Terms of Use.

1.1 The Service is under active development. Substantial parts of the Service operate, and may at any time operate, on Testnets. The Service is made available for the purposes of testing, evaluation, experimentation and development only.

1.2 The User acknowledges and accepts that Testnets and pre-production environments are subject, without notice and without any liability of the Provider, to: state resets, chain reorganisations, ledger wipes, snapshot rollbacks, redeployment of smart contracts with different addresses or different behaviour, breaking changes to protocols, schemas, data formats and interfaces, deprecation or removal of features, throttling, arbitrary parameter changes, downtime of indefinite duration and permanent discontinuation. Any data recorded in such an environment may be irretrievably lost or rendered unreadable at any time.

1.3 Any token, unit, credit, faucet allocation, point or balance issued, allocated or displayed in a Testnet or pre-production environment has no monetary or economic value, is not transferable for consideration, confers no claim of any kind against the Provider and creates no entitlement to any future token, asset, payment, allocation, airdrop, revenue share or other benefit. Any representation to the contrary is unauthorised.

1.4 The User acknowledges that the degree of decentralisation, the identity and number of participants operating the protocol, the governance arrangements and the extent of the Provider's own involvement and control will change over time, and that the Provider gives no assurance as to the timing, sequence, manner or outcome of that process. As the protocol becomes more permissionless, the Provider's practical ability to influence, correct, reverse, restore, moderate or discontinue any part of the network or of the data recorded on it will decrease and may cease entirely.

1.5 Nothing in these Terms obliges the Provider to develop, release, maintain, continue, decentralise, launch on mainnet or otherwise pursue Arkiv or any feature, roadmap item, specification or announcement. All statements about future functionality are non-binding.

2.1 Arkiv is a universal data layer for Ethereum that enables queryable, time-scoped and verifiable database chains. The expressions “time-scoped”, “lifecycle management” and “Expires In” refer to the addressability and lifecycle of records within the logic of the Service and do not denote deletion, erasure, destruction or confidentiality.

2.2 Arkiv is a specialised data layer merging blockchain guarantees with traditional database convenience, set to progressively become more permissionless and decentralised as the protocol matures. The platform enables developers to create and manage database chains (DB-chains) with built-in querying capabilities, time-based data lifecycle management and cryptographic verification. In particular, Arkiv provides:

• a specialised data storage and management layer, set to progressively become more permissionless and decentralised as the protocol matures;
• queryable database chains with cryptographic verification;
• time-scoped data lifecycle management (Expires In), which is a lifecycle and addressability mechanism and not a deletion, erasure or confidentiality mechanism;
• developer tools and SDKs for blockchain application development;
• integration capabilities with Ethereum and compatible networks.

2.3 By accessing or using the Service, you acknowledge that you understand the decentralised nature of blockchain technology and the associated risks.

2.4 The Expires In mechanism governs the time-scoped lifecycle of data within the logic of the Service. It is a lifecycle and addressability mechanism, not a guarantee of erasure, destruction, irrecoverability or confidentiality. Data whose retention period has elapsed may remain available in historical Blockchain state, in archive nodes, in node databases, in mempool records, in indexers, in block explorers, in caches, in backups, in forks and in any copy made by any third party, and may remain publicly retrievable indefinitely.

2.5 Cryptographic verification establishes, at most, the integrity of a record relative to a commitment and the fact of its inclusion. It does not establish that the underlying content is accurate, complete, lawful, authentic, authorised, current, fit for any purpose or attributable to any particular person. The Provider does not verify, validate, curate, review, moderate or endorse User Content.

3.1 The User represents and warrants that the User is at least 18 years old and has full capacity to act, including any legal power such as power of attorney or being the legal representative, where applicable; that the User is not subject to any sanctions measure or restriction and that access to and use of the Service is lawful for the User under all laws applicable to the User.

3.2 The Service is designed for, and directed at, developers and other technically competent users. The User confirms that the User has read the risks provided in these Terms and that the User has, or has obtained, sufficient knowledge and experience of distributed ledger technology, cryptographic key management, smart contracts and software development to assess the risks of the Service or has otherwise satisfied itself that it is prepared to bear them.

