Positioning in one paragraph
OptionsMatch soft-launches as free-first options research: Match directory and education plus Terminal multi-venue desks, monetized primarily through affiliate hops and partnerships rather than locking hollow features behind a self-serve paywall. Early-access badges and soft-launch banners exist so users know they are not on a finished institutional SLA product.
Honesty is a product requirement: live versus mock or degraded data is labeled; Pro or whitelist tools are not faked as unlocked for everyone; legal and affiliate pages stay visible. Operators should prefer shipping a smaller true surface over a larger theatrical one.
What users get for free today
Core Match surfaces — venues, countries, compare, find-venue, offers listings, guides, platform docs, and free intel layers as shipped — are intended for open research use subject to rate limits and soft-launch stability. Terminal desks for multi-venue books, vol, greeks, flow, and charts are available according to feed health and feature flags, not according to a fake checkout.
Account extras may exist for signed-in users without converting the entire app into a paywall. Whitelist or admin gates may protect experimental tools for operators and early testers; those gates should be described as early access, not as “your card failed.”
Wallet connection is not required for research. OptionsMatch does not custody funds and does not solicit seeds.
Live, mock, and degraded labeling
Multi-venue merges prefer live public APIs (Deribit, Bybit, OKX, Binance, Derive, Thalex, Paradex as configured). When a source fails — timeouts, Cloudflare blocks, geo limits, schema surprises — the sources desk and desk-level labels should show degraded or down states.
Mock data may scaffold UI during development or total outage scenarios but must not silently replace live books in a way that encourages real-money decisions. If you see mock labels, treat charts and chains as illustrative.
Enrichment from CoinGecko and DefiLlama can lag or partially fail independently of terminal adapters. Missing volume chips are not a green light to invent numbers in CMS copy.
Affiliate-first monetization
Outbound /go/{slug} hops and /offers pages support partner acquisition. Disclosures must remain readable. Compensation for sign-ups does not change the research-only nature of OM and does not justify aggressive dark patterns.
Users should still verify official domains after a hop. Operators should retire dead offers and avoid implying exclusive liquidity that public books do not show.
Free-first means the core loop — learn, compare venues, inspect multi-venue desks — works without payment. Affiliates fund the open surface rather than replacing it with locked stubs.
What Pro means (and does not mean) today
Pro is not a promise of fully shipped AI desk automation or institutional support SLAs at soft launch. Where Pro or whitelist features exist, they should map to real capabilities: experimental tools, higher limits, or operator-only admin, clearly named.
Do not present empty states as “upgrade to Pro to unlock” when the feature is simply unbuilt. Intel free layers and future Pro AI should remain separated in IA and copy when AI ships.
Self-serve Stripe checkout may appear later on the roadmap; soft launch can remain freemium-with-waitlist without faking a complete billing product.
Dual chrome expectations under soft launch
Match chrome and Terminal /t chrome both carry soft-launch honesty, but they fail differently. Catalog pages may be more cache-friendly; desks should emphasize feed health and poll behavior. Users hopping between /venue/paradex and /t/btc/book should see consistent venue naming and consistent refusal to custody keys.
Mobile bottom nav on Terminal and Match drawers should keep education and wallet safety reachable — security content is part of launch quality, not a postscript.
Operators testing dual shell regressions should verify legacy redirects, pair switchers, and sources labels on every release candidate.
Operator launch checklist (condensed)
Confirm legal pages (privacy, terms, affiliates) and soft-launch notices are linked from chrome. Confirm affiliate disclosures on offers and /go paths. Confirm early-access badge behavior matches NEXT_PUBLIC_SOFT_LAUNCH (or equivalent) configuration — default on for soft launch, off only when intentionally public.
Smoke-test enrichment jobs and major venue adapters; record known Thalex/Paradex quirks. Walk a new user path: guides → wallet education → venue profile → terminal book → official venue hop without ever requesting a seed.
Align public messaging with ROADMAP and RUNBOOK: phases complete versus next work, free-first positioning, and no overclaim on Pro AI or guaranteed feed uptime. Prefer linking this soft-launch doc from /docs so users and operators share one honesty contract.