Terms of Use

1. Acceptance

By accessing or using the Interface, including by connecting a wallet, creating a token, submitting a transaction or simply browsing, you acknowledge that you have read, understood and agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Risk Disclosure and Privacy Policy, which are part of this agreement. If you do not agree, do not use the Interface.

Before you connect a wallet, we also ask you to say so. The connect screen will not let you choose a wallet until you tick a box confirming that you accept these Terms and the Risk Disclosure. You are asked every time you connect, and your answer is not stored on your device or anywhere else. That box is a confirmation of the paragraph above, not a replacement for it: using the Interface is acceptance whether or not you ever reach a wallet.

These Terms contain an arbitration agreement, a class-action waiver and a jury-trial waiver in "Disputes", and a one-year limit on bringing any claim. Read them.

2. Experimental software

This is early software in an experimental phase. It may contain bugs, errors and vulnerabilities, and a flaw in a contract, in the maths, or in an interaction between contracts can destroy funds in a way nobody can reverse or compensate. A launch contract cannot be patched once it is deployed, so a mistake in it is permanent. Treat everything you commit here as money you have already lost.

3. Who may use the Interface

You must be at least 18 years old and of legal age to form a binding contract where you live. By using the Interface you represent that you meet those requirements and that you are acting for yourself, or that you are authorised to bind whoever you are acting for.

You may not use Shards if you are:

• under 18;
• subject to sanctions administered by the United Kingdom, the United Nations, the European Union or the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), or acting for anyone who is;
• a citizen of, resident in, or otherwise present in a country or territory that is itself subject to those sanctions;
• anywhere that using an interface like this one, or trading the assets available through it, would be unlawful for you, or would need a registration, licence or permission that you do not hold.

The next section sets those categories out in the formal terms they are usually written in. The list above is the same thing in plain words, and neither is softer than the other.

We do not check any of this. We ask for no name, no document and no address, we do not look up where you are, and there is no geographic block on this site. Whether you are allowed to be here is yours to work out, and by using Shards you confirm that you are.

4. Prohibited persons and places

You represent and warrant that you are not, and are not acting on behalf of, a Prohibited Person. A "Prohibited Person" is any person who is:

• a citizen, resident, national or agent of, or an entity organised, incorporated or otherwise located in, any country or territory that is the subject of comprehensive economic sanctions or trade embargoes administered by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the United Nations, the European Union or any EU member state, or the United Kingdom (currently including, without limitation, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions);
• listed on, or majority-owned or controlled by any person listed on, any sanctions or restricted-party list, including OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List, the EU Consolidated List or the UK Sanctions List; or
• located in, resident in, a citizen of, or otherwise present in any jurisdiction where accessing or using the Interface, or the activities available through it, would be unlawful or would require a registration, licence or authorisation that we or you have not obtained.

Working out whether your own law permits what you are doing here is your responsibility, not ours. We do not give that advice and we do not check it for you. We do not make the Interface available to anyone in a place where doing so would be unlawful.

There is no identity check, no address screening and no geographic block on this Interface, and nothing here should be read as one. Your representation above is what stands between a Prohibited Person and this site. We reserve the right to block or restrict access from any place or any wallet address, at our sole discretion and without notice, and we may begin doing so at any time.

5. The Interface is not the contracts

The contracts are the smart contracts that power Shards: a factory, the launch contracts it deploys, and the NEP-141 tokens those create, all running on the NEAR blockchain. They are autonomous and permissionless. They run whether or not this website exists, and anyone can use them without it.

The Interface is one possible front end to those contracts. It reads chain data and formats transactions for your wallet to sign. We can take this website down; we cannot take the contracts down, stop a trade, reverse a transaction, or move anyone’s tokens. Your relationship is with the contracts and with the people you transact with through them, not with us.

6. What we can and cannot do

We hold two administrative keys on the factory contract, and this section says exactly what they reach so that nothing here reads as a disclaimer of a power we actually have.

• The factory owner key publishes the launch template used for *future* launches, and rotates the platform treasury, the takeover authority and the approved quote asset. It never affects a launch that already exists.
• The takeover authority key can re-point a launch’s *future* creator-fee recipient through the community-takeover process below, and nothing else.

