Status: recommended product direction and conditional release specification. The features below are designs, not claims of live provider access, available yield, or approved promotions.
Reviewed: September 5, 2026.
Accepted expansion: the unified thesis and Clubs and Harvest specification add reviewed social Bundle plans, separately enrolled managed strategies and customer-directed proceeds routing. Merchant sharing remains private by default. Opt-in financial publications and approved operator compensation follow that extension, not merchant-referral rules or a grant of financial authority through engagement.
This document defines the earning and acquisition loops supporting Forage's core promise: customers earn money and build, hold and trade their own asset bundles. The earnings and asset-bundle specification controls that financial experience. This specification extends the responsible engagement system and end-user experience specification. Financial authority continues to follow the account and mirror system. Commercial preparation follows the publisher onboarding runbook.
1. Product decision
Forage helps people earn money from funded rewards and eligible income products, then build, hold and trade their own bundles of tokenized equities and other approved assets. Customers choose the instruments and allocations and control their holdings inside dedicated subaccounts or approved provider accounts. Investment results can be positive or negative. Merchant discovery, discounts and sharing support this financial product with useful earning opportunities and acquisition.
Suggested public promise:
Earn money. Build and trade your own asset bundles.
Suggested supporting copy:
Earn funded cash rewards and income from eligible holdings. Choose your assets, build your bundles, and decide when to add, sell or rebalance.
The primary takeaway is making money and controlling what it builds. A bundle is the existing Personal Basket: one customer's chosen constituents and allocation plan, with actual assets in that customer's accounts. Trading a bundle means buying, selling or rebalancing its underlying holdings. It does not sell the subaccount or create a transferable Forage share. Wallet administration and merchant trails support the experience. Received income follows actual provider terms; discounts, new deposits and unrealized gains are never relabeled as earned cash.
Decisions and candidates
| Item | Decision | Release condition |
|---|---|---|
| Customer-created asset bundles | Core financial v1: create, hold, add, sell and explicitly rebalance | Customer-isolated accounts, approved provider bindings, current leg quotes, customer confirmation and settlement evidence |
| Private earnings and investment results | Core Home experience | Source-specific rewards, received income/dividends, realized/unrealized P&L and attributable fees; deposits separate |
| Local trails, planned-purchase lists, illustrated merchant passport | Supporting earning and acquisition experience | Usability, merchant content rights, and location-optional verification |
| Fixed merchant rewards and checkout discounts | Core reward mechanism | Written merchant permission, published conditions, bounded funding, attribution and reversal handling |
| Cash or merchant-value redemption | Core customer choice | Approved fulfillment and funds flow |
| Customer-selected tokenized equities | Core bundle holdings and self-directed trading | Live provider and jurisdiction approval, customer account, disclosures, current quote and confirmation |
| Optional income account | Core product workstream; provider not yet selected | Approved product, customer consent, fees, liquidity, loss and custody disclosures |
| Recurring reward-to-investment routing | Later conditional feature | Explicit mandate plus provider and architecture release gates; manual review first |
| Friend groups and fixed merchant referral rewards | Pilot in bounded cohorts | Privacy controls and a funded campaign independent of investment activity |
| Card-linked automatic qualification | Later convenience feature | Approved commercial enrollment and transaction-data consent |
| NFT/token ecosystem collaborations | Later candidate | Fixed sponsor budget, compatible distribution rules, no investment or trading condition |
| Random cash, mystery securities, purchase-linked spins, deposit multipliers | Excluded | No launch path in this specification |
| Protocol token emission as reward backing | Excluded from economic base case | Market value or future emissions cannot secure cash liabilities |
2. Core financial and supporting growth flows
Flow A: Create, hold and trade a personal bundle
The customer opens Portfolio → Bundles, selects Create bundle, gives it a name and chooses eligible assets with target allocations. Forage resolves each asset to the customer's approved subaccount and provider binding. A draft records intent without trading. The customer can fund a bundle using their own eligible cash without first completing a merchant activity.
Each bundle shows holdings, current and target allocations, available cash, source-specific income, realized and unrealized gains or losses, and pending actions. Its direct actions are Add money, Buy, Sell and Rebalance. Sell supports a selected holding, a proportional slice of eligible constituents, or an exit from all eligible holdings. Rebalance previews the exact sales and purchases needed for the customer's selected targets; changing a draft allocation does not itself authorize them.
