Terms of Service for EarthBucks

About these terms

Astrohacker Inc. (“we”, “us” or “the Company”) creates, operates and owns EarthBucks. These terms are an agreement between you and the Company. They apply to your use of earthbucks.com: the website, the EarthBucks (EBX) wallet, the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) wallet, Pay, names, mining and the mining pool, paid verification, profiles, block messages and the block explorer (together, “the service”). Read them before you use the service. If you do not agree to these terms, do not use the service.

These terms include an agreement to settle disputes by individual arbitration, with a waiver of class actions. You can opt out of it. Read the section “Disputes”.

EarthBucks is experimental software. Using it involves risks to your keys, your access and your coins. Read the section “Experimental software and open source” before you receive, hold, send or mine coins.

What these terms do not cover

These terms cover only accounts on earthbucks.com. They do not cover these planned features, which are not available today:

• atomic swaps of EBX and BCH;
• EarthBucks servers on other domains, and mines that other people run;
• KeyPears, the vault of secrets and end-to-end encrypted messaging;
• access for AI agents that act for you, with budgets and permissions;
• invoices, marketplaces and email.

A description of a planned feature, on the blog or elsewhere, is not a promise that the feature is available. A name such as alice@earthbucks.com is a payment and Pay address. It is not an email inbox.

Who can use the service

To use the service, you must:

• be 18 years old or older;
• not be a person on a sanctions list of the United States, such as the Specially Designated Nationals list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control;
• not be in, or ordinarily live in, a country or region that is under comprehensive sanctions of the United States;
• obey the laws that apply to you where you live.

You are responsible for your use of the service under your local law. The service does not check these conditions for you.

Your account and your keys

Keys stay in your browser

Your private keys are made in your browser, and your browser signs your transactions. We do not receive your private keys. Your browser keeps your keys in its storage, without encryption by the application. A person with access to your browser or device can get your keys and sign with them. Protect your device, your password and your keys. Never put a private key or a password in a support request.

The encrypted key backup

If you set a password, the service keeps a backup of your keys. Your browser encrypts the backup with a key that comes from your password before it sends it to us. We cannot decrypt the backup, and we cannot reset a lost password. A password reset needs your private key. Your backup keys and the keys that you export from the Keys page are separate from this backup.

Your keys need the service to make new addresses

Each payment address of your wallet comes from a derived key. To compute a derived key, your browser uses your master key together with values that the service keeps. Thus your master key alone does not let you spend from your derived addresses without the service. Keys that you export from the Keys page work without the service. If you want to be able to sign when the service is not available to you, export your keys and keep them safe.

Key rotation

You can replace your current master key with a new one. Old keys stay with your account but can no longer sign in. Coins at old addresses stay yours.

You own your EBX

You own your EBX. Your title is a legal fact under the law of the United States. It does not depend only on who holds a key. A key is a lock, not a deed: if a person who is not the owner holds your key, the coins are still yours, and if you lose your key, the coins are still yours.

The Company has no right to take your EBX. No power that these terms give the Company, including the power to restrict an account, to suspend a name, to change the service or to end these terms, gives the Company your EBX or lets it take your EBX.

Recovery and expiry

Standard EBX outputs have recovery and expiry conditions. Under the current standard scripts, a recovery key can spend an output after 60 days, and the output expires after 90 days. These periods are measured in blocks, not on a clock. The service holds a recovery key for these outputs.

The service, a pool or a wallet uses recovery and expiry only to:

1. Upgrade the transaction structure. Expired outputs can move into a new structure. This is maintenance of your coins, not a taking.
2. Return coins after lost keys. When you prove that you are the owner, the EBX goes back to you. The old keys are not recovered.
3. Deliver coins after a death or another legal change of title. The EBX goes to the person that the law names as owner, for example through an estate or a court order.
4. Consolidate outputs. The service can merge your outputs for you to reduce the load on the network. The coins stay yours.

