Terms of use

No company stands behind this website or the software it serves (the Interface). It is published as source by the people who wrote it, and these terms are the basis on which they publish it rather than a contract with a business. “We” and “us” mean those contributors; nobody sells the Interface, charges for it, or undertakes to keep it running.

They do not govern the Protocol: the contracts deployed on Robinhood Chain that hold the money and clear the drafts. Those run without our permission or anyone else’s, they cannot be altered or switched off by us, and anybody may reach them with their own software. If you stop using this Interface, the Protocol is unaffected and so is your money.

The risk disclosure, privacy notice, acceptable use policy and storage notice published alongside these terms form part of them.

Use the Interface and you accept all of it. If you do not accept it, do not use it.

An Account is a set of records held on your device and derived from a secret only you hold. A Note is one such record, and what the Protocol stores is a cryptographic commitment to it, never the record itself.

A Draft is an instruction to pay, drawn against a Note, payable on proof rather than on a signature. Clearing is the act of presenting a Draft to the Protocol, which verifies the proof and pays. A Clearing Service is a third party that submits a Draft and pays the network fee for doing so.

The Interface is software. We do not hold, control or have access to your money, your Account, your keys or your Notes at any time. Nothing you do here creates a deposit with us, a debt owed by us or a balance held by us.

We are not a bank, a credit institution, a broker, a dealer, a custodian, an exchange, a money transmitter, a payment institution or an investment adviser, and we hold no licence as any of them. Nothing here is insured or guaranteed by any government or compensation scheme.

The words account, draft, clearing, cheque and ledger describe how the software behaves. They do not mean a bank is involved, and no banking law or protection applies because we use them.

We owe you no fiduciary duty and give you no advice. We are not your agent, trustee or adviser, and nothing here is financial, investment, legal, accounting or tax advice.

There is no company, no staff and no support desk. Nobody is on duty, nobody is paid to answer you, and there is no service level of any kind. If this website disappears tomorrow, the Protocol keeps running and your money is reachable with any other software that speaks to it.

You may use the Interface only if you are old enough to enter a binding contract where you live and are legally able to do so.

You may not use it if you, or anyone you act for, are the subject of economic sanctions, are named on any sanctions or restricted-party list, or are located in or ordinarily resident in a sanctioned territory.

You may not use it where doing so would break the law that applies to you. Deciding whether it would is your responsibility, not ours, and we make no claim that the Interface is lawful in any particular place.

Your Account is derived from a secret that never leaves your device and that we never see. You are solely responsible for keeping it. There is no account recovery, no password reset and no administrator who can help: lose the secret and the balance it controls is permanently unreachable by anyone, including us.

A Draft that has cleared cannot be recalled, reversed, cancelled or refunded, by us or by anyone. You are responsible for the payment details you enter. A Draft written to the wrong details pays whoever those details belong to.

You are responsible for any tax arising from your use and for any reporting obligation it places on you. We do not report on your behalf and cannot.

You are responsible for the security of the device and the browser you use. The Interface is served as ordinary web code; a compromised device or browser extension can take your secret.

Clearing a Draft through a Clearing Service costs a fee, quoted before you commit and taken from your balance. The Protocol caps what any Draft may pay, and the Interface refuses a quote above that cap. Using your own wallet to clear instead costs you the network fee and no clearing fee.

We do not set the fee a Clearing Service quotes, and a Clearing Service is not obliged to submit your Draft.

The Interface is provided when and as it is available. We may change it, restrict it, suspend it or withdraw it at any time, without notice and without liability.

The Protocol’s owner can pause clearing for at most 7 days at a time. While a pause is in force nobody can move money in the Protocol, including you, until it lapses or is lifted. The owner cannot move your money at any time.

We may change these terms. The version in force is the one published here, and continuing to use the Interface after a change means you accept it.

The source is published at https://github.com/cheq3/cheq3 under GPL-3.0-or-later. That licence, not this page, governs what you may do with the code, and where the two differ the licence wins. Third-party components keep their own licences.

Names, logos and the visual design of the Interface are not covered by that licence and remain ours.

The Interface and the Protocol are provided “as is” and “as available”, with all faults and without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise. To the fullest extent the law allows we disclaim every implied warranty, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, accuracy and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Interface will work, will keep working, will be secure, will be free of defects, or that any Draft will clear, that any balance shown is correct, or that money put into the Protocol can be taken out again.

Nothing in these terms excludes any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising out of or connected with the Interface or the Protocol. That includes lost funds, lost or stolen keys, lost profits, lost data, loss of privacy, loss of business and any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive loss, on any basis in contract, tort, statute or otherwise, and whether or not we were told such loss was possible.

Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, our total liability to you for all claims is limited to the greater of the fees we actually received from you in the three months before the claim arose, or one hundred United States dollars.

Some places do not allow these exclusions or limits. Where that is so they apply only as far as the law permits, and the rest of these terms stand.

You will indemnify us against any claim, loss, liability, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your use of the Interface, your breach of these terms, or your breach of any law or of anyone else’s rights.

These terms name no governing law and no court, because there is no company on the other side of them to be governed or to be sued. They record the basis on which free software is published, not a bargain between you and a business.

Your rights in the source are the rights the licence in section 8 gives you, and that licence has its own terms, including its own disclaimer of warranty. Where that licence and this page differ about the code, the licence wins.

Whatever the law of your own country says about this, understand the practical position: the Protocol runs on a public chain, nobody can reverse, freeze or refund a transaction on it, and there is no fund, insurer or company from which a loss could be recovered. Treat every clause on this page as a description of that reality rather than as a promise about it.

If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, the rest continues in force and that part is treated as replaced by the nearest enforceable wording.

These terms, with the documents named in 1.3, are the whole of what is stated about the Interface and replace anything said before, wherever it was said and by whoever said it.

Not enforcing a right does not waive it. Anyone may run their own copy of the Interface under the licence in section 8, and these terms say nothing about the copy they run.

Headings are for reading convenience and do not affect meaning.

Legal notice should go to [email protected].

If you find a security defect, report it there before disclosing it anywhere else.