Accepted specification direction - September 5, 2026. Implementation, commercial access and operating approvals remain outstanding.
1. Decision and precedence
The accepted product direction includes managed Forage Clubs and trader-funded risk sharing as part of the planned system. They are not merely engagement experiments. The unified thesis supplies the presentation story; this extension supplies the product boundaries.
This document narrowly supersedes earlier blanket bans on public financial sharing and copy/managed trading. It permits separately consented, reviewed financial publications and separately enrolled managed strategies. It does not permit public-by-default financial data, execution through a social click, reward-driven trading, pooled customer capital, account sales, ERC-6551, initial leverage or guaranteed returns.
Self-directed Bundles remain a complete product and the first financial release. Accepted roadmap membership does not mean a managed Club, collateral policy or provider route may launch before its own gates pass. Existing account, funds-flow, reconciliation and security rules continue to apply.
2. One product, distinct choices
Keep Home, Explore and Portfolio. Explore contains offers, shared plans and Clubs; Portfolio distinguishes Self-directed Bundles from Managed allocations. Clubs are communities, not financial accounts or asset pools. One Club may offer several separately approved strategies.
The customer can:
- Join a community without opening a trading mandate.
- Follow a versioned plan without placing a trade.
- Select Make it mine, producing an inactive personal Bundle draft for review.
- Review each suggested update and decide whether to trade.
- Separately enroll in an eligible managed strategy after reviewing its operator, account, assets, authority, fees, risks, exit and any coverage terms.
Only the fifth choice grants discretionary trading authority. Its review must say that individual trades within the signed scope can happen without another confirmation. Leaving the social Club does not silently liquidate holdings or cancel contractual obligations; mandate revocation and financial exit are explicit, accessible actions.
Original meme-native names and licensed artwork can identify plans and communities. Actual instrument identities, issuer rights and disclosures remain literal. Unavailable instruments are not silently substituted.
3. Customer ownership and operator authority
Reuse the existing STRATEGY Canonical Account and Account Instance classes. A managed allocation belongs to one Legal Account and binds to actual dedicated customer account instances or an approved provider structure that enforces the promised isolation. A UI label over a shared account is not adequate if the operator can access unrelated holdings.
The customer-signed mandate binds a verified operator and approved operating entity, strategy version, provider, exact eligible instrument universe, venues, account instances, actions, capital and turnover limits, concentration limits, pricing/slippage checks, expiry and recovery policy. The operator may choose trades within that universe; adding an instrument outside it, increasing authority or replacing the operator requires renewed acceptance. A public strategy update does not mutate a live mandate.
Delegates cannot change ownership/recovery, install modules or further delegates, approve arbitrary spenders, withdraw to themselves, use arbitrary targets/calldata, or access sibling accounts. Initial strategies exclude leverage and borrowing. Target/selector restrictions alone are insufficient: execution must independently validate received assets, recipients, economic amounts and price bounds.
No-withdrawal authority is not loss prevention. Manipulated prices, illiquid assets and trades against accomplices can destroy or divert value. Asset/venue screening, independent price quality, market-impact limits, related-party controls and incident monitoring are release requirements. A stop trigger or spending cap does not guarantee a maximum investment loss.
AGW root control is used only where approved. Each instance has its own accepted local authority, budget, nonce and expiry. Mirrors neither copy authority implicitly nor duplicate assets or collateral. Revocation reports local and remote completion, including already accepted orders. A request cannot reverse fills or promise instant cross-chain cancellation. Retaining holdings and requesting liquidation are separate exit choices.
AI remains an explanation, drafting and simulation tool. It may relay an already authorized action through approved execution infrastructure, but does not select securities or gain the trader's discretion through this extension.
4. Trader-funded collateral
Specify two distinct obligations:
- Conduct bond: collateral for defined breaches with evidence, attribution and adjudication rules. Ordinary market losses are not covered merely because this bond exists.
- Optional market-loss reserve: collateral expressly committed to reimburse defined customer losses up to a reserved cap during a stated period.
