Terms of Service

1. Introduction

Welcome to Indie Chains, a directory and link network for independent projects, products, and websites. These Terms of Service govern your access to and use of Indie Chains, including public profiles, site listings, badge widgets, verification tools, link balances, and related services.

By accessing or using Indie Chains, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, you may not use the service.

2. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms as Indie Chains evolves. When we make material changes, we will update the Last Updated date on this page. Your continued use of Indie Chains after the updated Terms are posted means you accept the revised Terms.

3. Accounts and Security

Some features require an account. You agree to provide accurate information, keep your account credentials secure, and remain responsible for activity that happens through your account.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, create legal or security risk, or interfere with the integrity of Indie Chains.

4. User Content and Site Listings

You are responsible for the profiles, site listings, descriptions, links, tags, images, logos, badge configurations, and other content you submit or publish through Indie Chains.

You represent that you own or have the necessary rights to submit that content, and that your content does not violate third-party rights, privacy rights, intellectual property rights, or applicable law.

By submitting content to Indie Chains, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, copy, display, process, modify for formatting or technical purposes, and distribute that content as needed to operate, promote, and improve the service.

5. Badges, Embeds, Verification, and Link Balances

Indie Chains provides badge widgets and snippets that users can embed on their own sites. Badge embeds may report impressions or activity so Indie Chains can verify active links and maintain link balances.

Link balances, incoming links, outgoing links, badge status, and featured status may change when verification detects inactive embeds, removed badges, invalid host pages, abuse, technical failures, or policy violations.

You may not manipulate embeds, impressions, link balances, badge status, or verification behavior. We may adjust balances, remove embeds, mark links inactive or penalized, or take other corrective action when needed to preserve the integrity of the service.

6. Link Credits

Indie Chains may assign, adjust, or remove link credits as part of free testing, verification, abuse prevention, or future product changes.

Link credits, balances, featured status, and related benefits are not guaranteed and may change when verification detects inactive embeds, removed badges, invalid host pages, abuse, technical failures, or policy violations.

7. Prohibited Activities

You agree not to use Indie Chains to break the law, infringe rights, upload malware, distribute phishing links, impersonate people or brands, misrepresent ownership, spam the service, evade enforcement, or interfere with the platform's security or availability.

You may not submit or promote content that is unlawful, abusive, deceptive, malicious, defamatory, infringing, explicitly adult or NSFW, or related to real-money gambling.

You may not use bots, scripts, coordinated campaigns, fake accounts, or other artificial methods to manipulate listings, embeds, impressions, balances, badges, or any service metric.

8. Enforcement

We may review, reject, remove, hide, suspend, or delete accounts, profiles, site listings, media, badges, embeds, link balances, or other content at our discretion when we believe it violates these Terms, creates risk, or harms Indie Chains or its users.

Policy violations may result in loss of credits, removal of featured benefits, account suspension, or permanent bans.

9. Intellectual Property

Indie Chains and its original software, design, branding, features, and functionality are owned by Indie Chains or its licensors and are protected by applicable intellectual property laws.

Trademarks, logos, names, and content submitted by users or linked third parties remain the property of their respective owners. Listing a project on Indie Chains does not imply endorsement by Indie Chains or affiliation with that project unless expressly stated.

10. Third-Party Links and Services

Indie Chains contains links to third-party websites and services. We do not control those websites and are not responsible for their content, availability, privacy practices, terms, products, or services.

Your use of third-party services, including payment providers and websites linked from site listings or badges, is at your own risk and may be governed by separate terms.

11. Disclaimers

Indie Chains is provided on an as-is and as-available basis. We do not guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that any specific listing, badge, link, verification result, visibility, traffic, search outcome, or business result will occur.

Indie Chains is in active development, and features may change, be removed, or become temporarily unavailable.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Indie Chains will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, including loss of profits, data, goodwill, traffic, business opportunities, or other intangible losses arising from your use of or inability to use the service.

13. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Indie Chains from claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses arising from your use of the service, your content, your site listings, your embeds, your purchases, your violation of these Terms, or your violation of any law or third-party right.

14. Termination

You may stop using Indie Chains at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access to Indie Chains at any time if we believe you violated these Terms or created risk for the service, other users, or third parties.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination, including ownership, disclaimers, limitations of liability, indemnification, and dispute-related provisions, will survive termination.

15. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

The governing law and jurisdiction for these Terms must be completed before production launch. Until then, this section is a placeholder and should not be treated as a final dispute resolution clause.

16. Severability and Entire Agreement

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in effect. These Terms represent the agreement between you and Indie Chains regarding your use of the service and replace prior or contemporaneous understandings about that use.

17. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms or account issues, contact us at hello@indiechains.com.