Terms of Service

1. Related policies

These Terms incorporate the Service Rules, Payment, Cancellation, Refund and Dispute Policy, Web3 Promotions and Acceptable Use Policy, Privacy Policy, and Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy. Providers also agree to the Provider Marketplace Agreement. The frozen booking record controls service-specific scope, dates, deliverables, proof, pre-publication approval, provider timezone, and price; these Terms and incorporated policies control platform use. A funded legacy booking retains its accepted policy version and frozen commercial terms.

2. Eligibility and payment availability

You must be at least 18 years old, have legal capacity to contract, provide accurate information, and use Herald only where lawful. Herald does not collect a country selection as a condition of general account creation and does not restrict client accounts to the United States. Client payment availability is determined by Stripe at checkout based on the transaction, payment method, location, and Stripe’s rules. Providers select their legally established country or region when beginning Stripe payout onboarding and must be located in a country or region supported by Stripe Connect before becoming bookable. Stripe may collect or validate location information when a payment or payout begins. You may not use Herald if Stripe cannot lawfully process the applicable payment or payout, if you are subject to applicable sanctions, if you are located in a prohibited jurisdiction, or if you were previously suspended without written permission. If you act for a company, DAO, project, or other organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind it.

3. Marketplace role

Herald provides discovery, vetting signals, messaging, booking records, payment coordination, delivery review, reviews, and dispute-support tools. Providers are independent businesses, not employees, agents, partners, joint venturers, or representatives of Brigid Forge. Unless expressly stated, Brigid Forge is not a party to the service relationship between client and provider and does not direct how a provider performs creative services.

Vetting, badges, ratings, fraud signals, and moderation reduce risk but are not endorsements, certifications, warranties, or guarantees. Herald does not guarantee identity, audience quality, service reach, engagement, legal compliance, token performance, business results, or provider availability. Herald does not provide investment, securities, brokerage, legal, accounting, tax, or financial advice and does not recommend any token, project, transaction, or investment.

4. Accounts and security

You are responsible for your credentials, authenticator factors, authorized workspace members, and all activity under your account. Notify support promptly of suspected compromise. You must keep account, project, provider, tax, payout, and contact information accurate. We may require verification, restrict features, delay an action, or suspend an account to protect users, investigate abuse, comply with law or payment-network requirements, or enforce these Terms.

5. Service formation

A client sends a service request containing a selected service or accepted proposal, project brief, attachments, start preference, and project information. The frozen agreement states the exact work, complete duration, automatic checkpoint dates and amounts, provider timezone, and price. The provider may accept, request changes, or decline within the displayed 24-hour deadline. No payment is created while the provider considers the request. The client likewise has 24 hours to respond to changes or pay after final acceptance.

The client pays the complete fiat amount upfront. Fiat-only payment authorizes immediate work or the agreed future date controls. For a project-token booking, Stripe confirmation is provisional and work is not authorized until Herald also verifies the required initial on-chain token transfer. Herald creates a checkpoint every three service days and on the final day if sooner. Checkpoint proof submission opens on the displayed checkpoint date and remains due through the end of that date; early completion does not move later checkpoint dates. At each checkpoint the provider submits at least one work URL, image, or written completion note. The client may approve immediately; otherwise payment releases 24 hours after proof unless a specific objective problem is reported. Missing proof or a valid issue pauses future work.

Herald Protection applies only when the service is managed, communicated, paid, documented, and resolved through Herald. Providers must not pressure or direct clients to bypass Herald’s workflow.

6. Payments and fees

Bookable Provider Services must have a total service value of at least $25.00. The client pays the frozen compensation and no separate Herald client fee. Herald deducts the disclosed 10% Herald provider fee from each approved or released checkpoint, so the provider keeps 90% before separate third-party payout, bank, blockchain-network, wallet-provider, currency-conversion, withholding, or tax charges on work that is actually paid. Rates and amounts are shown before commitment and frozen when the client accepts. Final acceptance alone creates no charge. For a project-token booking, completed Stripe Checkout is provisional: the booking is not funded or active and Herald earns no fee until Herald verifies the required initial project-token transfer. If that transfer is not verified within the displayed 24-hour window, or the client cancels during that window, Herald unwinds the booking and refunds the complete Stripe charge. After funding, Herald earns its 10% fee only on checkpoint value that is approved, released, paid to the provider, or otherwise finally awarded to the provider. If unstarted, undelivered, unreleased, or client-blocked work is refunded under Herald’s rules, the allocated Herald provider fee for that refunded work is also returned except where applicable law, a payment-network determination, correction of a duplicate or erroneous payment, fraud, chargeback, or separately incurred third-party cost requires a different result. A full refund of unreleased service value pays the provider nothing for that refunded work and returns the refundable Stripe charge for that work. Fiat payment records remain denominated in USD. Stripe may offer cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and eligible supported stablecoins such as USDC at Checkout; those stablecoin payments settle to Herald through Stripe in USD.

