Terms of service

Effective date: 12 April 2026

1. Agreement

By accessing or using qub.social ("the Service"), you agree to these Terms of Use. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. These terms constitute a binding agreement between you and VSPRY AUSTRALIA PTY LIMITED ("qub", "we", "us", "the Operator") or successors.

2. What qub Does

qub is a timed commitment and publication platform. It allows you to:

1. Seal a message — your content is encrypted on your device using timelock encryption.
2. Store the sealed message — the encrypted payload is uploaded to the Arweave network, a decentralised permanent storage layer.
3. Share a link — recipients see a countdown until the reveal date.
4. Reveal — after the reveal date, the content becomes publicly decryptable by anyone with the link.
5. Sign your qubs — optionally generate a signing key and attach a cryptographic signature to prove authorship. You may verify your email against your public key to make your identity visible to viewers.
6. Agree via pacts — seal structured terms between two parties. Both sides commit to the same conditions before the reveal date.
7. Get notified — subscribe to a sealed qub to receive an email when it reveals.
8. Embed — paste a single-line snippet into a blog, Notion page, Substack post, or any HTML to render any sealed qub on your own site. The embed displays the live countdown and the reveal in place.

We provide the tools to seal, sign, upload, and view content. We do not host or control the Arweave network or the drand timelock beacon that governs when content becomes decryptable.

3. Permanence — Read This Carefully

Content sealed through qub is stored permanently on the Arweave network. It cannot be deleted, edited, or recalled — by you, by us, or by anyone.

By sealing a qub, you acknowledge and accept that:

• Your content will become publicly readable after the reveal date you choose.
• Once sealed, the content cannot be modified or removed from Arweave.
• We can add a qub to our denylist so that qub's viewer refuses to display it, but we cannot remove the underlying data from the Arweave network.
• After the reveal date, anyone with the Arweave transaction ID can decrypt your content independently of qub.
• You are solely responsible for the content you seal.

Do not seal content that you may want to delete, retract, or keep private indefinitely. This is not a limitation we can engineer around — it is a fundamental property of the storage layer.

4. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use qub, or the minimum age required for digital consent in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher. By using the Service, you represent that you meet this age requirement. If you are between 13 and 18 (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction), you represent that your parent or legal guardian has reviewed and agreed to these terms on your behalf. We do not knowingly provide the Service to anyone under 13.

5. Your Content

5.1 Ownership

You retain ownership of the content you seal. Sealing a qub does not transfer any intellectual property rights to us.

5.2 Licence to Operate

By sealing a qub through qub, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to transmit the encrypted payload to the Arweave network and to facilitate its display through qub's viewer — including the qub embed iframe rendered on third-party sites — after the reveal date. This licence is necessary for the Service to function.

5.3 Responsibility

You are solely responsible for the content you seal. Because we cannot read your content before or during the sealing process, you acknowledge that content moderation is necessarily reactive.

At the point of sealing, you confirm that:

• Your content is lawful in all relevant jurisdictions.
• Your content does not violate these terms or our prohibited content policy.
• You understand the content will become permanently and publicly available after the reveal date.
• You have the right to publish the content.

6. Prohibited Content

You must not use qub to seal or distribute:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) of any kind.
• Non-consensual intimate imagery.
• Direct, credible threats of violence against any person or group.
• Doxxing — the publication of private personal information without consent, including when timed for maximum harm.
• Content that is unlawful under the laws of your jurisdiction.
• Content that constitutes harassment, stalking, or targeted abuse.
• Malware, phishing links, or deceptive content designed to harm viewers.
• Personal data about third parties sealed without their knowledge or consent, where publication would violate applicable data protection laws.

We take the timed-release nature of qub seriously. Abuse patterns specific to timed publication — such as doxxing timed to an event, coercive "dead man's switch" threats, or defamation timed for maximum impact — are explicitly prohibited and will be treated with the same severity as the underlying prohibited conduct.

7. Abuse Reporting and Enforcement

7.1 Reporting

qub's viewer includes a report function. You may report a qub for: illegal content, harassment or threats, publication of personal information, or other concerns. Reports submitted before a qub's reveal date are accepted, but content verification may not be possible until after the reveal.

7.2 Enforcement Actions

If we determine that a qub violates these terms — whether through a user report, a lawful order, or our own review after reveal — we may:

• Add the qub to our denylist, preventing qub's viewer and cache from serving it.
• Block associated device identifiers from creating new qubs.
• Report the content to law enforcement where required or appropriate.

Denylisting is the primary enforcement mechanism. It provides practical removal from qub's product surface but does not remove the underlying data from Arweave.

7.3 Moderation Limitations

We do not receive or have access to your plaintext content during or after the sealing process. Moderation is necessarily reactive and metadata-driven until a qub becomes publicly decryptable. We do not and cannot pre-screen content.

