Terms of Use

1. Accepting these terms

These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) form an agreement between you and the operator of Arcapis (“Arcapis”, “we”, “us”) covering the website at arcapis.com, the dashboard, the HTTP gateway, the smart contracts listed in the dashboard, and the arcapis-sdk package (together, the “Service”).

You accept these Terms by connecting a wallet, signing in, buying a packet, calling the gateway, or otherwise using the Service. If you do not agree, do not use it.

We may update these Terms. Material changes will be announced on the site and the “Last updated” date above will change. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the revised Terms.

2. What Arcapis is

Arcapis is a shared, on-chain cache and pay-per-call gateway for AI APIs. You buy prepaid quota (a “packet”, an ERC-721 token) for an endpoint operated by a third-party provider and call it through our gateway. Where a result is cacheable, the gateway pins it to IPFS and commits it on chain in a batch, so the next agent to ask the same question gets the same answer without paying for it again.

Arcapis therefore does three things: it meters and settles calls in USDC, it forwards your request to the provider you chose, and it maintains the shared cache. It does not do anything else with your request.

Arcapis does not build, train, host, or control the underlying AI models. The output you receive is generated by the upstream provider you selected. We do not warrant that output is accurate, current, lawful, or fit for any purpose.

Arcapis is not a bank, broker, exchange, money transmitter, custodian, or investment adviser, and nothing in the Service is financial, legal, tax, or investment advice.

3. Eligibility

You may use the Service only if all of the following are true:

• You are at least 18 years old and can form a binding contract.
• You are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or organised under the laws of a jurisdiction subject to comprehensive sanctions, and you are not on any sanctions or restricted-party list (including OFAC SDN, EU, and UK lists).
• Your use is legal where you are. Local law on AI services and digital assets is your responsibility, not ours.

We may block addresses, regions, or accounts to comply with law, and we may do so without notice.

4. Wallets and custody

Arcapis never takes custody of your funds or your packets. Payments move directly from your wallet to an endpoint provider or a packet seller, and packets are held by your own address.

Self-custody wallets

If you connect MetaMask or another self-custody wallet, you alone hold the keys. We cannot recover a lost key, reverse a signed transaction, or restore access to a compromised wallet.

Email and social sign-in

If you sign in with email or a Google account, an embedded wallet is created for you by Circle Programmable Wallets. That wallet is governed by Circle’s own terms in addition to these Terms. Losing access to the underlying email account may mean permanently losing access to that wallet and everything it holds.

Your responsibilities

• Keep your keys, recovery material, and sign-in credentials secure.
• Verify every transaction before you sign it.
• Treat a packet call URL or call key as a secret — anyone holding it can spend quota.

5. Packets, quota, and payment

A packet is an ERC-721 token representing a number of prepaid calls to one endpoint. The price is set on-chain by the endpoint provider, and you pay in USDC at the moment you mint.

All sales are final

Blockchain transactions are irreversible. We cannot refund a packet purchase, including where you bought the wrong endpoint, bought the wrong quantity, or are unhappy with the output an upstream model produced. Check what you are buying before you sign.

How quota is consumed

• A served request that reaches the upstream provider consumes one call. Audio transcription consumes one call for each started five minutes of audio.
• A cache hit consumes nothing — your quota is unchanged.
• If the upstream provider returns an error, is rate-limited, or does not answer within 45 seconds, the call is given back. A request the provider answered counts as served, even if the connection to you was then cut off.
• A request rejected by content moderation may consume nothing, but we do not guarantee it.
• Each endpoint answers with the model it is sold for, and an answer from any other model is refused and the call given back. The one exception: an endpoint may be routed to a newer model of the same provider and kind that costs less upstream. The response names the model that answered.

Expiry and network changes

Quota does not expire on a timer today. However, endpoints can be deactivated by their providers, upstream models can be retired, and networks can be deprecated or migrated. If an endpoint becomes unavailable, unspent quota against it may become unusable and is not refundable. Packets minted on a test network carry no monetary value whatsoever and may be reset at any time.

6. The shared cache

The cache key is keccak256(endpointId + body). Your wallet address is deliberately excluded, which is what makes results reusable across users — and also what means an identical request by anyone else returns your cached result.

To keep a call out of the cache, send it with the header X-Arcapis-Cache: off: its response is neither stored nor shared. The call is charged as usual, and an answer already cached can still be served to it. Any value other than on or off is refused before anything is spent.

Current policy by category:

“Retention” is how long a cached entry lives: each reuse renews an embedding, up to 90 days after it was stored. When it runs out we delete our copy and unpin it, but we cannot guarantee its removal from IPFS, because other nodes may pin it independently. We may change categories and TTLs; see the Privacy Policy for the full data picture.

By submitting a request to a cacheable endpoint with the cache on (the default), you grant us and every other user a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, and serve that request and its response through the cache.

7. The marketplace

The marketplace lets holders sell packets with quota remaining. It is a peer-to-peer, non-custodial venue. Arcapis is not a party to any sale, does not hold the packet or the payment, and does not guarantee that any listing is fair, accurate, or worth its price.

