The cost gate is a rule built into zengtrade's execution engine: a signal only becomes a real trade if its expected edge exceeds EDGE_MULT × round-trip cost, a multiple of what the round trip will actually cost in fees and slippage. A marginal signal that would only barely clear costs (or wouldn't clear them at all) is skipped entirely, rather than taken and quietly bled away by fees.
This exists specifically to stop high-frequency, low-edge strategies from "churning," generating a large number of trades that look active but net out to a loss (or a wash) once real trading costs are subtracted from each one.
It's applied uniformly, to every strategy in the library and every custom Builder strategy alike. The cost gate isn't a setting users tune per-strategy, it's a fixed rail the engine enforces underneath whatever signal a strategy (or a user-composed rule) generates.
Educational content, not investment advice. zengtrade is paper-first and non-custodial.