Recovery and expiry are never used to take EBX from its rightful owner. Expiry is not a penalty for holding coins. Abandoned coins do not go to a mine or to other users. You do not have to move your coins before an output expires. We charge no fee for recovery unless you agree to the fee before the recovery.

This section states the rule in the post You Own Your EarthBucks. Where an earlier blog post says something different, this section applies.

Wallets and payments

Payments cannot be reversed

Check the recipient and the amount before you sign. We cannot cancel or reverse a payment after your browser signs it and the network accepts it. This applies to EBX and BCH. A payment to the wrong person, or to a person who is not who they say they are, is a matter between you and that person.

A submitted transaction is not yet a confirmed transaction. A rejected or conflicting transaction, a network interruption or a change in the accepted chain can change its status.

The BCH wallet

The BCH wallet uses Bitcoin Cash, a public network that we do not control. We send your signed BCH transactions to the BCH network through a Bitcoin Cash node that we run. Each BCH transaction pays a network fee. We count a BCH transaction as final after 6 confirmations. Before that, a change in the BCH chain can revert it, and a reverted deposit leaves your balance.

The recovery and expiry conditions of EBX do not apply to BCH. We hold no recovery key for BCH. If you lose your keys and your backup, nobody can recover your BCH.

Dollar values

The service shows estimated dollar values of BCH from a public price source. In Swap, EBX is what is bought and sold, and BCH is the money, valued in dollars at that price. Each coin that Swap adds later follows the same rule: Swap buys and sells EBX for that coin. The reason is that EBX is the more volatile asset. The service finds an estimated dollar price of EBX from the Swap trades between verified users in the last 24 hours: their median, weighted by value, with a limit for each account. It uses this price to show dollar values of EBX. These values are estimates only. They are not an offer to buy or sell, and they never set the amount of a payment or a trade.

Pay

Pay sends a message with a payment, proof of work or both. Your browser encrypts the note of each message. The service can see the other details of a message, such as the names, the amounts and the time. The Privacy Policy lists them.

Postage

The EBX or BCH that you attach to a message goes to the recipient, not to the Company. Proof of work pays the recipient’s server for one message only. Each recipient sets their own minimums, and their contacts can send for free. We do not return postage when the recipient does not answer. Meeting a recipient’s minimums does not give you a right to send abusive or illegal content.

Payments for goods and services

When you pay a person for goods or services, that person is the seller. The Company is not a party to the sale, does not hold the payment for you and does not settle disputes between buyer and seller.

Messages to other domains

Pay delivers each message from the sender’s server to the recipient’s server. A message to a name on another domain goes to the server of that domain. That server follows its own terms and policies. When a message leaves earthbucks.com, we cannot delete its copy on the other server.

Names

You choose your name when you create your account. Your name gives you an address, such as alice@earthbucks.com. Names are permanent: you cannot change your name, sell it or transfer it.

Do not choose a name that impersonates a person, a business or the Company, or that infringes the rights of another person. Some names are reserved.

A name does not prove who a person is. Before you pay a name, make sure that it belongs to the person that you intend to pay.

If you think that a name infringes your rights or impersonates you, contact us with the details of your claim. We can suspend a name, so that it does not show and does not receive Pay messages, while we review a claim. We change or remove a name only to obey a court order, or after a claim of trademark infringement or impersonation that we find to be valid. A change to a name never transfers anyone’s EBX.

Mining and the pool

Mining starts only when you start it

The Mine page uses the graphics processor (GPU) of your device. Mining starts only when you start it, and it stops when you stop it or close the page. While mining runs, it continues when you move between pages of the app. Mining uses electricity and can make your device hot, slow or short of battery. You pay these costs.

No promised return

We do not promise that you will receive any EBX from mining, or that your rewards will pay for your costs. An estimate on the Mine page is not a promise. Work that is not valid, that comes too late or that the pool rejects earns nothing.