What you should know as a buyer

• Quota is live inventory. A seller can keep spending calls while the listing is open. The purchase transaction includes a minimum-quota parameter that reverts the sale if the balance dropped below what you accepted — but you must set it honestly, and the interface sets it from the balance read immediately before you sign.
• Every listing has a window of 7, 30, or 90 days chosen by the seller. When it passes, the listing stops being fillable until the seller relists. A listing can also become unfillable at any moment if the seller transfers the packet or revokes the marketplace approval.
• A purchased packet is sold as-is. There is no refund, no dispute process, and no recourse against Arcapis.

What you should know as a seller

• Listing grants the marketplace contract permission to move that packet on sale. It never takes custody, and you can cancel or revoke at any time.
• When a sale settles, your call key for that packet stops working immediately, because the gateway checks the on-chain owner on every request.
• Deliberately draining a listed packet to defraud a buyer is a breach of these Terms.

Protocol fee

A protocol fee may be deducted from the sale price and paid to the fee recipient. The current rate is shown in the marketplace interface and is readable on-chain. The fee is capped at 5% in the contract (MAX_FEE_BPS), and that cap cannot be raised after deployment.

8. Acceptable use

You must not use the Service to:

• Generate, request, or distribute child sexual abuse material, or any content that sexualises minors. This is reported and permanently banned without exception.
• Generate content that incites violence, promotes terrorism, or facilitates the creation of weapons, including chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or cyber weapons.
• Produce targeted harassment, hate speech, defamation, or non-consensual intimate imagery of real people.
• Impersonate a real person or organisation, or create deceptive material intended to defraud, including fake identity documents, records, or reviews.
• Break any upstream provider’s usage policy — those policies flow down to you, and a violation can get the shared gateway account terminated for everyone.
• Attempt to bypass moderation, quota metering, rate limits, or payment.
• Extract, resell, or redistribute cached results in a way that circumvents endpoint providers’ pricing outside the cache mechanism we provide.
• Scrape, overload, or attack the gateway, the contracts, or the RPC endpoints, including through denial-of-service traffic or automated abuse.
• Launder money, evade sanctions, or fund illegal activity.
• Reverse-engineer or interfere with the Service beyond what applicable law allows.

We run automated moderation on generative endpoints on a best-effort basis. It is not a guarantee: it can fail open when unavailable, and it does not make prohibited use acceptable. Responsibility for what you submit and what you do with the output is yours.

9. Third-party services

Using Arcapis necessarily involves third parties, each with their own terms. By using the Service you accept that your data and transactions pass through them:

We are not responsible for third-party acts, outages, pricing changes, or policy changes, and we do not control what they do with data they receive.

10. Availability and changes

The Service is provided without any uptime commitment. We may modify, suspend, deprecate, or discontinue any part of it — including specific endpoints, the cache, the marketplace, or support for a network — at any time, with or without notice.

The smart contracts are deployed on a public network. They may continue to operate whether or not the website does, and we may not be able to change or stop them.

11. Intellectual property

The Arcapis source code is released under the MIT licence in its public repository. The Arcapis name, logo, and brand assets are not covered by that licence and remain ours; do not use them in a way that suggests endorsement or affiliation.

As between you and us, you keep whatever rights you have in the content you submit, subject to the cache licence in section 6. Rights in model output are governed by the upstream provider’s terms, not ours.

12. Risk disclosure

• Smart contract risk. The contracts are unaudited. A bug, exploit, or economic attack could permanently destroy packets, quota, or funds.
• Irreversibility. No transaction can be reversed, cancelled, or refunded once confirmed. A mistyped address or amount is permanent.
• Key loss. Losing your key or sign-in access means losing everything held by that wallet. No recovery exists.
• Network risk. Arc may fork, halt, reorganise, change fee mechanics, or be deprecated. State on a test network can be wiped without notice.
• Stablecoin risk. USDC may depeg, be frozen at the issuer level, or be subject to regulatory action.
• Counterparty risk. Marketplace sellers, endpoint providers, and upstream model operators are third parties who may fail, withdraw, or act dishonestly.
• Public data risk. Your wallet address, purchases, and cached request content are public and permanent. See section 6.
• Regulatory risk. Rules covering digital assets and AI are unsettled and may change in a way that restricts or ends the Service.
• Model risk. AI output can be wrong, biased, offensive, or fabricated. Do not rely on it for medical, legal, financial, or safety-critical decisions.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, in which case they apply only to the extent permitted.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or digital assets, arising out of or relating to the Service — even if we were advised such damages were possible.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you paid to Arcapis in the three months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) USD 100.

Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

15. Indemnity

You will indemnify and hold harmless Arcapis, its operators and contributors, from any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the Service, your content, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any law or third-party right.

16. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the gateway and the website at any time, with or without notice, if we believe you have breached these Terms, if required by law, or to protect the Service or its users.

Termination does not refund unspent quota, and it does not remove content already published to IPFS or written to the blockchain. Sections 6, 11, and 13–17 survive termination.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the operator’s jurisdiction, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Disputes will be resolved in the courts of that jurisdiction, unless mandatory consumer-protection law in your country gives you the right to sue locally.

18. Contact

Questions about these Terms, abuse reports, and legal notices: contact@arcapis.com.