Prop Firm Technology Buyer Dependency Model 2026
A due-diligence framework for the questions that become expensive after a technology contract is signed: what can leave the platform, who controls critical decisions, which integrations remain portable, and whether operations can continue through migration or failure.
Four buyer-dependency layers
1. Exit & portability
- Who owns trader, challenge, transaction, payout and behavioural data?
- Is there a contractual right to export it at termination?
- Which formats, schemas and attachments are included?
- Are export timing, cost, retention window and deletion timing documented?
- Can active challenges, balances, rule state and historical events be reconstructed elsewhere?
2. Control & authority
- Who can change risk rules and breach logic?
- Who can approve, block or override payouts?
- Which actions require vendor intervention?
- Which administrative roles and audit logs remain under buyer control?
- Are payment, KYC and capital relationships held by the buyer or mediated by the vendor?
3. Integration dependency
- Is API access read-only, write-capable, event-driven or undocumented?
- Are webhooks complete enough to reproduce operational state outside the platform?
- Who owns third-party API credentials and commercial accounts?
- Can integrations survive a vendor change without being re-contracted?
- Are rate limits, versioning, deprecation and bulk-export routes documented?
4. Operational continuity
- Is uptime a marketing statement, service target or contractual SLA with remedies?
- What is the incident-notification and escalation path?
- Can the buyer obtain backups or recovery exports?
- Is there a documented parallel-run, cutover and rollback process?
- What support survives termination and for how long?
Evidence states
Each answer should retain its evidence state: Primary / verified public, Provider-stated, Unknown / not publicly evidenced, or Conflicting. A capability can exist while remaining unknown in public evidence. A provider-stated commitment is not silently upgraded to a contractual guarantee.
Why this is different from a disclosure score
A disclosure score asks how much a vendor publishes. This model asks what the buyer must establish before relying on the vendor operationally. A highly transparent provider can still create concentrated dependency; a less public provider can still offer strong contractual portability. PFV therefore does not collapse transparency and dependency into one synthetic grade.
Minimum evidence to request before signing
- A data ownership and termination/export clause.
- A sample full export or schema covering live and historical state.
- API/webhook documentation showing read, write and event scope.
- A responsibility matrix for risk rules, breaches and payouts.
- An integration/account ownership map.
- The governing SLA, measurement method and remedies.
- A migration, cutover, rollback and post-termination support plan.
How PFV will use the model
The framework extends PFV's due-diligence passports. Existing evidence is not re-labelled to fill new fields. New fields remain unknown until a traceable source supports them. Research coverage, matcher eligibility and commercial introduction readiness remain separate statuses.