The pool rules

The pool pays miners from each block reward. Today:

• miners receive 5% of each block reward, divided by their shares of valid work;
• a verified account counts each valid share as 10 shares;
• each block pays at most the 399 miners with the most unpaid shares;
• shares that are not paid within one day expire and earn nothing;
• a block that leaves the accepted chain pays nothing.

The pool can pause. We announce a change to these rules on the EarthBucks blog before it takes effect. A change applies only to work that you submit after it takes effect. It never changes EBX that the pool already paid.

EBX and the Company’s share

The Company created EBX. The Company receives 95% of each block reward. The Company uses this EBX to fund the development of EarthBucks, and it can sell it. The Company can change this share. It announces a change on the blog before the change takes effect.

EBX gives you no share, vote, dividend or other right in the Company. We do not promise any price or value for EBX or BCH. EBX can lose all of its value.

We do not give financial, investment, legal or tax advice. You are responsible for your own taxes on coins that you mine, receive, send or hold. We do not make tax reports for you.

Paid verification

Paid verification costs 100 EBX for each year. You can pay for one to five years. A verified account shows a badge and gets the benefits that the Verification page lists, such as 10 shares for each valid share of mining work.

The badge shows that the account paid for verification and that the verification is active. It does not show that we checked who the person is, and it is not an endorsement by the Company.

• Payment. You pay in EBX from your own wallet. The payment goes to the Company. It is final when the network accepts it.
• No refunds. Payments are not refunded, except where the law requires a refund. If the Company ends paid verification for all accounts, it returns the EBX for the unused time to each account.
• No automatic renewal. Verification ends at the end of the time that you paid for. We show a notice before it ends.
• Price changes. A price change applies only to payments after the change. It does not change time that you already paid for.
• Loss of the badge. If we restrict your account for impersonation, fraud or another violation of these terms, your verification benefits can end without a refund. The loss of the badge never takes your EBX or pool payments that you already earned.

Content

Your content

You keep your rights in the content that you submit, such as your avatar, your profile and your block messages. You must have the rights to submit it. You give us permission to store, process, resize and show your content as necessary to operate the service and to deliver it to its recipients. This permission does not give us ownership of your content. We do not use your content, your Pay notes or your key backup to train AI models.

Block messages

A block message is public. The block keeps only a hash of the message. The service keeps the text and shows it. We can remove the text from our pages, but we cannot change the hash in the block, and we cannot remove copies that other people keep. Consider this before you publish.

Prohibited content

Do not submit content that:

• sexually exploits children (we report such content to the authorities as the law requires);
• threatens, harasses or incites violence against a person;
• infringes the copyright, trademark or other rights of a person;
• contains malware, phishing or private information about another person without their consent;
• is illegal where you live or in the United States.

Copyright claims

If you think that content on the service infringes your copyright, send a notice to support@astrohacker.com with:

1. your name and contact details, and your signature;
2. the work that you say is infringed;
3. the location of the content on the service;
4. a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorized;
5. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you own the right or may act for its owner.

We remove or disable content after a valid notice. A person whose content we remove can send a counter-notice with the same details. We end the access of a person who infringes copyright again and again.

Acceptable use

Do not use the service to:

• steal keys or coins, phish, impersonate others or distribute malware;
• submit fraudulent work, or defraud others with conflicting transactions;
• send spam or bulk messages that the recipients did not ask for;
• attack the service, the server-to-server protocol or other users, or evade our access controls and rate limits;
• break the law, or help another person break the law.

You can use your own software to use the service, within these rules and the rate limits. You are responsible for what software that you give your keys or password to signs and sends.

A rejected transaction or an invalid share of work alone is not abuse. Criticism of the Company or disagreement with it is not a violation of these terms.

Restrictions and ending use

What a restriction does

We can restrict your account if you violate these terms or if your account is a security risk. A restriction can stop you from signing in, from using the website and its wallet pages, and from using Pay. While your account is restricted, you cannot sign transactions through the website. Keys that you exported from the Keys page still work.