Neither key can move your tokens or your NEAR, pause or halt trading, change a tax rate, mint supply, unlock liquidity, or reverse anything that has happened. No key anyone holds can. Assume that nothing done on chain can be undone, because it cannot.

7. We never hold your assets

You connect your own wallet and you sign your own transactions. We never take custody of your NEAR or your tokens, never hold your keys, and never have permission to move anything on your behalf.

That cuts both ways. If you lose your keys, send to a wrong address, sign a transaction you did not understand, or are tricked into approving something, we cannot undo it and we cannot get your assets back.

8. Anyone can create a token, and we do not vet them

Every token on this Interface is created by a member of the public using a permissionless contract. They are third-party content. We do not endorse, audit, verify, review, rank for quality or take responsibility for any token, its name, its ticker, its image, its description, its links, or the people behind it. Their creators may abandon them, mislead you, or act fraudulently.

Names and tickers are not unique. Two tokens can share a name. A token can be named after a real company, person or project with no connection to it. The account ID is the only identity that means anything. Always check it.

Anything you do with a token is between you, its creator and the other people trading it. Any dispute about a token is yours to bring against them, not against us.

9. Taxes on buying and selling are set by the creator, not by us

Each launch has a buy tax and a sell tax, chosen by the creator when the token is created and fixed permanently at that moment. They can be as high as the contract’s cap.

That tax is split between the creator’s fee wallet, holder dividends, a buyback and burn, added liquidity, and a platform share, in proportions the creator also chooses at creation. The Interface shows you the rates before you trade. Read them. A high sell tax means you get back much less than the price suggests.

Neither we nor the creator can change these rates after a token is created.

10. What we charge

We take a creation fee when a token is created, and a share of each launch’s trading tax, both as set in the contracts. Those amounts are shown in the Interface and enforced on chain. They are charged whether you win or lose, and they cannot be refunded or reversed by anyone.

Network gas and NEAR storage deposits are separate and go to the network, not to us.

11. You are responsible for your own taxes

Trading, receiving dividends, claiming fees and burning tokens may have tax consequences where you live. We do not give tax advice, do not withhold anything, and do not report on your behalf. That is yours to handle.

12. Community takeover

Some launches allow a community takeover, which re-points the creator’s future fee share to a new wallet. Where a launch has it enabled, a community applies, we review the application, and the takeover authority key executes it subject to the process and the checkpoint written into the contracts. Fees already earned before a takeover stay with the outgoing wallet.

Reviewing an application is not an endorsement of anyone, and we are not obliged to act on any application, to explain a decision, or to act within any time. If you are relying on who controls a launch, check its current state rather than assuming.

An application asks for contact details you type yourself. Do not put anything there you would not want an operator to read.

13. Risks you accept

You use the Interface and the contracts entirely at your own risk. Without limiting anything else in these Terms, you knowingly assume the following:

• Total loss. The value of a token can go to zero, and most memecoins do. You may lose some or all of what you commit.
• Extreme volatility. Prices move violently and in seconds, and these markets are thin, so a single order can move the price hard against you.
• Contract risk. The contracts are experimental, immutable once deployed, and may contain flaws that cause irreversible loss.
• Irreversibility. A wrong amount, a wrong address or an approval given to the wrong contract cannot be corrected afterwards.
• Creator risk. Creators earn from trading volume whether the price rises or falls, and may abandon, manipulate or misrepresent a token.
• Displayed figures. Prices, balances, charts, market caps, progress and holder lists come from an indexer that can lag the chain, stall or be wrong.
• Regulatory risk. The law around these assets is unsettled and can change in a way that affects what you hold or whether you may hold it.

The Risk Disclosure sets all of this out in full. Read it.

14. This is not advice

Nothing here is investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, tax advice, a recommendation, a solicitation, or an offer. Not a page, not a chart, not a label, not the ordering of tokens, not a trending list. We are not your broker, your adviser, or your fiduciary, and no relationship of trust exists between us.

15. What you may not do

Do not use the Interface to break the law, launder money, evade sanctions, manipulate a market, impersonate someone, infringe anyone’s rights, upload illegal or infringing images, attack or overload our servers, circumvent a rate limit, scrape it automatically beyond ordinary use, or misrepresent your identity or location.

