Terms of Service

To use the Service you must be able to form a binding contract with us. By using the Service you represent and warrant that:

• You are at least 18 years old, or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher.
• You are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or organised under the laws of any country or territory subject to comprehensive economic sanctions, and you are not a person or entity named on any sanctions or restricted-party list maintained by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union or the United Kingdom.
• Your use of the Service, and of any protocol, asset or strategy described on it, is lawful in your jurisdiction.
• You are acting on your own behalf, or you are authorised to act on behalf of the entity you represent.

We may restrict or refuse access to the Service, in whole or in part, to any person or from any jurisdiction, at our discretion and without notice.

The Service provides independent research: protocol and asset ratings, risk analysis, yield strategy write-ups, educational tools, calculators, curated news, and interactive explanations of how protocols work.

The Service does not, and is not intended to:

• Provide financial, investment, trading, legal, accounting or tax advice, or any personal recommendation.
• Custody, hold, transmit, control or have access to your digital assets or private keys at any time.
• Execute, route, broker or facilitate any transaction on your behalf.
• Operate, control, audit, insure or guarantee any third-party protocol, smart contract, token or platform we write about.
• Constitute an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any asset, or an endorsement of any protocol.

Any transaction you enter into after reading our content is between you and the relevant third party or protocol. We are not a party to it and have no ability to reverse, pause or recover it.

Our ratings are opinions, produced by applying a published methodology to information available at a point in time. They are not statements of fact, guarantees of safety, credit ratings within the meaning of any securities regulation, or predictions of future performance.

• Point in time — a rating reflects our view on the date it was produced. Protocols change; ratings may become stale before we revise them.
• Imperfect inputs — we rely on public sources including on-chain data, protocol documentation, audit reports and third-party data providers, any of which may be incomplete, delayed or wrong.
• Methodology may change — we may revise our methodology, weights or scoring at any time, which can change scores without any change at the protocol itself.
• Not exhaustive — a favourable rating does not mean a protocol is free of risk, and no rating covers every possible failure mode.
• APYs and yields shown are historical or estimated, are sourced from third parties or on-chain data, and are not offers or promises of return.

We do not accept payment in exchange for a rating, a score, a favourable review or the removal of a negative finding. Where a commercial relationship of any kind exists with a covered protocol, we disclose it on the relevant page.

Parts of the Service require you to connect a self-custodial wallet and sign a message (Sign-In With Ethereum) to prove you control it. Signing that message authenticates you; it does not authorise a transfer of funds.

• We never ask for, receive or store your private key, seed phrase or recovery phrase. Anyone who does is attempting to defraud you.
• You are solely responsible for the security of your wallet, device and any session token issued to your browser.
• Your wallet address is your account identifier. If you lose access to the wallet, we cannot restore your membership, badges or history to a different address.
• Always verify you are on the correct domain before signing anything. We are not liable for losses arising from phishing sites, malicious browser extensions, compromised devices or transactions you approve.

Paid membership unlocks gated research and member features. Membership is purchased on-chain, in USDC, through our payment smart contract on a supported network. Current pricing is 9.9 USDC per month and 99.9 USDC per year; mixed durations are priced as a combination of the two. Prices displayed on the membership page at the time of purchase govern.

• Prepaid, not recurring — you pay for a fixed number of months up front. There is no automatic renewal and no stored payment credential. Your access simply ends when the paid period expires unless you renew.
• You bear network fees — gas and any exchange or bridging costs are yours and are not part of the price we receive.
• Send only the required asset on a supported network. Assets sent to the wrong address, on an unsupported network, or in the wrong token are unrecoverable.
• On-chain payments are final — blockchain transactions cannot be reversed by us. Except where a refund is required by applicable law, all payments are non-refundable, including for unused time after a cancellation, a change to the Service, or a suspension of your access for breach of these Terms.
• If a payment succeeds on-chain but your membership is not reflected in the Service, contact us with the transaction hash and we will correct it.

