> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.dega.trade/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The lifetime payout limit
- URL: https://blog.dega.trade/the-lifetime-payout-limit/
- Published: 2026-10-20T09:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-10T20:11:06.000Z
- Description: Each funded account can withdraw up to 20% of the deployable reserve at the moment it is funded: $4,000 at the recommended $25,000 seed. It never falls.
- Author: Dega editorial
- Tags: Payouts

You passed. Your funded $10,000 account has just finished its first full profit cycle: $1,000 above the starting balance, flat, with $800 of it yours to withdraw. You take it, the balance resets, and you start again.

A few cycles in, the question comes. How many times can you do this on one account?

The answer is the lifetime payout limit. At the recommended $25,000 seed it is $4,000, which is five full profit cycles on a $10,000 account.

## What the limit is

Every funded account has a lifetime payout limit set to 20% of the deployable reserve at the moment the account is funded. The deployable reserve is the payout reserve less an operating buffer: $20,000 of a $25,000 seed. Twenty percent of that is $4,000.

You can take it in any number of requests. Payouts are paid in USDG on Robinhood Chain and settled by smart contract, with no discretionary approval in between, at up to $800 per person per day. The $4,000 is the total. The $800 is only the pace.

Passing itself pays nothing. Assessment profit is a score, and your first payable dollar is earned in the funded stage. The funded account is still simulated: orders never reach Lighter's order book, and the balance is not your money. The payouts are what is real.

## Fixed when you are funded, and it never falls

The limit is set at the moment the account is funded, from the reserve as it stands then. After that it never decreases. If the reserve grows, the limit is recalculated upward at the next daily solvency check.

It is a share rather than a dollar amount so that one trader reaching it always represents the same fraction of the deployable reserve, whatever the seed. The paper's reasoning: a fixed dollar cap would over-correct at large reserves and under-protect at small ones.

| Reserve  | Deployable | Lifetime limit | On a $10,000 account  |
| -------- | ---------- | -------------- | --------------------- |
| $10,000  | $8,000     | $1,600         | 2 full profit cycles  |
| $25,000  | $20,000    | $4,000         | 5 full profit cycles  |
| $50,000  | $40,000    | $8,000         | 10 full profit cycles |
| $100,000 | $80,000    | $16,000        | 20 full profit cycles |

A profit cycle is your share of one full profit target: size x 10% x 80%, or $800 on a $10,000 account. It is a unit of measurement, not a limit.

## What happens when you reach it

- A withdrawal that would go past the remaining limit is paid up to the limit, not refused. The account then completes.
- A completed account closes in good standing, and you may buy a new assessment.
- Profit above the limit is not payable. Your remaining limit and any pending claim must be visible in the account at all times, so this is never a surprise.
- A [pending claim](https://blog.dega.trade/pending-claims-settle-in-order/) counts against the limit when it is created, not when it settles.

## Why it exists

An unfunded payout obligation has no natural ceiling. On a book where every payout is met from fees, a winning trader is a pure cost, and firms run that way hold their pass rates down to stay solvent.

The lifetime limit bounds any single account. The daily solvency gate bounds the book as a whole. The paper calibrates them differently on purpose, because neither is sufficient alone: a limit stops one name, the gate stops the aggregate.

Dega also hedges its total payout obligation with real positions on Lighter. Those positions are Dega's own, never yours. The paper is explicit that a working hedge is what makes a future without this limit possible: once the obligation is funded, the ceiling can rise and eventually be removed.

## The commitment about it rising

That future is written as a measured trigger, not an intention. Dega's revenue at launch is the assessment fee. The paper names other revenue lines, which it calls levers, and commits that the fee falls when measured lever revenue per funded trader clears a stated threshold, and that the lifetime payout limit rises on the same basis. Both are recorded at the daily solvency check and both are published. Neither moves on judgement.

Until then the rule is simple. The limit is fixed when you are funded, it can go up, and it never goes down.

---

*Nothing has launched. Every figure in this post is a design figure from the Dega yellow paper, version 2.0, dated 22 September 2026\. Dega is not an exchange, broker, custodian or investment manager. Accounts are simulated: orders do not reach Lighter's order book, and the account balance is not your money. Dega's hedge positions are Dega's own, never yours. Payouts are subject to a lifetime limit of 20% of the publicly visible reserve and a per-user cap of $800 a day.*