[sukaka]

I've been lurking on Quantopian for a few months. The algotrading community is secretive. Currently, you code in python which is then saved and run on their servers. I fear Quantopian copying the best trading strategies for their own use. Even if you black box the code, all Quantopian needs is I/O with your program. What's to stop this?

[dunster]

We get this question at Quantopian periodically.

You retain ownership of the content you put in our system; everything you write is yours. Your intellectual property remains private and your own. You can read more about our policies in our terms and in our FAQ (https://www.quantopian.com/faq and https://www.quantopian.com/policies/terms)

Of course, there is no way that we can prove or guarantee that we're not peeking. Like anything else in the cloud, at some point it becomes a matter of trust. That's why we did our About page a bit differently (https://www.quantopian.com/about). We're all startup veterans with reputations in the industry. You can click the links there and find out who we know in LinkedIn, and see what they say about us. We hope that our good reputations make it easier for you to trust us. Of course, that is entirely up to you!

[bitcuration]

Trust can take care concerns of credit card transaction, banking, or privacy. But when it comes to trade secret, intellectual property, trust is irrelevant. If you're working on trust, you're on the wrong path.

Traders need to keep their algo close to themselves. What you can offer is not testing their algo on your platform, but separating the their critical algo from the commodity data mining then offer the latter. The latter is what most traders don't have and you can add value. The ability of separating the algo, might just be your competitive edge.

[toomuchtodo]

As a Quantopian user, thank you.