3.3 Access to the Service requires, and is dependent upon, elements that the Provider neither supplies nor controls, including internet connectivity, bandwidth and latency, functioning hardware, operating systems, browsers, runtimes, drivers, wallets, signers, hardware security modules, node providers, remote procedure call endpoints, indexers, relayers, oracles, bridges, domain name resolution, certificate authorities, cloud and hosting providers, electricity supply, correct system clocks and the availability and correct functioning of the relevant Blockchain. The Provider gives no warranty in respect of any such element and bears no responsibility or liability for its absence, failure, misconfiguration, incompatibility, degradation, compromise or discontinuation, or for the User's inability to meet any technical requirement.

3.4 The User is solely responsible for the procurement, configuration, security, patching, monitoring and operation of User Systems, and for the generation, secrecy, custody, backup, rotation and recovery of all Private Keys. The Provider has no access to Private Keys, cannot recover, reset, reissue, freeze or restore them, and cannot reverse, cancel, amend or recall any transaction signed with them. Any action taken through the User's Private Keys or credentials is presumed, unless the User proves the contrary, to be an action of the User.

3.5 The Provider is under no obligation to admit any person to the Service and may refuse, limit, condition, meter, rate-limit or revoke access, in whole or in part and in respect of individual users, categories of users, jurisdictions, network addresses or use patterns, at any time and without stating reasons.

4.1 The User expressly acknowledges and accepts that On-Chain Data is public. Anything recorded on, submitted to or propagated through a Blockchain in connection with the Service can be read, copied, indexed, aggregated, retained, analysed, correlated and republished without technical or legal restriction imposed or imposable by the Provider.

4.2 All records, including, where applicable, personal data and non-personal data committed to a Blockchain may not be altered, corrected, redacted, withdrawn, deleted or reversed by the Provider. The Provider may have no technical or operational ability to alter, correct, redact, withdraw, delete or reverse On-Chain Data, including in response to a request, instruction, injunction or order. Nothing in these Terms excludes or restricts any rights of data subjects or any obligations of the Provider under applicable data protection law. The exercise of such rights and the measures available to the Provider shall depend on the architecture, governance model and technical characteristics of the relevant Blockchain and on the nature of the data concerned. Subject to the foregoing and to applicable law, the consequences of an erroneous, unlawful, unintended, mistaken, duplicated, malformed or unauthorised transaction may remain recorded on the Blockchain and may be borne by the User.

4.3 The Provider does not act as custodian of User Content. The User is solely responsible for maintaining independent, complete and current copies of all data of importance to the User, outside the Service, and for the User's own backup, retention, export and recovery arrangements. The Provider bears no liability for data loss, corruption, unavailability, non-retrievability, incompleteness or inconsistency, however caused.

5.1 The User is solely and exclusively responsible for all User Content and for all activity conducted through the User's access, credentials and Private Keys, whether or not authorised by the User.

5.2 The User represents, warrants and undertakes, on a continuing basis and in respect of each and every item of User Content and each and every use of the Service, that:

• the User Content is lawful, and its creation, possession, upload, storage, transmission, publication, making available and permanent public disclosure through the Service does not violate any law, regulation, order or legally binding requirement applicable in Switzerland, in any jurisdiction in which the User is resident, established or present, in any jurisdiction which the User targets or in which the User makes its own products or services available, or in the jurisdiction of any person to whom the User Content relates;
• the User holds all rights, title, licences, consents, authorisations, permissions and legal bases necessary to submit the User Content to the Service, and to have the User Content made permanently and irrevocably public;
• the User Content does not infringe any intellectual property right, personality right, right of privacy or publicity, trade secret, moral right, database right or other right of any third party;
• the User Content is not subject to any confidentiality obligation, professional secrecy, banking secrecy, official secrecy, non-disclosure agreement, protective order or duty of discretion, and does not constitute inside information or a trade secret of any person;
• the User's use of the Service does not, and is not intended to, further, facilitate, conceal or constitute any criminal offence, tort, breach of contract or regulatory contravention.