A provider proposal may include fiat compensation, an eligible Solana or BNB Smart Chain project token, or both. Direct project-token compensation is limited to a project’s own token and excludes stablecoins, SOL, BNB, wrapped or staked versions of those assets, and other general-purpose payment or network assets. A stablecoin offered by Stripe Checkout is treated only as a method of satisfying the USD-denominated fiat portion; it cannot be entered as direct project-token compensation. Herald may reject any token it reasonably determines is ineligible. Herald uses Jupiter Price API V3 for Solana or DEX Screener market data for BNB Smart Chain to estimate the project-token portion’s current fair market value (“FMV”) when the client accepts. The gross token quantity, chain, mint or contract address, provider wallet, USD price, value, timestamp, and 90% provider-net token quantity then become frozen booking terms. The client remits the project-token portion’s 10% provider fee to Herald in fiat at Checkout and pays the complete fiat Checkout amount upfront. Project tokens are not paid in full through Checkout: the client sends the first checkpoint’s frozen provider-net token quantity during the initial funding window and must send and obtain Herald verification of each later checkpoint’s frozen quantity before that checkpoint’s work period begins. Until a later checkpoint is fully verified, its work period and schedule remain paused and the provider must wait.

The accepted token quantity—not a future USD value—is the payment obligation. The FMV snapshot may differ from the token’s market price when a checkpoint transfer occurs. The client commits to send, and the provider agrees to accept as the complete token portion of compensation, the exact recorded provider-net token quantity regardless of whether its market value rises or falls before transfer. A price change alone does not increase or decrease the quantity, require a fiat or token top-up, permit substitution, reopen the service price or Herald fee, or create a refund right. A quote is an accounting snapshot, not investment advice or a guarantee of liquidity, transferability, or future value.

During the provisional project-token funding window, the complete Stripe charge is refundable even if Stripe does not return its processing cost to Herald. After activation, Stripe processing, Connect, currency-conversion, bank, wallet-provider, and blockchain-network fees actually incurred are non-refundable and are not credited by Herald, except to the extent the applicable third party or law requires a return. These third-party costs are separate from Herald’s 10% fee.

The Brigid Forge Featured Provider product is a separate one-time marketplace-visibility purchase, not a Provider Service. Its displayed $50 total has no additional Herald service fee, creates no service delivery payment, and activates the disclosed 30-day visibility immediately after Stripe confirms payment. No client delivery approval or review period applies, and the payment is transferred automatically. Completed visibility purchases are nonrefundable except for duplicate or erroneous payment, fraud, chargeback, legal obligation, or non-waivable consumer rights. If Herald ends a paid Featured entitlement before its scheduled expiration, Herald records a refund review and ordinarily returns the full purchase unless documented fraud, abuse, chargeback, illegality, legal obligation, payment correction, or another stated exception supports a different result.

Herald is not a bank, trust company, licensed escrow agent, fiduciary, insurer, guarantor, digital-asset exchange, or crypto custodian. Fiat funds paid through Stripe remain in the platform’s Stripe balance pending delivery-payment transfer under the stated workflow. Project tokens move directly from the client wallet to the provider wallet; Brigid Forge never receives them and does not receive or custody a user’s private keys or seed phrase. Funds are not represented as a legally segregated trust or escrow account, are not insured for a user’s benefit, and do not earn interest for users. Stripe, payment networks, blockchain networks, wallet providers, banks, and regulators may delay, block, reverse, or require additional review of payments. Provider net figures describe Herald fees; separate Stripe payout, currency-conversion, network, wallet-provider, bank, or tax charges may apply.

7. Checkpoint payments, results, cancellation, and review

Each checkpoint carries a share of service value and fees proportional to the service days it covers, with cent and token base-unit rounding assigned to the final checkpoint. For a project-token booking, the first checkpoint’s required token quantity must be verified before the booking begins. After a checkpoint is approved or released, the client must fund the next checkpoint’s project-token portion and Herald must verify at least 100% of its exact recorded provider-net quantity before the provider begins that next work period. Until verification, the next work period and its deadlines remain paused and the provider must not continue that work.

