, and 10% to Prose. Of course, you can still set a free-to-enter challenge with no prize either. The above applies to 'premium challenges' only

Posting Fee: When you post a premium challenge, you pay the baseline prize up front. That prize is stored until the challenge resolves, at which time the prize is sent to the winner. If the challenge expires before reaching the minimum number of entries, the prize will be refunded to you. In addition to the prize, you will be charged a small, non-refundable posting fee, equal to 10% of the base prize.

Along with this huge update, we have fixed a handful of bugs and cleaned house. 

We've got a couple more challenge extras we want to bring you, and then we shall be moving forward with our goals for improving your experience. 

Until next time, Prosers, 

Prose.