5.3 The User must not upload, store, transmit, index, publish, make available or cause to be recorded through the Service any content that consists of, contains, depicts, describes, advertises, facilitates access to or otherwise relates to representations of violence and pornography in any form; material infringing copyright, trademarks, designs, patents or other intellectual property rights, including unlicensed works, circumvention information and counterfeit-related material; personal data processed without a lawful basis, unlawfully obtained or leaked personal data, credentials, identity documents, biometric templates, medical records, or data whose publication would breach the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (“FADP”) or any other applicable data protection law; trade secrets, confidential or privileged information, banking data or client data disclosed in breach of any legal, contractual or professional duty; malware, ransomware, spyware, exploit kits, botnet infrastructure, phishing kits, credential-stuffing lists, command-and-control instructions, or any code or data designed to disrupt, damage, gain unauthorised access to or exfiltrate data from any system; material facilitating fraud, forgery, money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, tax evasion, market manipulation, insider dealing, unlicensed financial services, unlawful gambling, pyramid or Ponzi schemes, or the sale of illicit goods, narcotics, weapons, explosives, stolen data or human beings; instructions or designs for weapons, explosives, chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials, or other content whose dissemination is prohibited by law; content prohibited by any applicable law not expressly listed above. The above enumeration is illustrative and not exhaustive. The fact that a category of content is not listed does not imply that its submission is permitted.

5.4 The Provider is under no obligation to monitor, screen, filter, review or moderate User Content or User conduct, and does not do so. The Provider is nevertheless entitled, at its sole discretion and without prior notice, to investigate, to restrict or refuse the further processing, indexing, query serving, propagation or display of any User Content within the components it controls, to suspend or terminate access and to preserve and disclose data and User information to law enforcement, supervisory authorities, courts or affected rightholders where the Provider considers this legally required, legally permitted and appropriate, or necessary to protect the rights, safety or property of the Provider, of users or of third parties. The Provider's technical ability to act is confined to the components it actually controls.

5.5 Suspected unlawful content or misuse may be reported to report@arkiv.network. The Provider will assess reports at its discretion. Neither the existence of this channel nor any action or inaction following a report constitutes an assumption of any duty to monitor, remove, block or verify, or an acknowledgement of control over any Blockchain.

6.1 The Provider is under no obligation to provide any support, assistance, helpdesk, response, onboarding, training, consulting, troubleshooting, migration assistance, bug fixing, patching, update, upgrade, security fix or maintenance of any kind. Any assistance actually rendered is voluntary, gratuitous, provided without warranty and without any acknowledgement of duty, and does not create any entitlement to further assistance, any service level or any waiver of these Terms.

6.2 The Provider may at any time, at its sole discretion and without liability, modify, restructure, redesign, reprice, restrict, limit, deprecate, suspend, discontinue or permanently withdraw the Service or any part, feature, endpoint, interface, network, environment, protocol version or component of it, including in a manner that is not backward compatible and that renders existing integrations, tooling, data structures, queries or DB-chains inoperable, inaccessible or unreadable. The Provider will endeavour to give reasonable advance notice of material discontinuations where practicable but is not obliged to do so and incurs no liability for failing to do so.

6.3 On any discontinuation, suspension, reset or termination, the Provider is under no obligation to export, extract, migrate, convert, deliver, preserve or restore any data, or to provide any transition assistance or wind-down period.

7.1 All intellectual property rights in and to the Service, including the software, protocol design, smart contracts, source and object code, documentation, interfaces, databases, structures, know-how, designs, names, logos and trade marks (including “Arkiv”), are and remain vested in the Provider or its licensors. Nothing in these Terms transfers or assigns any such right to the User.

7.2 Subject to the User's full compliance with these Terms, the Provider grants the User a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence, for the term of these Terms, to access and use the Service for the User's internal development, testing and evaluation purposes. Any use beyond that licence requires the Provider's prior written consent.