One review summarizes the constituent orders, total costs, expected proceeds, provider/custody differences and any unavailable leg. A supported atomic transaction either completes all included legs or reverts. Independent provider or chain orders may fill partially; the review says so before confirmation, and the result states what filled, what remains held, what cash is available and what needs attention. No retry resubmits a completed leg. Further trading outside the confirmed intent requires a new review.
The full behavior and release tests are in the earnings and asset-bundle specification. Selling holdings does not transfer the account, and a mirror never duplicates the assets. Additional provider bindings appear only after their individual trading and reconciliation capabilities are proven.
Why use Forage: earn money, see the actual financial result, and control personally composed bundles through a simple account experience. Holding without trading remains a complete product use.
Flow B: Find something useful and earn a known reward
The customer opens Explore, chooses a town or uses optional location, and sees nearby offers or a saved purchase list. Each offer shows the actual discount, any separate cash reward, qualifying spend, exclusions, end date, and expected confirmation time. A customer can save a trail without buying anything.
The main action is View offer. A second screen explains exactly how qualification works: activate an approved tracked link, use a merchant code, submit a supported receipt, or use an enrolled card. Forage preserves the terms version and attribution record. GPS presence alone never proves a qualifying purchase.
Example copy, with illustrative commercial terms:
Harbor Books: Save $4 on a $40 purchase. A separate $2.16 cash reward becomes available after merchant approval and receipt of the reward payment. Taxes and excluded items do not qualify. See terms for review and payment timing.
If the discount and reward cannot be combined, the interface shows that before activation. Only genuinely compatible combinations appear as a combined offer. Affiliation copy sits beside the offer: “Forage may earn a commission from this purchase.”
After a merchant confirms a valid activity, an illustrated passport stamp may appear immediately if it has no cash or financial rights. The financial receipt has its own state:
Purchase tracked. $2.16 is pending. We will update you after merchant review and when reward funding arrives.
The stamp makes discovery satisfying while the receipt remains honest about value. Approval alone leaves a receipt Approved, awaiting payment. It reaches Available only after the applicable review/reversal rules, actual funding receipt, and reconciliation pass, or under a separately disclosed guarantee backed by fully reserved cash. If the purchase is returned, the receipt is adjusted under those terms. Support can explain the source event and terms without asking the customer to understand an affiliate network.
Why return: the person has another planned errand, wants to revisit a good place, or has a new reward to review. There is no requirement to open Forage daily.
Flow C: Put available rewards toward a chosen goal
Home leads with a private view of Cash rewards earned, Income received, Dividends received, Realized gains/losses and Unrealized gains/losses for a chosen period. Each source is shown after its attributable fees and corrections, with calculation and freshness details. Deposits, withdrawals and internal moves have their own contribution history. Available rewards is a current balance, separate from period earnings, and links to Use rewards. Its choices are permitted merchant redemption, cash withdrawal, adding to an approved income account, or buying into a customer-selected bundle.
Investment is optional. A customer denied securities eligibility retains the reward and the other permitted redemption choices. Reward balances do not earn yield just because they appear inside Forage.
The investment path asks the customer to choose eligible instruments or a previously authored bundle (Personal Basket). Forage then resolves the provider route and shows the exact asset, issuer, rights, provider, custody, price, fees, restrictions, and expected settlement. The customer confirms the constituent orders. After settlement, those holdings remain available for holding, adding, selling and customer-confirmed rebalancing inside the same bundle. Buying stock in a merchant is never the default consequence of shopping there.
Example review copy:
Use $12.00 of available cash rewards for the holdings you selected. Review the price, fees, and provider before confirming. Investments can lose value.
If provider minimums or fees make a tiny order uneconomic, cash stays available. A customer-selected threshold can create a reminder. Later, a separately signed mandate may enable a batch purchase within exact limits. Forage does not manufacture daily micro-orders to create activity.
The optional income path is a distinct product review. It shows whether the actual instrument is a bank deposit, money-market product, tokenized Treasury exposure, or another approved product. They are not interchangeable. The customer sees the variable rate, fees, principal risk, provider, actual protection if any, withdrawal timing, and distribution schedule. No provider is selected or deposit accepted merely by accepting reward terms.