For each covered customer, identify the obligor, collateral holder, currency, covered account, starting coverage base, cap, covered events/exclusions, loss method, period, exit handling, valuation source, claims process, payment timing and release conditions. Review custody, insolvency enforceability and the legal classification of the arrangement before marketing coverage. Do not label it insurance or principal protection without a separately established basis.
Collateral must be prefunded and independently controlled against the agreed obligations. Apply liquidity and valuation rules; the operator's own illiquid token, future fees and anticipated customer yield are not reliable dollar backing. Customer investments, reward liabilities, operating cash and operator collateral remain separate ledgers and legal interests. Coverage is not part of a customer's spendable portfolio value before a valid payable entitlement arises.
For reserved per-customer coverage:
eligible claim = min(eligible net loss, customer's reserved cap)
sum of active reserved caps <= eligible collateral assigned to those caps
Apply the claim formula to the remaining unpaid loss and remaining cap after prior payments and overlapping committed claims. Coverage occupies mutually exclusive buckets: unclaimed reserved coverage, pending/adjudicated claim, submitted payout, paid or released. Submitting a claim moves an obligation; it does not free collateral. A payment consumes the original cap and never renews protection automatically. Coordinate conduct claims, market-loss claims and recoveries so the same economic loss is not reimbursed twice. Cash debited before delivery is reconciled as restricted payout-in-transit backing only that payment, not as free collateral or another reserve asset.
These are design invariants, not guarantees against collateral failure. If collateral is impaired, show the shortfall, stop accepting unsupported new coverage and apply the disclosed claims terms. Do not silently reduce existing rights. No shared first-come-first-served pool may be presented as an individually reserved amount.
Illustration only: ten customers allocate $1,000 each. An operator posts $2,000 of separate collateral, reserving $200 for each customer for one defined period. A $300 eligible net loss gives a $200 reimbursement and leaves a $100 customer loss. A total $1,000 investment loss still leaves an $800 loss. This assumes fully available collateral and eligible claims; it is not an offered policy or recommended coverage rate.
Measure the entire covered allocation, with consistent contributions, withdrawals, realized/unrealized values, fees and prior payments. Do not reimburse selected losing trades while ignoring gains elsewhere in the covered account. Define valuation for retained or illiquid holdings and prevent duplicate reimbursement after recovery. Early withdrawals, additions and strategy changes require deterministic treatment; new allocations cannot dilute existing reservations.
Use separate collateral lots, reservations, claims and payouts with explicit pending/final states. Reserve through the coverage period and claim-finalization window. An exit request, timeout or mirror acknowledgment cannot release collateral. A claim payment reduces available backing once; renewal needs new capacity. State whether fee holdbacks replenish the bond and when they become eligible collateral. Publish evidence of backing, not a bare escrow balance.
5. Compensation and reputation
Verified identity, a funded bond and past returns are not proof of skill. Operator admission also needs legal/provider fit, conduct checks, realistic execution capacity, conflict controls and an understandable strategy. Popularity does not increase financial authority.
Compensation is a financial-service term, not a promotional reward. Fixed, asset-based or performance-based fees require the applicable operating permissions, customer eligibility and disclosures. Do not assume broad U.S. retail customers qualify for performance fees. Initial design excludes KOL compensation based on follower trade volume. Issuer-paid deal fees need separate distribution and conflict review; a fixed fee is not an adviser-registration exemption.
Where performance fees are permitted, use customer-specific net performance and cash-flow-adjusted high-water marks. Do not charge for deposits, rewards, collateral reimbursements or merely recovering prior losses. Define crystallization, costs, valuation, fee holds and repayment obligations before enrollment. Do not release encumbered fees as free operator capital.
Accepting fee terms does not itself grant withdrawal authority. Collection requires a separately customer-authorized provider/payment mechanism with a defined formula, cap, recipient and reconciliation. The trader's execution delegate cannot self-debit arbitrary fees. Any narrow fee-collection permission needs its own custody and security review.