7.3 To the extent that any part of the Arkiv codebase or Service is made available under an open-source licence, the User may use, copy, modify, adapt, distribute and otherwise exploit that part in accordance with the terms of the applicable open-source licence. Nothing in these Terms shall restrict the rights granted under such licence or impose additional restrictions inconsistent with it. Except as expressly permitted by an applicable open-source licence, these Terms, mandatory law or a separate agreement between the Provider and the User, the User must not copy, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, rent, lease, lend, sell, sublicense, transfer, host as a service, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or attempt to derive the source code of any proprietary component of the Service. The User must not remove, obscure or alter any proprietary notices or use the Provider's names, logos or trademarks without prior written consent, except where expressly permitted by applicable law or licence terms.

7.4 By submitting User Content to or through the Service, the User grants the Provider and its affiliates, which may include technical operators and providers such as node operators, validators, sequencers, indexers, and other third-party network participants facilitating the Service, a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable and sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, transmit, propagate, cache, index, query, aggregate, display, distribute, make available and create technical derivative works of the User Content, to the extent necessary to operate, provide, secure, verify, maintain, develop and improve the Service.

7.5 The User acknowledges that, because of the public and immutable nature of Blockchains, the public availability of On-Chain Data may not be revoked, restricted or terminated by either party, and that this is a consequence of the technology rather than of this licence. In respect of components operated by the Provider off-chain, the licence terminates when the User Content is removed from those components.

8.1 The Provider processes data under Swiss FADP and a privacy notice published at the following address: https://arkiv.network/privacy.

9.1 The User bears all Gas Fees, network costs, node and infrastructure costs, exchange fees, spreads, slippage and third-party charges arising from the User's use of the Service. Gas Fees are set by the relevant Blockchain and its participants, not by the Provider, are highly volatile and unpredictable, and are not refundable. A transaction may fail, revert, time out or be dropped while still consuming Gas Fees. Amounts paid to any Blockchain or third party are not recoverable from the Provider.

10.1 The Service may interoperate with or depend upon third-party technical infrastructure, including Blockchains, protocols, smart contracts, node providers and wallet providers. Certain components may be operated or controlled by the Provider, while others are operated independently by third parties.

10.2 The Provider does not act for, does not control, does not supervise, does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any third party or third-party system, nor for its availability, security, integrity, performance, solvency, lawfulness, conduct, terms, fees, changes, defects, compromise, discontinuation or content, nor for any act, omission, error, exploit, insolvency, seizure, censorship or failure attributable to it. The User’s relationship with any third party is exclusively between the User and that third party and is governed by that third party's own terms, which the User is responsible for reviewing.

11.1 To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Provider expressly disclaims all warranties and representations, including any warranty of merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, currency, security, durability, interoperability, absence of defects and absence of interruption, and any warranty in respect of the results obtainable from the Service. Without limitation, the Provider disclaims all liability and gives no warranty in respect of: transaction delays, failures, reverts, timeouts, dropped or stuck transactions and mempool eviction due to blockchain network conditions; unpredictable transaction costs on the Ethereum network and any other Blockchain, including fee spikes, priority auctions and failed transactions that nonetheless consume fees; blockchain splits, hard and soft forks, chain reorganisations, rollbacks, replay attacks, chain halts, finality failures and protocol changes affecting the Service or the persistence, ordering or readability of data; potential vulnerabilities, defects, logic errors, upgrade errors, proxy and storage collisions, oracle manipulation and economic exploits in deployed contracts, whether or not audited; theft, compromise, corruption or destruction of Private Keys, seed phrases or wallet access, and any resulting permanent and irreversible loss of data, assets or access; government, legislative, supervisory, judicial or law enforcement actions affecting blockchain operations, the Service or the User's ability to use it, including prohibitions, licensing requirements, seizures, blocking orders, sanctions and adverse tax treatment; wallet providers and node operators, or other services, including their failure, insolvency, compromise, censorship or discontinuation; Testnet resets and data destruction; hacking, unauthorised access, intrusion, exploitation, phishing, social engineering, malware, ransomware, front end and interface compromise, address poisoning, replay and man-in-the-middle attacks, insider attacks at any third party, and any theft, destruction, alteration, exfiltration or public disclosure of data or assets resulting from any of the foregoing, whether directed at the Provider, at a Blockchain, at any third party or at the User.

