Terms of Service

Effective date: 2026-07-16 Version: v1

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the kestrel.markets platform ("Platform", "we", "us", "our"), operated by Longtail Studios, LLC, a limited liability company organized under the laws of the State of Florida, United States. By accessing the Platform, running a simulation, minting or accepting an Offer, or completing a payment, you ("you", "the customer", and, where you act through software, "your agent") agree to these Terms.

1. What the Platform is — and is not

The Platform hosts scarce computational resources (market data slices, deterministic simulation sessions, certified grading, and optional hosted execution runtime). The Platform is a tooling and infrastructure provider. The Platform:

money-transmission services, and does not act as your broker, adviser, or fiduciary**; and

process a Platform payment through our third-party payment processor.

Any brokerage or execution relationship you use is your own, with a broker you select and authorize; the Platform is the tooling you point at it.

All strategy, parameters, and decisions are yours (or your agent's). See the Simulation-Only & No-Investment-Advice Disclaimer for the controlling risk statement, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

2. Simulations are simulations

Free and paid simulation sessions run against historical or derived data in a deterministic sandbox. Simulated or "paper" results are hypothetical, do not represent actual trading, and do not guarantee or predict any future or live result. Past or simulated performance is not indicative of future results.

3. Accounts, agents, and authority

Anonymous trial use requires no account. Paid authority is granted only through the signed Offer → payment → Envelope flow. Payment is evidence that unlocks a bounded, pre-named scope — it is never open-ended authority (ADR-0002, ADR-0003). Scopes that carry regulated activity (e.g. broker connectivity or live trading) can be established only by a human signer; no machine payment alone completes them.

You are responsible for all activity conducted under your agent's authority and for keeping any credentials or capability tokens confidential.

4. Offers, terms binding, and payment

Each Offer is a platform-signed, one-time, bounded commercial proposal bound to a single Operation. Every Offer carries a terms_digest that cryptographically binds the Offer to the exact published version of these Terms (see §12). Payments are processed by our third-party processor (currently Stripe); by paying, you also agree to that processor's terms. Prices, ceilings, and expiries are shown on the Offer and on the activation/claim page before you pay.

5. Refunds

Refund eligibility is governed by the Refund Policy, incorporated by reference. In summary: certified digital work that has already been delivered is generally non-refundable, but we refund good-faith Platform errors. Nothing here waives any non-waivable statutory right you may have under the consumer-protection law applicable to you (see the Refund Policy §6 and the Privacy Policy §6).

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to: (a) use the Platform for unlawful market activity, manipulation, or fraud; (b) attempt to access another customer's Operation, workspace, envelope, or capability; (c) attempt to extract, redistribute, or resell raw licensed market data (see §7); (d) reverse, probe, or overload the Platform beyond documented interfaces; or (e) use the Platform to provide regulated financial services to third parties without your own authorization to do so.

7. Data license and the raw-data firewall

Raw market data (including any .dbn/.dbn.zst source feeds) is licensed to the Platform and is platform-private. The Platform serves and you may use only derived artifacts (simulation results, certified grades, metrics). Raw market data is never served, exported, or redistributed to you, and you may not attempt to obtain or redistribute it. This restriction survives termination.

8. Traces, model training, and data rights

The payment axis is the data axis: whether the Platform may learn from your usage is determined by whether you paid for it.

a training license over the operational traces of that usage — strategy runs, session events, simulation inputs and outputs, and interaction metadata: a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to use those traces to train, evaluate, and improve models and the Platform. This is a license, not publication: free-tier traces are not published, shared, or redistributed. Certified proofs you choose to mint are public — publishing the proof is the point of minting it — but a public proof does not expose the underlying trace.

100% proprietary to you. We do not use paid Operations' traces, strategies, configurations, inputs, outputs, or results to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any model, and we do not license or disclose them to anyone else. Paid traces are used only to deliver, certify, secure, and account for the work you purchased.

per-season trace terms (for example open-replay or sealed), stated in the season's terms and in the Offer you accept when entering; an open-replay season is an explicit, opt-in public arena. Those terms govern season traces; this section governs everything else.

The tier in force is determined by the Offer: if work was performed under a paid Offer, it is paid-tier and is never trained on.

9. Intellectual property

The Platform, its software, and its language/marks are owned by Longtail Studios, LLC or its licensors. You retain ownership of the strategy inputs and configurations you supply. Certified proofs and receipts we issue may be shared by you as evidence of work performed.

10. Disclaimers of warranty

THE PLATFORM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.

11. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, LONGTAIL STUDIOS, LLC WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY TRADING OR INVESTMENT LOSSES. OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO THE PLATFORM IN THE twelve (12) months PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. Each version is content-addressed: the terms_digest on an Offer names the exact version in force when the Offer was minted, so the version you accepted at payment time is verifiable and immutable. Material changes take effect for new Offers minted after the change.

13. Termination

We may suspend or terminate access for breach of these Terms or the Acceptable Use section. You may stop using the Platform at any time.

14. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.

Binding arbitration. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Platform will be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its applicable rules, before a single arbitrator, seated in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Judgment on the award rendered by the arbitrator may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Small-claims carve-out. Either party may instead bring an individual claim in a small-claims court of competent jurisdiction in Miami-Dade County, Florida, so long as the claim remains in that court and proceeds on an individual basis.

Class-action waiver. You and we agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims or preside over any form of a representative or class proceeding.

15. Contact

Questions about these Terms: legal@kestrel.markets, Longtail Studios, LLC, Miami, Florida, United States.