We may change pricing at any time. A change never affects a period you have already paid for.

Some activity on the Service — paying for membership, completing the quiz game, or qualifying for a promotion — can result in an ERC-1155 badge being minted to your wallet.

• Badges are soulbound. They cannot be transferred, sold or traded, by design and by contract.
• Badges are access credentials and mementos. They confer no ownership interest, no equity, no profit share, no governance right and no redemption right, and they are not intended to be, and should not be treated as, securities or investments.
• Badges have no monetary value and we make no representation that any market for them exists or will exist.
• Minting requires an on-chain transaction and its associated fees. Some badges require a small ETH payment stated at the point of minting.
• We may change badge artwork, metadata or the criteria for earning future badges. Badges already minted remain in your wallet regardless of what happens to the Service.

We may run promotions such as early-adopter rewards, the lucky wheel, discount coupons or free-access codes. Unless stated otherwise:

• Promotions are offered at our discretion, may be limited in quantity or time, and may be modified or withdrawn at any time before a reward is granted.
• Rewards have no cash value and are not exchangeable for cash or other consideration.
• One reward per person and per wallet. We may void rewards obtained through multiple wallets, automation, exploitation of a bug, or any other abuse, and may revoke access obtained that way.
• Where a promotion depends on an on-chain condition, the on-chain state governs.

The audit tool analyses a smart contract repository you submit and returns an AI-generated report. It is available by invitation or coupon and is provided on the following terms, in addition to the rest of these Terms.

• Authorisation — you may only submit a repository that you own or that you are expressly authorised to have analysed. You are responsible for any third-party rights in the code you submit.
• Processing — submitted repository contents are transmitted to third-party large-language-model providers for analysis. Do not submit secrets, credentials, keys or personal data in the repository.
• Storage — we store the job record and the generated report so you can retrieve it later. See the Privacy Policy for retention.
• Not a professional audit — the output is automated, may contain false positives and, more importantly, will miss real vulnerabilities. It is not a substitute for a review by a qualified security firm, and must not be represented to third parties as a DeFi Sentinel certification, endorsement or assurance of security.
• No liability — we accept no liability for any loss arising from reliance on the report, including undiscovered vulnerabilities and any exploit of the analysed code.

Some links on the Service — in particular on the referral page and occasionally within strategy write-ups — are referral or affiliate links. If you sign up or trade through one, we may receive a commission, a fee rebate or a sign-up bonus, and you may receive one too.

This is how we fund free research. It does not change our ratings: rating decisions are made under the published methodology and are not influenced by whether a referral relationship exists. We are not responsible for the products, terms, fees or conduct of any exchange or protocol we link to, and a link is not an endorsement.

The Service aggregates and displays information from third parties, including on-chain data, protocol documentation, audit reports, price and TVL data providers, and public social media posts summarised or translated for the news feed.

That content is provided "as available". We do not verify, endorse or guarantee it, and it may be delayed, incomplete, mistranslated or wrong. Summaries and translations are produced automatically and may not reflect the original author's meaning. Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience only; your use of them is governed by their terms, not ours.

You agree not to:

• Scrape, crawl, harvest or bulk-download the Service, or use automated means to access it, except as permitted by our robots.txt or under a written API agreement.
• Resell, republish, sublicense or commercially redistribute our ratings, research, data or reports, or create a competing product from them.
• Circumvent or attempt to circumvent membership gating, rate limits, coupon limits or any access control.
• Probe, scan or test the vulnerability of the Service or its infrastructure, or breach or attempt to breach its security, without our prior written permission.
• Interfere with the Service's operation, including by overwhelming it with requests or introducing malicious code.
• Reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any part of the Service except to the extent that restriction is prohibited by law.
• Impersonate DeFi Sentinel, misrepresent your affiliation with us, or use our name, logo or ratings in a way that suggests endorsement.
• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose, including money laundering, sanctions evasion or market manipulation.