11.2 The User acknowledges and accepts the inherent risks of cryptographic systems, including: advances in quantum computing potentially compromising encryption, digital signatures, commitments and hash functions; discovery of vulnerabilities, weaknesses or backdoors in cryptographic algorithms, primitives, curves, random number generation, implementations or libraries; human error in key generation, storage, backup, rotation or management; malicious attacks on cryptographic implementations, including side-channel, fault injection, downgrade and implementation-specific attacks.

11.3 No advice, statement, information or documentation, whether oral or written, obtained from the Provider or through the Service creates any warranty not expressly set out in these Terms.

11.4 The exclusions in this Section apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, and the corresponding warranty is limited in duration and scope to the minimum permitted by that law.

12.1 To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Provider, its affiliates, and its and their bodies, officers, employees, agents, contractors, auditors, advisers, licensors and node operators shall not be liable to the User for any loss or damage of any kind arising out of or in connection with these Terms, the Service, its use, its unavailability or the inability to use it, including:

• any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages;
• loss of profits, revenue, savings, goodwill, reputation, business, contracts or business opportunities;
• loss, corruption, destruction, unavailability, non-retrievability or public disclosure of data;
• loss of, or loss of access to, any cryptocurrency, token, digital asset or Private Key, and any diminution in the value of any such asset;
• damages resulting from network congestion, forks, reorganisations, chain halts, Testnet resets or any other blockchain condition or event;
• financial losses from cryptocurrency, token or gas transactions, including failed, reverted, mistaken, duplicated or unauthorised transactions;
• security breaches, hacking, exploits, unauthorised access to user accounts, wallets, keys, systems or data, and any theft or misappropriation resulting from them;
• any act, omission, failure, insolvency, compromise or discontinuation of any third party or third-party system;
• any regulatory, supervisory, tax, criminal or civil proceeding, sanction, fine, penalty or seizure affecting the User;
• business interruption, cost of substitute services, cost of remediation, wasted expenditure or management time;

and this irrespective of the legal basis of the claim, whether in contract, tort, unjust enrichment, statute or otherwise, and irrespective of whether the Provider was advised of, or could have foreseen, the possibility of such loss.

12.2 To the maximum extent permitted by Article 101 paragraph 2 of the Swiss Code of Obligations, any liability of the Provider for the conduct of its auxiliary persons, including employees, agents, contractors, subcontractors and other persons engaged in the performance of the Provider's obligations or the exercise of its rights, is excluded.

12.3 If any exclusion or limitation of liability specified herein is held unenforceable in whole or in part, it applies to the maximum extent permitted, and the remaining exclusions and limitations remain in full force.

13.1 The User shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless the persons whose liability is limited under Section 12 above (each a “Protected Person”) from and against any and all claims, demands, actions, proceedings, investigations, orders, liabilities, losses, damages, fines, penalties, awards, settlements, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees, expert fees, forensic and remediation costs, and the internal cost of responding to authorities) arising out of or in connection with: (a) any User Content, including any allegation that it is unlawful, infringing, defamatory, harmful or processed without a lawful basis; (b) any breach or alleged breach by the User of these Terms, of any representation, warranty or undertaking given by the User, or of any applicable law, regulation, order or third-party right; (c) the User's use or misuse of the Service, or use by any person through the User's access, credentials or Private Keys; (d) any breach concerning the User Content provided under these Terms, or intellectual property; (e) any claim by a third party, data subject, rightholder, authority or regulator relating to the User Content or to the User's use of the Service, including any request or order for the deletion, rectification, blocking or disclosure of On-Chain Data derived from User Content submitted by the User.

13.2 The indemnity provided within Section 13.1 does not extend to, and the User is not liable to indemnify any Protected Person in respect of: (a) any loss, claim or liability caused by the unlawful intent or gross negligence of a Protected Person; (b) any liability arising from the design, architecture, coding, deployment, configuration or operation of the Service by or on behalf of the Provider, as distinct from the content submitted or the conduct engaged in by the User; (c) any claim to the extent attributable to the Provider's own breach of these Terms or of applicable law; or (d) any amount to the extent it exceeds what is attributable to the User's own content, conduct or breach.

13.3 This indemnity is independent of, and not limited by, the limitations of liability provided under these Terms, and survives termination of these Terms.