16. Content you upload

You keep ownership of images and text you upload. By uploading, you give us permission to publish and display them through the Interface, and you confirm you have the right to do so.

Uploads are pinned to IPFS and referenced on chain. That is public and effectively permanent. We cannot delete an IPFS file from the network and we cannot alter anything already written to the blockchain. Do not upload anything you would not want to be public forever.

17. Third-party software and services

Your wallet, the NEAR network and its validators, the RPC providers we read through, the IPFS pinning service and any site a token links to are operated by other people. We do not control them, we are not responsible for them, and your use of them is governed by their own terms and is at your own risk.

18. We may change or withdraw the Interface

We may modify, suspend or discontinue any part of this website at any time, without notice. We may stop displaying a particular token without giving a reason. None of that affects the contracts, which keep running.

19. No warranty

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE INTERFACE AND ALL RELATED CONTENT AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE. WE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE INTERFACE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, ACCURATE, COMPLETE OR ERROR-FREE, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT IT IS FREE OF HARMFUL COMPONENTS. WE MAKE NO WARRANTY ABOUT THE CONTRACTS, ANY BLOCKCHAIN, ANY TOKEN, OR ANY THIRD-PARTY OR USER-GENERATED CONTENT. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN WARRANTIES, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

Prices, balances, charts, progress bars and holder lists are indicative. Do not treat anything shown here as authoritative. The blockchain is the record.

20. Limit of our liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL WE, OR ANY CONTRIBUTOR TO OR OPERATOR OF THE INTERFACE, BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, GOODWILL, DATA, TOKENS OR DIGITAL ASSETS, OR FOR ANY TRADING LOSS, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS, THE INTERFACE, THE CONTRACTS, ANY TOKEN OR ANY DIGITAL ASSET, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY OR ANY OTHER THEORY, AND WHETHER OR NOT WE WERE ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE INTERFACE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$100) OR (B) THE TOTAL FEES YOU ACTUALLY PAID TO US, AS OPPOSED TO NETWORK VALIDATORS, TOKEN CREATORS OR OTHER USERS, IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM. THESE LIMITS APPLY EVEN IF A REMEDY FAILS OF ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

21. You cover us

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the contributors to and operators of the Interface against any claim, loss, liability, damage or cost, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your use of the Interface or the contracts, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any law or any third party’s rights.

22. Disputes

Read this section carefully. It affects your legal rights.

Informal resolution first. Before starting any formal proceeding, you agree to contact us through the channel named in "Contact" and to try to resolve the dispute informally for at least sixty (60) days. This is an obligation on whoever raises the dispute. Nothing in these Terms obliges us to respond to, engage with or resolve any notice, and our silence is not an admission or a waiver.

Binding individual arbitration. Except where applicable law requires otherwise, any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Interface that is not resolved informally will be resolved exclusively by final and binding individual arbitration, rather than in court, administered under the rules of a recognised arbitral institution, before a single arbitrator, in the English language. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Class-action and jury-trial 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 CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. TO THE EXTENT ANY CLAIM PROCEEDS IN COURT, YOU AND WE EACH WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL.

Claims expire after one year. To the fullest extent permitted by law, any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Interface is permanently barred unless it is commenced within one (1) year after it accrued. This shortens any longer limitation period that would otherwise apply. Each side pays its own costs of bringing or defending a claim.

23. Governing law

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of them, are governed by the laws of England and Wales, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles, and the seat of any arbitration under "Disputes" is London, England, except where mandatory local law provides otherwise.

24. Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms at any time. The "last updated" date above changes when we do, and the change takes effect when it is posted. Continuing to use the Interface after a change means you accept the new version. Where the change is material you will be asked to acknowledge it again before you can trade or launch. If you do not agree, stop using the Interface.

25. General

These Terms, together with the Risk Disclosure and the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Interface. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it is enforced as far as it can be and the rest stays in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them freely. There are no third-party beneficiaries. Headings are for convenience only.

26. Contact

Questions about these Terms, and the notice that starts the sixty days in "Disputes", go to @shardsmarket (https://x.com/shardsmarket).

Nobody from this project will ever ask you for your seed phrase, your private key or a signature "to verify your wallet". Anyone who does is trying to rob you.