Example display only when supported by the actual provider:
Estimated income today: $0.04. Income is posted on the provider's schedule. The rate can change. You do not need to check in or claim it.
The customer may choose a factual weekly receipt showing newly available merchant rewards, posted income, and dividends separately. Approved rewards still awaiting funding appear in a separate pending section. Market gains are shown separately from earned proceeds. A saving goal is never described as guaranteed to be reached through investment returns.
Why return: review new available value, understand progress, and adjust a personal plan. Customers continue receiving entitled income while away, subject to the provider's actual terms.
Flow D: Share a useful trail and explore together
A customer makes a short trail, such as Books and a good coffee, with three public merchant stops. The share card contains the stops, accessibility information, offer conditions, and a private invitation link. It contains no balance, wallet address, security choice, trade, or return.
The recipient can preview the trail on the web before making an account. Joining creates a private group membership after consent. Each member can add a merchant note or collect nonfinancial stamps at their own pace. There is no live location feed. The group host cannot see financial accounts or act for members.
A merchant may sponsor a fixed referral campaign. For example, “You and your friend each receive $1 after their first eligible merchant reward becomes available.” The specific amount is a prepublished campaign obligation with a reserved budget. Referral terms describe the qualifying merchant action, return window, geographic restrictions, household/self-referral policy, and payment timing.
Referral qualification never requires a brokerage account, deposit, investment purchase, token trade, NFT purchase, or balance lock. It creates no percentage of the friend's future financial activity and no reward for a second generation of referrals. Referral value comes from an allocated sponsor budget or realized commercial contribution; forecast lifetime revenue is not committed funding.
Suggested invitation disclosure:
Join my neighborhood trail. If the merchant referral terms are met, we can each receive $1 from Forage.
Why share: the trail is useful to a friend, the group has a shared outing, and a disclosed fixed benefit may help. The product must earn sharing even with the monetary referral disabled.
3. Make discovery feel like a game
Social Bundles, Clubs and Harvest
Original meme-themed Bundle plans can publish a short thesis, exact eligible instruments and versioned weights. Make it mine imports an inactive draft; suggested changes receive a new customer review. Customer financial snapshots need separate opt-in disclosure controls. Operator records show net results, risk and conduct, not prize-driven return rankings.
Clubs sit within Explore, and their separately approved managed allocations appear in Portfolio. Joining a community and authorizing a trader are different actions. Managed strategies use the separate operator, account, mandate and collateral gates in the Clubs extension. Performance-linked service compensation, where legally permitted, is not a promotional reward; initial KOL compensation excludes follower trading volume.
Harvest routes customer-chosen available rewards or settled proceeds through approved funding paths to personal Bundles, permitted cash accounts or withdrawals. A transfer is not new earnings; proceeds are not all profit. Manual review comes first, and a managed trader does not receive Harvest withdrawal authority. Broader automation has a separate mandate.
Merchant discovery and cosmetics
Nature imagery is a visual layer. Financial balances and actions retain literal names. Primary navigation is Home, Explore, and Portfolio; reward history and groups are reachable within these surfaces. Settings contains authority controls. One screen should have one clear next action.
Customers can name and visually distinguish their own bundles and see their selected composition clearly. Creating a useful personal collection is part of the appeal. Its illustration does not grow with balance, returns or trade count. Earnings and bundle controls remain central even for a customer who never uses a trail or passport.
| Mechanic | Customer experience | Economic behavior |
|---|---|---|
| Neighborhood passport | Collect illustrated stamps for participating places and free discovery activities; complete a page in any order | Cosmetics have no cash value, yield, redemption promise, or financial authority |
| Personal trails | Assemble a route around an existing errand, interests, access needs, and time available | No spend target, distance race, or requirement to visit every stop |
| Shared field guide | Friends add short practical notes and favorite public places | Private by default; public publication is explicit and moderated |
| Planned-purchase list | Save an intended purchase; see relevant offers when the customer returns or requests an alert | Offer ranking shows total customer cost and terms; higher spend is not progress |
| Neighborhood request board, later candidate | Neighbors independently save a wanted category, such as bike repairs; local merchants can offer a fixed discount to that audience | Only consented aggregate demand is shared, above a privacy threshold; no purchase commitment or pooled payment |
| Sponsored route | A merchant pays for a clearly labeled place in a themed trail | Sponsor money pays the campaign cost; paid placement never affects security selection |
| Fixed group benefit | An approved sponsor funds a known benefit for individually eligible members | Each accepted eligibility has reserved funding; no growing pot or payout dependent on later recruits |
| Seasonal visual collection | Choose a known decorative theme and earn listed stamps through nonfinancial discovery | Missing a season never reduces money, yield, levels already earned, or account rights |
| Weekly progress receipt | “$8.40 in merchant rewards became available; $0.21 income posted; $0.00 dividends” | A factual source breakdown, not a score, annualized combined yield, or investment prompt |
A soft animation can acknowledge a passport stamp or a completed plan. Order buttons, trade confirmations, gains, and losses remain calm. The collection is available without financial-account enrollment. No streak resets, loot packs, rarity odds, live-return contests, or leaderboards based on spending.