14.1 The User may terminate these Terms at any time by ceasing all use of the Service. Termination does not, and cannot, remove, delete or withdraw any On-Chain Data.

14.2 The Provider may, at any time, at its sole discretion, with or without cause, with or without notice and without liability, suspend, restrict, rate-limit, condition or terminate the User's access to the Service in whole or in part, and terminate these Terms. The Provider will exercise this right in good faith and, where the User so requests and the Provider is not prevented by law, by an order or by an overriding security or investigative interest from doing so, will inform the User of the general reason for the measure and, where the measure is capable of being remedied by the User, of what is required to remedy it. Without limitation, the Provider may do so where the Provider suspects or determines that: the User has breached these Terms; the User Content is or may be unlawful; the User's activity threatens the security, integrity, availability or lawful operation of the Service or of any network or third party; the Provider is required or advised to do so by law, by an authority or by a court; or the Provider discontinues the Service or the relevant environment. For the avoidance of doubt, where the Service relies on distributed, decentralised or independently operated network infrastructure, any termination of the User’s access or revocation of access rights shall be limited to the Provider-operated or Provider-controlled components of the Service and shall not extend to infrastructure or network components outside the Provider’s control.

14.3 On termination, the licence provided under these Terms terminates immediately and the User must cease all use of the Service. Termination does not entitle the User to any refund, compensation, damages, data export, migration assistance or transition period, and does not affect any right, claim or liability accrued before termination.

14.4 Any provision of these Terms which by its nature is intended to survive termination including, without limitation, provisions relating to definitions, intellectual property rights, limitation of liability, indemnification, dispute resolution, governing law and jurisdiction, and any other rights or obligations which by their nature ought reasonably to continue beyond termination shall survive the termination or expiry of these Terms for any reason.

15.1 The Provider shall not be liable for any failure or delay in performance under these Terms due to circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to natural disasters, fire, flood, earthquake, severe weather and epidemics or pandemics; acts of war, hostilities, insurrection, civil unrest, sabotage or terrorism; government actions, regulations, sanctions, embargoes, blocking orders, seizures, expropriations, court orders and administrative measures; labour strikes, lockouts and industrial disputes; internet, telecommunications, electricity, cloud, hosting and data centre infrastructure failures; shortages or unavailability of hardware, software, semiconductors, energy or third-party services. During force majeure events, the Provider will make reasonable efforts to minimise service disruption and to communicate updates to users. The Provider's obligations are suspended for the duration of the event, and either party may terminate these Terms if the event continues for more than 30 days.

16.1 The Provider may amend these Terms at any time. The amended version will be published with an updated version number and effective date. Continued access to or use of the Service after that date constitutes acceptance of the amended Terms.

16.2 A User who does not accept an amendment may terminate these Terms with immediate effect at any time before the amendment takes effect, by ceasing all use of the Service. Termination on this ground is without cost to the User and does not prejudice any claim accrued before termination.

17.1 These Terms create no partnership, joint venture, agency, employment, fiduciary, trust or exclusive relationship between the parties.

17.2 The Provider may assign or transfer these Terms, in whole or in part, to any affiliate, successor, acquirer of its business or assets, or to any entity without the User's consent.

17.3 If any provision of these Terms is or becomes invalid, unlawful or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force, and the invalid provision is to be replaced by a valid provision that comes as close as possible to the economic and legal purpose intended by the parties. The same applies to any gap in these Terms.

17.4 These Terms, together with the privacy notice and any document expressly incorporated by reference, constitute the entire agreement between the parties in respect of the Service and supersede all prior or contemporaneous statements, representations, understandings, communications and agreements in respect of it, whether oral or written.

18.1 These Terms, and all matters arising out of or in connection with them, are governed exclusively by substantive Swiss law, to the exclusion of its conflict of law provisions and to the exclusion of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

18.2 Before initiating formal legal proceedings, the parties will endeavour to resolve the dispute through good faith negotiations for a period of 30 days from written notice of the dispute. For blockchain-specific disputes, the parties may agree to consult experts familiar with distributed ledger technology.

18.3 The ordinary courts of Zug, Switzerland have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the use of the Service.