Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

HardState is operated by Zevlat Intelligence (zvlint.com), "we" in these terms. They cover hardstate.net, app.hardstate.net, api.hardstate.net, docs.hardstate.net and the hosted HardState service (the "Service"). They build on the Zevlat Intelligence Terms of Service; where the two differ for HardState, these terms prevail.

The HardState Standard and the HardState software are licensed separately, under open licenses (section 10). By using the Service you accept these terms and the Privacy Policy.

2. Who uses HardState

• Verifiers: anyone who checks a document, receipt or proof. No account, no fee.
• Institutions (issuers): public bodies, universities, NGOs, companies and others that keep a HardState Log. They act through admins, officials and the systems they authorize.

If you register an institution, sign as its admin or buy a plan for it, you confirm that you are authorized to act for it. "You" then means the institution. The institution answers for the people and systems it authorizes.

3. How it works, and what is permanent

1. Every step an institution records is a signed event, chained to the previous one in its public HardState Log and anchored to Bitcoin. Once accepted, an entry cannot be edited or deleted, by the institution or by us. Corrections are new entries that point to the old ones.
2. Public fields can be read by anyone, anywhere, forever. Copies exist beyond our control: on Bitcoin, in independent verifiers and in mirrors and downloads made by others.
3. Documents are committed as salted hashes. We never receive a document unless the institution chooses to publish it.
4. Passkeys and signing keys live on your devices. We never hold your private keys and cannot recover them. Keep at least two admins so that one lost device never locks the institution out.
5. A record is valid, signed and chained the moment it is accepted. Anchoring adds an independent upper bound on when it happened. Anchoring times are targets that depend on the Bitcoin network, not promises.

4. What institutions are responsible for

• Being who they say they are. Linking the institution's own domain (domain verification) is how we and the public confirm it.
• Having a lawful basis for what they record, and complying with their transparency, records and data protection laws.
• Keeping personal and sensitive data out of public fields. Use case numbers, salted document commitments and role-based signer labels where a name should not be public.
• The truth of what they record. HardState proves who signed what and when, not that the content is true.
• Securing their devices, passkeys and integrations, and revoking keys they no longer trust.

5. Acceptable use

Reading public logs is welcome, including programmatically, within the published rate limits. You can mirror, archive, analyze and verify them. That is the point. Just don't present a copy as HardState or as the institution's official source. You may not:

• Record anything unlawful, or anything meant to defame, harass or expose a person.
• Impersonate an institution, an official or HardState, or register an institution you don't represent.
• Flood logs with meaningless records, or inflate public figures and the Coverage Index.
• Get around plan limits, for example by splitting one institution into several free ones, rotating issuers or sharing an allowance between unrelated institutions.
• Resell, sublicense or white-label the hosted Service without a written partner agreement with us.
• Attack, overload or probe the Service, except for good-faith security research under our security policy.

6. Plans, fees and billing

1. Prices are those on the pricing page when you buy. They exclude taxes such as IVA or VAT, which are added where they apply.
2. Community is free for public-interest institutions: public bodies, public schools and universities, registered NGOs and aid programmes. We may ask for evidence of eligibility. An institution that doesn't qualify moves to a paid plan with 30 days' notice, or keeps its records on the free limits it already has.
3. Payment is by card or other methods through Stripe (we never see card numbers), or by invoice, payable by bank transfer within 30 days.
4. Renewal and cancellation: subscriptions renew automatically for the same period until cancelled. An admin can cancel at any time from Manage billing; cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid.
5. Refunds:
   • Monthly plans are not refunded for partial months.
   • Yearly plans get a full refund on request within 14 days of their first payment.
   • If we materially reduce what your plan includes, or change these terms to your detriment, you may cancel and get back the unused part.
   • Paid pilots are credited in full against the first year if you subscribe within 30 days of the pilot's end.
   Otherwise fees are non-refundable.
6. Limits: each plan includes monthly records and express anchors. Above the records limit plus a 10% grace, new writes are refused (HTTP 402) until the next month or an upgrade. Nothing already recorded is affected. Unused allowances don't roll over. Express anchors that Bitcoin fees push to a later anchor are not counted.
7. Late payment: Stripe retries failed card payments. After 30 days past due, paid features pause and the institution continues on Community limits. Nothing is lost, and everything comes back when the payment is settled.
8. Price changes: we give at least 30 days' notice by email, and changes apply from your next renewal. A yearly price never changes during the year you paid for. Discounts apply as stated when you bought.
9. Invoices and taxes: give us accurate tax details at checkout or in Manage billing, and we issue the invoices our tax obligations require.
10. Public bodies: where a signed contract or purchase order conflicts with these terms, the contract or order prevails.

7. Service levels and support

• Professional: 99.5% monthly uptime target, with next-business-day support.
• Institution: 99.9% monthly uptime, with service credits off that month's fee:
  • 10% below 99.9%;
  • 25% below 99.5%;
  • 50% below 99.0%.
  Credits are applied to the next invoice when requested within 30 days. Response within 4 business hours.
• Government: as set in the contract.