Free stops make a trail usable on a no-spend day: public art, an accessible landmark, a merchant story, or a community activity with appropriate permission. These earn cosmetics only unless a sponsor has separately funded a fixed real-world benefit under published terms.
The request board is the most promising later network-effect experiment. People bring a real need; merchants see enough anonymous local demand to fund a useful offer; friends share the resulting trail. Members still decide individually whether to buy. The offer amount is known before acceptance, and the merchant reserves every accepted entitlement. Forage never promises a growing discount funded by a future crowd. Test this against ordinary merchant listings to establish whether it creates incremental value for both sides.
4. Source-specific money and progress
The interface must not add pending rewards, coupons, estimated income, cash, and portfolio value into one spendable total. Making money is visible through truthful source-specific results: earned funded rewards, received income/dividends, and realized and unrealized investment P&L. Show gains and losses with equal prominence. Attribute fees once to the relevant source; when fees or cost basis are unavailable, mark the result incomplete rather than asserting a net amount. Transferring a reward into a bundle is a contribution to that bundle, not new earnings for the customer. Reinvested income is not counted again when it purchases holdings.
| Source | Main customer states | When it becomes usable | Key distinction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checkout discount | Saved offer → Applied / Not applied / Expired | At the merchant checkout under its terms | Money not spent is not cash deposited into Forage |
| Affiliate reward | Tracked → Pending → Approved, awaiting payment → Available; or Adjusted / Declined / In review | Confirmation, applicable reversal policy, funding receipt or explicitly capitalized advance, and reconciliation all pass | Locked or approved does not necessarily mean money has arrived |
| Direct merchant benefit | Reserved offer → Verification pending → Available / Redeemed; or Released / Declined | Campaign cash or benefit inventory backs the obligation and the qualifying event is accepted | Merchant invoicing receivable is not available cash |
| Referral reward | Qualified, pending checks → Available; or Declined / In review | Valid merchant qualification, unique attribution, fraud review, and reserved funding | An invitation, install, or brokerage order is not revenue |
| Income account | Principal settled; Income estimated → Accrued per provider → Posted; withdrawal may be pending | Actual product distribution and redemption rules | Accrual frequency, cash distribution, and liquidity differ |
| Equity dividend | Announced → Eligible / Estimated → Received / Adjusted | Provider confirms entitlement and payment | A dividend is not guaranteed, daily, or income for every holding |
| Investment order | Needs review → Processing → Settled / Needs attention | Provider and chain completion rule | Shares or token units are not a reward receivable |
| Passport stamp | Recorded / Corrected | Immediate display after the permitted event | No monetary value; absent from all financial ledgers |
Show one principal state for each individual item and expose source details in a timeline. A delayed source should say “Waiting for merchant confirmation” or “Waiting for provider payment”, with the latest known estimate. A stale estimate is labeled; it is not silently pushed forward.
Available reward credits are claims against the applicable rewards operator until actually paid or transferred; they must not be presented as insured bank deposits or as customer brokerage cash. Terms identify the party that owes the value and the permitted redemption route.
Merchant reversals do not authorize a sale of a customer's investments or a debit from unrelated accounts. Advances, exceptional clawbacks, disputes, and fraud recovery require separately defined terms and operations. Defaults should avoid advancing unsettled affiliate commissions.
5. Commercial economics and funding
Offer economics are evaluated on the actual qualifying net purchase amount, after the offer's exclusions and discount treatment. The customer sees an offered reward amount or rate. Forage's commission is a separate contract term and may differ.