Proof starts a 24-hour client acceptance period. Immediate acceptance or client silence ordinarily releases the fiat checkpoint payment, but any agreed project-token portion also requires confirmed on-chain receipts totaling at least 100% of that checkpoint’s exact recorded provider-net token quantity at the recorded wallet. Herald may automatically discover and record matching Solana signatures or sufficiently confirmed BNB Smart Chain hashes during the applicable payment window; the client may provide an identifier as a fallback. Multiple unique confirmed transfers may be accumulated for the same checkpoint. An underpayment leaves the checkpoint pending and Herald displays the remaining quantity. A transfer of a different token or to a different address or network does not satisfy the obligation.

Missing proof or a missing or deficient required token transfer pauses eligible payment release and future work. An uncured missed delivery refunds the refundable compensation held for that checkpoint, including its allocated Herald fee under this r11 policy, and permits the client to end eligible future unperformed work. A valid termination cancels only unpaid future token portions; it does not change the agreed quantity for a token checkpoint already earned under the service rules. Herald cannot reverse project tokens already sent directly to a provider; any voluntary return must be arranged and recorded by the parties.

Payment covers completion of the frozen objective deliverables—not impressions, views, engagement, clicks, conversions, sales, revenue, return on investment, price movement, token performance, or other audience or business outcomes. Those outcomes are not guaranteed and are not grounds to pause work or withhold payment.

A valid objective problem pauses future deadlines and uses one correction, refund, client withdrawal, retained messaging, and a 24-hour direct-resolution period before an unresolved issue may reach Herald. After funding, the client cannot otherwise cancel accepted work unilaterally.

8. User content and intellectual property

You retain ownership of content you submit. You grant Brigid Forge a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to host, copy, process, transmit, display, resize, moderate, preserve, and use that content as reasonably necessary to operate, secure, improve, promote, and administer Herald and the applicable booking. Public provider content may be displayed and promoted while the listing is active. You represent that you own or have all rights, permissions, releases, and licenses needed for content you submit and for Herald and booking parties to use it as contemplated.

Brigid Forge and its licensors own Herald’s software, design, branding, documentation, and platform content. No right to Brigid Forge or BRIGID branding is granted except as expressly authorized. Copyright complaints are handled under the Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy.

9. Reviews and marketplace integrity

Only eligible completed bookings may produce platform reviews. Reviews must reflect genuine experience and may not be purchased, conditioned on positive or negative sentiment, fabricated, submitted through linked accounts, or influenced by threats or retaliation. Herald may label, decline, remove, or preserve reviews and reputation signals to address fraud, conflicts, legal requirements, policy violations, or unreliable evidence. Moderation will not be based solely on whether a review is favorable or unfavorable.

10. Prohibited and regulated activity

You must comply with the Web3 Promotions and Acceptable Use Policy. Prohibited conduct includes fraud, market manipulation, undisclosed paid promotion, deceptive claims, fake engagement, impersonation, malware, harassment, unlawful financial activity, sanctions evasion, rights infringement, and attempts to bypass platform controls. Project-token misconduct also includes offering tokens you lack authority or ability to transfer; using a malicious, frozen, blocked, counterfeit, unsupported, materially misdescribed, or unlawfully distributed token; manipulating liquidity or market data to affect an FMV snapshot; supplying a false, altered, failed, unrelated, or reused transaction hash; routing around the agreed wallet, token, chain, quantity, or Herald fee; or falsely denying or claiming a transfer. Clients are responsible for the legality and substantiation of project claims and service instructions. Providers are responsible for their endorsements, required disclosures, wallet accuracy, and publication conduct.

11. Taxes and independent obligations

Each user is responsible for determining and paying taxes arising from platform activity, including determining any fair market value, basis, income, gain, loss, reporting time, and recordkeeping treatment applicable when digital assets are transferred or received. Herald’s agreement-time FMV snapshot is for booking and fee calculation and may not be the value required for a user’s tax reporting at the later on-chain transfer or receipt time. Brigid Forge or Stripe may collect tax information, withhold amounts, or issue information returns where required. No provision controls worker classification if applicable law requires a different result.

12. Third-party services and availability

Herald depends on Stripe, Supabase, hosting providers, email services, blockchain networks, wallet software, social platforms, internet infrastructure, and other third parties. We are not responsible for their acts, rules, outages, security incidents, content removal, account restrictions, or service changes. We may change, suspend, or discontinue platform features and do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free availability.

13. Disclaimers

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HERALD IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” BRIGID FORGE DISCLAIMS ALL EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, SECURITY, AVAILABILITY, AND WARRANTIES ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT USERS, BOOKINGS, CONTENT, TOKENS, SERVICES, PAYMENTS, OR RESULTS ARE LAWFUL, SAFE, ACCURATE, OR SUITABLE FOR YOU. Nothing in these Terms excludes a warranty or right that applicable law does not permit you to waive.

14. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, BRIGID FORGE AND ITS MEMBERS, MANAGERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, AFFILIATES, AND SERVICE PROVIDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR LOST PROFITS, LOST REVENUE, LOST TOKENS OR DIGITAL ASSETS, LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, OR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THEIR POSSIBILITY.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THEIR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO HERALD, A BOOKING, OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF US$100 OR THE HERALD SERVICE AND PROVIDER FEES ACTUALLY PAID BY THE CLAIMANT TO BRIGID FORGE DURING THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM. This limitation does not apply where prohibited by law or to Brigid Forge’s fraud, willful misconduct, or liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

15. Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Brigid Forge and its members, managers, employees, contractors, and affiliates from third-party claims, investigations, penalties, losses, and reasonable legal costs arising from your content, bookings, services, project claims, endorsements, breach of these Terms, infringement, tax obligations, unlawful conduct, sanctions violations, or dispute with another user. Brigid Forge may control the defense with counsel of its choice, and you may not settle a covered claim imposing liability or obligations on Brigid Forge without written consent.

16. Legal disputes with Brigid Forge

This section concerns legal claims against Brigid Forge, not Herald’s booking-dispute process. Before filing a claim, the party must send a detailed written notice to [email protected] and allow 30 days for informal resolution. These Terms are governed by New Hampshire law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Except for an eligible small-claims action or a claim seeking temporary injunctive relief for intellectual-property misuse or unauthorized system access, any unresolved claim will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under the rules applicable to the claim. Arbitration may occur remotely unless the arbitrator requires otherwise. YOU AND BRIGID FORGE WAIVE TRIAL BY JURY AND THE RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS, COLLECTIVE, CONSOLIDATED, OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. If this arbitration provision is held unenforceable for a particular claim, exclusive venue for that claim will lie in the state or federal courts serving Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, and each party consents to jurisdiction there.

You may opt out of arbitration by emailing [email protected] within 30 days after first accepting this version of the Terms, stating your name, account email, and an unambiguous request to opt out. Opting out does not affect other provisions.

17. Suspension, enforcement, and termination

You may stop using Herald, subject to active bookings, disputes, payment obligations, and retained records. A provider who switches to client-only access is removed from discovery and cannot receive new requests, but may finish open bookings; the provider listing is delisted automatically after those bookings close, while profile, service, history, and connected payout records are retained as described in the Provider Marketplace Agreement and Privacy Policy.

Herald may, in its sole reasonable discretion and based on information then available, immediately investigate, restrict, suspend, hide, or delist an account or listing without prior notice when Herald believes the user may be abusing these Terms; creating fraud, illegality, sanctions, payment, security, safety, or marketplace-integrity risk; evading fees or controls; or committing a material or repeated violation. Herald may terminate access with or without cause to the extent permitted by law. When practical and legally permitted, Herald will provide notice after an immediate action and a way to supply relevant information, but it need not disclose confidential fraud, security, legal, or risk controls.

Failure to make or truthfully document an agreed project-token transfer, fraudulent or manipulative use, fee avoidance, repeated wallet or network misconduct, or another material violation may cause Herald, to the extent lawful and consistent with applicable payment-provider rules, to reject or cancel an affected transaction, pause work or eligible fiat payment release, delay or withhold a connected payout, deny verified-review eligibility, require additional evidence, reverse or recover a payment, offset amounts owed, restrict features, suspend or delist an account, terminate access, preserve evidence, notify affected parties or service providers, and report or cooperate with authorities. Remedies may be tailored to the risk and do not give Herald custody of, or the ability to reverse, a direct token transfer. Material adverse account decisions receive human review, and non-waivable earned-payment, refund, legal, and payment-method rights remain available.

Provisions that by their nature should survive—including payment, token-transfer, evidence, intellectual-property, disclaimer, liability, indemnity, dispute, and record-retention terms—survive termination.

18. Electronic communications and changes

You consent to electronic contracts, signatures, records, and notices. We may send transactional, legal, security, and account notices to your verified email or in-product account. Keep that address current. We may update these Terms prospectively. Material changes will be identified by a new version and may require renewed acceptance before continued marketplace use. Changes do not retroactively alter a funded booking’s frozen commercial terms.

19. General

These Terms and incorporated policies are the complete platform agreement and supersede prior platform representations. If a provision is unenforceable, it will be limited to the minimum extent necessary and the remainder will continue. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign your account or these Terms without consent; Brigid Forge may assign them in connection with a reorganization, financing, merger, sale, or transfer of the service. Neither party is liable for delay caused by events beyond reasonable control, except payment obligations already due.

20. Contact

Brigid Forge LLC is based in Pelham, New Hampshire, United States. Support questions: [email protected]. Legal notices: [email protected].