Operator records show dated actual performance, fees, drawdown, liquidity, capital traded, strategy changes, breaches, disputes and coverage history. Keep failed/retired strategies and losing periods in the relevant track record. Separate returns before coverage from claim payments and customer results after coverage. Label modeled results and missing data. Do not rank operators solely by short-term returns or buy authority through an engagement score.
Public customer snapshots require specific, revocable sharing consent and a precise data scope; public copies may persist after revocation. Account identifiers, balances, location and transaction feeds remain private by default. Required operator reporting does not authorize disclosure of identifiable customer data. Sponsorships and material interests must remain visible on shared content. Manipulation, fabricated performance and hidden related-party trading require monitoring and a moderation/appeal process.
6. Harvest
Harvest is a customer-facing funding journey, not a new asset, yield source, pooled vault or guarantee. It lets the customer select eligible available funds or settled proceeds and a destination: personal Bundle, permitted cash account or approved withdrawal. A managed trader's permission does not include Harvest withdrawals.
Manual Harvest uses the existing authenticated, customer-authorized funding and order-intent paths. Resolve the sender, recipient, currency, conversion, fees, tax information, funding acceptance and final settlement. External crypto proceeds require an approved funding route; do not route through Forage's operating treasury as a workaround.
Money transferred is not earned again. Gross proceeds include principal. Missing basis prevents a verified profit claim. Distinguish income, rewards, investment P&L and collateral reimbursements. The destination investment can lose value.
Later automatic Harvest requires a separate source/destination mandate, amount/frequency/lifetime caps, selected instruments where relevant, expiry and pause/revoke controls. A percentage-of-profit rule needs reliable cost basis, netting, settlement and anti-double-counting logic; balance growth is not profit. It cannot silently refill a managed trader's risk budget or make customer income collateral for someone else's losses.
7. Early access and multichain scope
Network connections may source legitimate opportunities, not bypass eligibility, issuer restrictions or duties concerning confidential information. Early-stage and illiquid deals are a separate gated offering, not an implied benefit of every Club. Review operator holdings and compensation, establish fair allocations before execution, prevent trading ahead of customers, and disclose lockups and unequal/partial fills.
Meme-token execution, derivatives, pooled/private-fund structures and broad discretionary AI are not authorized by this expansion. Supported tokenized-equity strategies and permitted income routes remain the focus. Any additional asset class needs a distinct decision and review.
8. Release gates and evidence
Social discovery and inactive plan remixes can be delivered separately after content, privacy, communications and provider review. The core financial release still proves rewards and the full self-directed Bundle lifecycle. Manual Harvest follows actual funds-route evidence.
Managed Clubs require their own gate: named approved operator/adviser structure, custody/provider agreements, client and compensation eligibility, strategy/venue controls, signed mandates, independent security review, reconciliation, customer recovery and support. Verify no sibling-account access, malicious swaps, unauthorized instruments, concurrent orders, partial fills, stale quotes, local/remote revocation and operator replacement.
Before promising a conduct bond or loss reserve, prove its legal terms, independently controlled backing, unique reservations, exact claim calculation, shortfall handling, early exit, disputed valuation, payout idempotency and release accounting. Test simultaneous losses, collateral impairment, collusion and operator failure. Pilot capacity is limited by the smallest of collateral, market liquidity, operations and approved exposure limits. Claim commitments already made survive a stop to new enrollments.
Track customer net outcomes, retained ownership, execution quality, successful exits, operator conduct, claims paid against commitments and contribution after costs. Model operator compensation and collateral opportunity cost separately; a small bond plus upside fees can still favor excessive risk. No growth assumption relies on 100x returns, unlimited followers or future deposits.
9. Primary review references
These sources inform diligence, not Forage approval. Reviewed September 5, 2026.
- SEC investment-club guidance: separate accounts do not settle paid-adviser questions.
- Current performance-fee exemption, Rule 205-3: applicable qualified-client and contract conditions need review.
- SEC broker-dealer registration guidance: execution, solicitation and transaction-linked compensation require analysis.
- ESMA copy-trading guidance: service classification, suitability, remuneration and trader qualifications are jurisdiction-specific.
- FTC endorsement guidance: disclose material creator/advertiser relationships.