Illustrative offer, not a forecast or quoted partner agreement:
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Purchase before discount | $40.00 |
| Checkout discount funded by merchant | $4.00 |
| Qualifying purchase amount, assuming all $36 qualifies | $36.00 |
| Network commission at an assumed 10% | $3.60 |
| Promised customer cash reward | $2.16 |
| Payment, fulfillment, support, and expected loss costs | $0.44 |
| Contribution before fixed operating costs and growth allocation | $1.00 |
The customer receives $4 of checkout savings and a separate $2.16 reward when payable. Only $2.16 can be routed from the reward ledger. If the customer chooses to save the $4 discount as well, that requires a separate $4 transfer of their own money and fresh authorization.
For an individual campaign:
commercial contribution
= settled merchant/network revenue
+ earned sponsor service revenue
- promised base rewards
- fulfillment, payment, support and realized/expected loss costs
discretionary growth budget
<= cash-backed approved allocation from commercial contribution
or an explicitly budgeted company/sponsor marketing subsidy
Sponsor deposits are not earned revenue merely because received. Customer reward obligations, unearned sponsor deposits, reserve requirements, accrued tax/fees, and contractual refunds remain reserved before free funds are allocated. Treasury cash must not be counted twice across campaigns, referral promises, token distributions, or operating commitments.
A funded reward is a liability when the applicable promise becomes binding. Campaign capacity is reserved atomically at the accepted commitment point defined by its terms. Exhaustion prevents new commitments; it cannot remove already accepted entitlements. A general “subject to budget” message does not fix an oversubscribed campaign.
The base business case excludes token appreciation, future deposits, customer principal, and future customer income. Income paid to a customer remains theirs. A clearly agreed provider/platform fee may be revenue only under the actual contract; an assumed spread is not a source available for reward funding.
Referral example: a $2 combined reward cannot be paid from the single $1 contribution above without another approved source. It needs a separate sponsor allocation, prior realized campaign contribution, or an explicit acquisition subsidy. Show organic contribution and subsidy separately when judging performance.
6. Privacy, referrals, and abuse controls
Referral attribution is one eligible new person to one inviter under a deterministic, published window. Check duplicate identities, repeated payment instruments where permitted, self-referrals, suspicious device clusters, refund rings, and merchant collusion. Collect only the data justified by the funds flow and fraud policy. Wallet address count is never a count of distinct people.
Apply a per-person, per-inviter, per-merchant, and campaign cap. Publish relevant eligibility limits. Do not publish detection thresholds that defeat fraud controls. A legitimate household or shared-device case needs a review path; a single signal is not sufficient proof of abuse. Earned rewards in review receive a visible reason category and service timeline.
Sensitive data is not a viral feature. Shared pages exclude balances, holdings, earnings, account identifiers, live location, and route history by default. Inviting friends does not upload an address book. Recipient joins, member visibility, and public trail publication require separate choices. A member can leave without losing money or changing financial authority.
Map discovery works with town search. Qualification uses merchant-approved links, codes, card matching, receipts, or review; it remains possible without location, push, or advertising-tracking permission. No unsafe road crossing, driving use, trespass, isolated late-night destination, or precise residential pin belongs in a suggested trail.
7. Financial consent and automation
Reward participation, card transaction matching, precise location, income-product enrollment, securities-account opening, and money-moving mandates are distinct consents. Do not combine them into one Start earning action.
Forage uses the customer's AGW authority and provider-approved dedicated account instances where supported. The rewards service cannot create an owner, delegate, investment order, or mirror allocation. Every financial transfer is a normal authenticated, authorized, idempotent intent with a durable result.
The launch default is customer-confirmed movement of available eligible cash. Later routing automation requires a selected destination, exact instruments where relevant, amount threshold, source eligibility, frequency, cost bound, lifetime cap, expiry, and a clear Pause / Revoke control. Revocation does not confiscate a pending reward or cease income owed under a provider's terms.
Mirrors synchronize bounded control state for actual account instances. They do not duplicate rewards, principal, holdings, or income. A source reward may fund one resolved transfer, with reconciliation preventing another chain or retry from spending it twice. No ERC-6551 account wrapper, transferable personal basket share, pooled customer capital, or speculative cosmetic token is introduced.