Uptime means our API accepting and serving records. It excludes:

• maintenance announced at least 48 hours ahead, up to 4 hours a month;
• the Bitcoin network, public block explorers and OpenTimestamps calendars;
• your own systems;
• suspensions under section 11;
• events beyond reasonable control.

Service credits are the remedy for downtime.

8. What we commit to

• Integrity: we never alter, reorder or delete accepted entries. Any attempt would be detectable by anyone holding a proof.
• Portability: your full log and proofs can be exported at any time, on any plan, as standard HSS-1 files that any HSS verifier checks without us.
• Continuity: downgrading or cancelling never touches past records, and public logs stay readable for as long as we operate the Service. If we ever shut it down, we give at least 12 months' notice, keep exports open until the end, and publish the full public dataset so it can be archived.
• No data business: we never sell personal data, never use log content for advertising, and never use it to train AI models.
• Everything visible: we publish the anchoring wallet address, every anchor, every treasury top-up (/v1/topups), the Coverage Index methodology, our prices and every change to these terms.

9. Your content

Institutions own what they record. You give us a worldwide, royalty-free license to store, process, publish, anchor and serve it as the Service requires, publicly for public fields. Because of section 3, this license continues for content already recorded after you stop using the Service.

We may compute and publish aggregate figures from public logs, such as counts, coverage and timeliness, including in the Coverage Index and in reports.

We may name paying institutions as HardState users; their logs are public anyway. We only use logos, case studies and quotes with permission, and you can ask us to leave your name off any list. Feedback you send us can be used freely.

10. Open standard, open code, and our brand

1. The HardState Standard (HSS-1) is published under CC BY 4.0, and the HardState software in our public repository under the Apache License 2.0. Nothing in these terms narrows those licenses.
2. Those licenses grant no trademark rights (Apache-2.0, section 6). "HardState", the HardState logo, "HardState Verified", the Coverage Index badges and the look of our sites belong to Zevlat Intelligence.
3. You may say, truthfully, that a product "implements HSS-1" or "verifies HardState proofs". Without our written permission, you may not use HardState, or a confusingly similar name, for a product, fork, service or domain, use our logo, or suggest that we endorse or certify you.
4. Only institutions that meet the published criteria may show the "HardState Verified" seal and Coverage Index badges, and only in the form we provide. The right ends when the criteria stop being met.
5. The text, design, illustrations and other material of our sites are © Zevlat Intelligence, all rights reserved, unless they are marked as openly licensed or are part of the public repository.

11. Suspension and termination

You can stop using the Service at any time, and export everything before or after you do.

We may suspend an institution's ability to write, never anyone's ability to read or verify, for any of these reasons:

• a breach of these terms;
• a security risk;
• a legal requirement;
• non-payment, as in section 6.7.

We give notice where we can. We may end the agreement for a material breach left uncured for 30 days.

A suspension never alters past records. Our explorer may label an institution whose identity is disputed or unverified.

12. Disclaimers

The free parts of the Service are provided as they are, as available.

HardState proves who signed which record and when. It does not prove:

• that the content is true;
• that the institution had the authority to record it;
• that a record has legal effect in a given jurisdiction, which depends on local law.

We don't control Bitcoin fees or confirmation times, or the availability of public explorers and calendars. Verification is built to keep working when any one of them, or we, are unavailable.

13. Liability

To the extent the law allows:

• neither side is liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses, such as lost profits or opportunities;
• our total liability is limited to the fees you paid in the 12 months before the claim, or USD 100 if you use HardState for free.

Nothing limits liability for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or anything the law does not allow to be limited.

The institution covers us against third-party claims arising from what it records or from its unlawful use of the Service.

14. Governing law and disputes

Tell us first. Most problems are solved by email within 30 days.

These terms are governed by the laws of Mexico, and the courts of Mexico City have jurisdiction. Two exceptions apply:

• consumers keep the protections of the mandatory law where they live;
• a public body's contract may set its own law and courts.

15. Changes to these terms

We announce material changes at least 30 days ahead, on this page and by email to the admins of paying institutions. All changes are listed in the change history below.

If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, you accept it. If a change works against you, you can cancel and get back the unused part of your plan.

16. General

• These terms, the Privacy Policy and any signed order are the whole agreement.
• If a clause is invalid, the rest still stands. Not enforcing a clause once is not a waiver.
• We may transfer these terms as part of a merger or sale with notice to you, and our commitments in section 8 bind whoever takes over.
• You may transfer them with our written consent, which we won't refuse unreasonably.
• Notices are sent by email to the addresses on file.
• The English text prevails over any translation.

17. Contact

Questions, notices, refunds, eligibility and brand permissions: hello@hardstate.net.