A restriction applies to the website only. It does not freeze, move or take your EBX or BCH, and it does not cancel a payment that we owe you. If you think that a restriction is a mistake, contact us. We review it and tell you the result.

Ending use

You can stop using the service at any time. Logging out ends the session in that browser and removes your keys from that browser. It does not delete your account or the records that the service keeps. The service does not have an account deletion feature today. The Privacy Policy tells you how to ask about your data. Stopping use does not stop the blockchain or change the conditions of your outputs.

Experimental software and open source

EarthBucks is experimental software. Software faults, compromised keys, network interruptions, changes to the accepted chain and the conditions of outputs can cause loss of access or loss of coins. We provide the service “as is” and “as available”. We do not promise that the service works without interruption or errors, or that it is always available.

Information on the Blockchain page and in other parts of the service can be wrong or out of date. Check it before you rely on it. Other signed-in users can see which account mined each block.

The Company governs the EarthBucks protocol. It runs the mines today, and it approves the mines that join the network. The EBX network rules, not the records of the website, decide which transactions are valid.

Software that we publish as open source, such as our libraries and the ebxmine mine, comes with its own license. When you run that software yourself, its license applies to it, not these terms.

Limits on our liability

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct, or any liability or right that the law does not let us limit or exclude. Nothing in this section limits the section “You own your EBX”.

Other than that, and to the extent that the law allows:

• we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, or for loss of profits, that come from your use of the service;
• our total liability to you for all claims about the service is limited to the greater of 100 US dollars or the amount that you paid to the Company in the 12 months before the claim, with EBX at its value when you paid.

Your responsibility to us

You agree to defend and pay the Company for claims, losses and reasonable costs, including legal fees, that third parties bring against it because of your violation of these terms, your content or your violation of the law. This does not apply to a claim that the Company caused.

Disputes

Talk to us first

Before you start a claim, send us a written notice of the dispute at support@astrohacker.com. We send our notices to the contact that we have for you. Each side gives the other 30 days to settle the dispute before it starts an arbitration or a court case.

Individual arbitration

If we cannot settle a dispute, you and the Company agree to settle it by binding individual arbitration, under the Consumer Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association. There is no judge or jury. Either side can take a claim to small claims court instead, if the claim qualifies.

For a claim of 10,000 US dollars or less, the Company pays the arbitration fees above the filing fee that a court would charge you. If 25 or more similar claims come from the same lawyers or group, they are heard in batches.

You and the Company bring claims only for yourselves, not as a plaintiff or member of a class or representative action. This does not stop a request for a public injunction where the law allows it.

Opt out

You can opt out of this arbitration agreement. Send a notice to support@astrohacker.com within 30 days of the day that you first accept these terms. Include your name and the statement that you opt out of arbitration. If you opt out, the rest of these terms still apply.

Law and courts

The laws of the State of Delaware and the federal law of the United States govern these terms, without regard to rules that would apply another law. A claim that is not in arbitration goes to the state or federal courts in Delaware. You keep the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country where you live.

Changes to these terms

We announce material changes on the EarthBucks blog and its RSS feed, at least 30 days before they take effect, with the reasons for them. A change that the law or a security problem requires can take effect sooner.

A change to this document does not change the network rules, does not undo a confirmed transaction and does not take back the rights that the section “You own your EBX” gives you. Your use of the service alone does not show that you accepted new terms.

Other terms

If a court or arbitrator finds part of these terms not enforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we do not enforce a part of these terms, we do not give up our right to enforce it later. You cannot transfer your rights under these terms without our consent.

When you use an independent service that EarthBucks links to, its own terms apply to that service.

Contact

For questions about these terms, payments, names, copyright, a restriction or a dispute, contact support@astrohacker.com. Describe the matter without your private keys or your password.