AI can explain source balances, help draft an errand route, compare approved merchant offers on disclosed customer criteria, and explain a user-authored savings rule. It cannot choose securities, increase spending to unlock a benefit, treat a high commission as the customer's best deal, or expand its own permissions.
8. NFT and token ecosystem candidates
Partnerships can bring an audience and creative identity without making financial risk the entry ticket.
| Candidate | Acceptable proposed shape | Excluded shape |
|---|---|---|
| Community-themed trail | Partner licenses art and funds a known merchant benefit; normal Forage eligibility applies | More benefits for higher token balance, trade volume, or new token purchases |
| NFT artist passport | Fixed commissioned art for free cosmetic collection; provenance displayed where useful | Mystery paid mint, yield-bearing badge, or account ownership tied to an NFT |
| Partner campaign budget | Sponsor prepays approved fiat/settlement value; Forage records enforceable obligations | Volatile token pledge treated as full cash backing |
| Community referral | Fixed disclosed merchant reward with the same qualification and cap as other groups | Reward for token trading, securities orders, social posting, or downline recruitment |
These are later candidates. The mobile-web pilot can use ordinary accounts and offchain cosmetics. Native-app distribution receives a separate implementation review: Apple's current rules constrain crypto task rewards and NFT-based unlocking. Web distribution does not remove financial, advertising, privacy, or promotion obligations.
9. Measurement that can prove or disprove the thesis
The primary outcomes are net cash earnings delivered to customers and customers able to hold and manage their own funded asset bundles. Track them separately: a reward recipient need not invest, and a bundle owner need not shop or trade repeatedly. Customer income, dividends and investment P&L retain separate source labels and fee treatment. A rising portfolio caused by deposits does not demonstrate earnings or investment performance.
Report acquisition, value, retention, and contribution separately:
| Measure | Definition and purpose |
|---|---|
| First financial value | Time to the first available funded cash reward, received income/dividend or settled customer-authored bundle, each reported separately |
| Reward activation | New eligible customers with a first valid merchant claim; report pending and available cohorts separately |
| Usable value delivered | Cash/merchant value actually made available or delivered, net of corrections; checkout discounts reported separately |
| Reward resolution | Median and tail time tracked → approved → funded/available; missing reward and reversal rates by provider |
| Meaningful retention | D30 and D90 activated customers who intentionally use an offer, review a reward, manage a goal, or manage an account; exclude push opens and passive accrual |
| Funded account retention | Customers retaining an active financial relationship; separate from engagement and never improved through withdrawal friction |
| Customer-directed ownership | Customers with their own funded bundles, source-separated contributions and confirmed access to underlying holdings; reward and own-cash funding distinct |
| Bundle control | Completion and recovery for create, hold, add/buy, partial/full sell and rebalance; measure fees, partial fills and settlement errors rather than order volume |
| Earnings visibility | Customers can explain rewards earned, received income/dividends, realized/unrealized gains or losses and net attributable fees without counting deposits as income |
| Customer outcome | Net reward value after user fees, planned-versus-unplanned purchases, and self-reported usefulness |
| Contribution | Mature net commercial contribution per activated and retained customer, before and after referral/subsidy costs |
| Merchant value | Cost per verified qualified customer, repeat visit cohort, and incremental contribution where controlled measurement is possible |
| Healthy exits | Ability to redeem, stop alerts, unlink a card, pause automation, or close a relationship without lost entitlements |
Define first-generation viral coefficient over a fixed acquisition window:
K30 = fraction of eligible activated customers who share
× unique invited prospects per sharing customer
× prospect-to-new-signup conversion
× new-signup-to-valid-activation conversion
retained K = K30 × referred activated cohort's D30 meaningful retention
For this coefficient, valid activation means a first merchant reward reaching Available after the funding and verification gates. Report a pending-claim coefficient only as provisional. Deduplicate recipients across inviters, exclude existing accounts and fraud, apply one attribution rule, and report interval uncertainty. Example assumptions of 30% sharing, 3 unique prospects, 40% signup, and 50% activation produce K30 = 0.18. At 60% referred retention, retained K = 0.108. A pleasant sharing loop does not prove self-sustaining virality; paid traffic or merchant distribution may still be necessary.
A K above 1 alone is insufficient if each cohort loses money or floods merchants with low-quality claims. Measure invitation complaints, share utility without a reward, referral incrementality against an appropriate control, fraud loss, payback, and contribution of referred users. Do not count multi-generation growth twice.
