What the beta is

TopFlight is running a test before it opens for real money. The clubs are there, the prices move, the table is the published Premier League table and club tokens pay their holders second by second.

What stands in for what

The rest of this site describes TopFlight, as if it were live with real money. The beta version has five differences to what will be the live version:

• The money. Play money, on a test network. Eventually, real money held inside TopFlight will be the stablecoin USDC.
• The rate the money earns. A flat 4% a year, a fixed test setting rather than a rate read from a market. The play money is not deposited anywhere, so what it earns is that flat rate applied to play money. With real money the rate is whatever the deposits actually earn.
• The table. Two watchers post tables and can contradict each other inside the window. The finished form puts a bond behind each posted table and behind each dispute, which is set out in Where the table comes from.
• The transaction charge. In beta, it is paid by TopFlight, so a trade costs the market maker's fee and nothing else.
• The market maker's money. It is seeded with play money for the test. Eventually, it will be seeded with USDC.

Play money

Joining the test credits your account with $10,000 of play money. It arrives once and it costs nothing.

That $10,000 is your budget for the test.

Nothing can be cashed out

The play money, the tokens bought with it, and what those tokens earn all belong to the test.

None of it can be withdrawn, cashed out, sold for real money or moved anywhere else and none of it converts into anything that can be.

The test runs on a test network: a public copy of a live blockchain. Every trade is a real, permanent, publicly checkable transaction. The play money belongs to the test network and has no value outside it.

Taking part requires no technical expertise.

What the test is for

A dry run of the soon-to-be live system: real people trading, real results moving the table and daily pay building up across a stretch of a season, so that every part is proven.

Anything broken or confusing is worth reporting now.

Everything else is the product

The prices, what each place in the table earns, how a share is calculated, the fees and promotion and relegation all work exactly as the rest of this site describes them. Next: How to join.