If you believe you have found a security vulnerability in the Service, please report it to us at [email protected] before disclosing it publicly.

The Service and its contents — including ratings, scores, methodology, research articles, strategy guides, interactive visualisations, software, design, text, graphics and the DeFi Sentinel name and logo — are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws.

We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for your own non-commercial purposes. You may quote short excerpts of our research for commentary, journalism or research provided you attribute them to DeFi Sentinel and link to the source page. All other rights are reserved.

If you send us feedback, suggestions or ideas, you grant us a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use them without obligation or compensation. Do not send us anything you consider confidential.

Programmatic access is available only under an API key issued by us. Keys are personal to the holder, must not be shared, and may be rate-limited, suspended or revoked at any time. Any additional terms provided with a key apply in addition to these Terms and prevail over them in the event of a conflict.

We may add, change, suspend, limit or discontinue any part of the Service — including individual pages, ratings, tools, data feeds and member features — at any time and without notice. We do not guarantee uptime, and the Service depends on third parties (hosting, RPC endpoints, data providers, blockchains) whose failures we cannot control.

If we permanently discontinue a paid feature during a period you have paid for, we will make a reasonable effort to provide an equivalent benefit; nothing in this section limits Section 5 on refunds.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE AND ALL CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that ratings or data will be accurate, current or complete, or that any protocol, asset or strategy described on the Service is safe, solvent or suitable for you.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, DIGITAL ASSETS OR ANTICIPATED SAVINGS, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERVICE, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, AND (B) US$100.

We are not liable for losses arising from: smart contract bugs, exploits, hacks or economic attacks on any third-party protocol; depegs, liquidations, impermanent loss or market movements; blockchain congestion, reorganisation, forks or validator failure; the acts or insolvency of any exchange, bridge, custodian or protocol; or your own transactions, approvals and key management.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or limitation of certain damages. Where that is the case, the exclusions and limitations above apply only to the extent permitted, and nothing in these Terms excludes liability for fraud or for any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless DeFi Sentinel and its operators, contributors and contractors from any claim, demand, loss, liability or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your use of the Service, your breach of these Terms, your violation of any law or third-party right, or any content or repository you submit to us.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service, in whole or in part, immediately and without notice, if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, abused a promotion, or created legal or security risk for us or other users. You may stop using the Service at any time.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including Sections 3, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20 — survive it.

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and by applicable United States federal law including the Federal Arbitration Act.

Informal resolution first. Before starting any formal proceeding, you agree to contact us at [email protected] with a description of the dispute and to attempt in good faith to resolve it for at least 30 days.

Arbitration. If a dispute is not resolved informally, it will be settled by final and binding individual arbitration administered under the rules of a recognised arbitration provider, seated in Wyoming, in English. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court instead, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or prevent unauthorised access.

No class actions. Disputes will be brought only in an individual capacity. You and we each waive any right to participate in a class, collective, consolidated or representative proceeding, and an arbitrator has no authority to hear claims on a class basis.

Time limit. Any claim relating to the Service must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred, to the extent permitted by law.

If you are a consumer resident in a jurisdiction whose law grants you rights that cannot be waived by contract, nothing in this section deprives you of those rights or of the protection of the mandatory law of your place of residence.

We may update these Terms. The "last updated" date at the top of this page shows when the current version took effect. If a change is material we will make a reasonable effort to highlight it on the Service. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the revised Terms; if you do not accept them, stop using the Service.

• Entire agreement — these Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any terms accompanying a specific feature, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service.
• Severability — if any provision is held unenforceable, the rest remains in force and the unenforceable provision is limited to the minimum extent necessary.
• No waiver — our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment — you may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition or transfer of the Service.
• Force majeure — we are not liable for failure to perform caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• No partnership — nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, employment or agency relationship, or any fiduciary duty owed to you.
• Language — these Terms are published in English and Chinese. If the versions conflict, the English version governs.

Questions about these Terms: [email protected]