Financial-reward economics need mature cohorts. A four-week engagement result cannot prove profitability when a merchant takes months to confirm or pay. Maintain forecast, locked/approved, and realized cohort economics at 30, 60, 90, and 120 days or the actual longer partner cycle.
10. Experiment and release sequence
Stage 0: prove earnings clarity and bundle control
Test a mobile-web prototype with representative adults, including users who decline location and investment enrollment. Validate source-specific earnings and the full bundle flow: create allocations, hold, add, sell a slice or all, and explicitly rebalance. Include a negative-return scenario and a partial provider fill. Prepare one market, a short merchant category list, written publisher rights, and a funded campaign ledger. Pursue equity-provider and account-binding evidence in parallel. Use sample values prominently labeled as such.
Stage 1: prove merchant value
Launch a bounded pilot with approximately five to ten consenting merchants and approved affiliate programs. Offer fixed rewards, simple receipt/support recovery, free cosmetic stamps, public trail previews, and manual redemption. Keep financial routing disabled until its own provider gates pass. Retain a non-incentivized comparison where feasible to test whether the trail itself is useful. This rewards-only pilot validates funding and acquisition; it does not fulfill the financial v1 promise. Build the bundle execution and earnings read models in parallel against approved sandboxes.
Stage 2: release the earnings and bundle financial v1
Full financial v1 requires one approved equity lane with customer-isolated account bindings, bundle creation and holding, customer-confirmed add/buy, partial/full sell and rebalance, and truthful source-specific results. Prove a permitted reward-funding route, provider completion, partial-fill recovery and customer exits. A read-only portfolio or reward-to-single-holding purchase is insufficient. Release an income product independently after its own terms and distribution tests pass. Add private groups and a tightly capped referral campaign only when funding and reconciliation have held through the relevant settlement cycle.
Stage 3: reduce repeat friction
Evaluate card-linked matching, customer-authorized reward batching, additional chain/provider routes, and richer merchant tools. Release one new capability at a time. The same customer experience persists while the backend gains adapters and separately scoped account instances.
Stage 4: expand distribution
Test creator trails, licensed community art, approved ecosystem sponsors, and native mobile delivery using mature contribution data. Expand geography only where merchant density, customer eligibility, data rights, and support coverage are real.
Each release requires reproducible reward reconciliation, no double-funded or oversubscribed commitments, an understandable alternative when a provider fails, and reviewed source-specific copy. Numerical conversion or retention targets are pilot hypotheses to set before an experiment; none in this document is a market benchmark or promised result.
Stop or adapt a loop if it increases unplanned spend, financial confusion, unwanted invitations, fraud, reward-driven or accidental trading, inappropriate mandate expansion, withdrawal friction, or support burden beyond the agreed threshold. This does not remove customer-requested buy, sell or rebalance controls; it prevents promotions from pressuring their use. Also stop an economically failing loop even if engagement rises. Preserve already earned benefits and customer exit paths when a campaign stops.
11. Primary sources and design implications
Sources checked September 5, 2026. Provider descriptions establish reference behavior, not Forage access or approved use.
- Acorns Earn documents merchant rewards that can take 60–120 days to invest and can change after returns. This supports pending-state transparency and a separate funding gate; it is not Forage's promised schedule.
- impact.com pending actions distinguishes pending, locked, and scheduled clearing states. Reversed actions explains why pending actions may be modified or cancelled. These establish the need for versioned, reversible attribution and a separate cash receipt state.
- Stash Stock-Back rewards shows that everyday purchases can connect to fractional ownership within a specific banking/card/brokerage arrangement. Forage should borrow the approachable outcome while preserving explicit customer choice and its own provider agreements.
- FTC endorsement guidance explains material-connection disclosure near recommendations and links. Offer cards, compensated trail placements, and referral share cards need visible disclosures that survive sharing.
- Apple App Review Guidelines constrain mandatory location/tracking permissions for monetary benefits, crypto rewards for certain tasks, and NFT ownership used to unlock app functions. This supports optional location, ordinary offchain cosmetics, and a separate native distribution review.
- Visa Offers Network describes enrollment, eligibility, offers, ledger, and payout capabilities. Card-linked convenience is a commercial/provider integration, not evidence that Forage may autonomously monitor cards or distribute every listed offer.