8. Pricing, Payments, and Fulfilment

8.1 Free Tier

The free tier provides a limited number of qubs at no charge. The free tier is soft-enforced and subject to change. We subsidise the Arweave storage costs for free qubs.

8.2 Paid Tiers

Paid tiers are available as one-time purchases processed through Stripe. Current pricing is displayed on the purchase screen within the app. Prices are listed in United States Dollar currency (USD); Stripe may convert the amount to your local currency at the prevailing exchange rate at the time of purchase.

Applicable taxes are determined by Stripe at checkout.

8.3 Fulfilment and Delivery

qub is a digital service. When you complete a purchase, your paid entitlement is activated automatically and immediately. There is no physical delivery. Your entitlement is confirmed on the purchase success screen and is available for use straight away.

Entitlements are delivered by writing a record to our entitlement store, keyed to your device identifier. You will also receive an email confirmation of your purchase from Stripe.

8.4 Entitlements

Paid entitlements are bound to your device identifier, which is stored in your browser's local storage. If you lose your device identifier (by clearing browser data, switching devices, or using private browsing), you may need to contact us for manual restoration. Automated restoration is planned for a future release.

8.5 Refund Policy

Because sealed content is permanently uploaded to Arweave at our cost and cannot be reversed, refunds are generally not available for qubs that have already been sealed.

You are eligible for a full refund if:

• You purchased a paid tier but have not yet sealed any qubs, and
• You contact us within 14 days of purchase.

To request a refund, email support@qub.social with the subject line prefix [REFUND] and include the email address you used at checkout. We will process approved refunds within 5–10 business days to your original payment method via Stripe.

8.6 Cancellation Policy

One-time purchases do not have recurring charges and therefore do not require cancellation.

If you have a subscription plan, you may cancel your subscription at any time. Cancellation will take effect at the end of your current billing period.

8.7 Price Changes

We may change pricing for future purchases at any time. Price changes do not affect entitlements you have already purchased. If we introduce subscription plans, we will provide at least 30 days' notice of any price increase to existing subscribers.

8.8 Disputes and Complaints

If you have a problem with a purchase — including an entitlement that did not activate, an incorrect charge, or any billing concern — please contact us at support@qub.social with the subject line [REFUND] before initiating a chargeback or dispute with your bank or card issuer. We will work to resolve the issue promptly.

We aim to respond to payment-related inquiries within 2 business days.

8.9 Payment Processing

All payments are processed by Stripe. We do not receive or store your credit card number, expiry date, or CVC. Your payment is subject to Stripe's terms of service and privacy policy. By completing a purchase, you authorise Stripe to charge the amount displayed at checkout to your chosen payment method.

9. API and Developer Access

If you access qub through our API, you are additionally bound by the API usage terms displayed on the developer portal. API keys are personal to you, non-transferable, and must not be shared. We may revoke API access for abuse, excessive usage, or violation of these terms.

Server-side sealing through the API is a deliberate trust-model change from client-side sealing: when you use the API to seal content, our servers temporarily process your plaintext. This distinction is documented in our developer documentation and you accept it by using the seal endpoint.

10. Identity, Email, and Signing

10.1 Signing Keys

If you generate a signing key, it is created and stored on your device. You are responsible for safeguarding your private key. We do not have access to your private key and cannot recover it if lost. Loss of your private key means you can no longer sign qubs with that identity — previously signed qubs remain verifiable.

10.2 Email Attestation

When you verify your email against your signing key, your verified email address becomes publicly visible on qubs you sign. You may revoke your attestation at any time, which removes your email from future viewer displays. Revocation does not retroactively remove your email from qubs that were signed while the attestation was active — those qubs are stored permanently on Arweave.

10.3 Notify-Me Subscriptions

When you subscribe to a sealed qub's reveal notification, we store your email address until the notification is delivered, then delete it. Notifications are best-effort — we do not guarantee delivery. You may receive at most one email per subscription.

10.4 Pacts

A pact is a structured agreement between two parties sealed as a qub. By creating or counter-signing a pact, you accept that the terms you commit to — and the identifiers of both parties (names, contact details) — will become permanently and publicly visible after the reveal date, subject to the same permanence disclosures in §3. You are responsible for ensuring that all parties to a pact consent to its terms and to the inclusion of their identifier in the sealed body before sealing.

Email binding for co-sign. When you stage a pact against a counter-party email address, that counter-party must verify the same address via a single-use link before they are permitted to co-sign. The verified address is bound to the staged pact server-side for 15 minutes. This is a deliberate anti-impersonation measure — it prevents a bystander with the staging link from completing the agreement in place of the intended counter-party.

Frozen acknowledgement text. Pacts in the structured/v1 schema embed verbatim acknowledgement language covering statutory rights, legal capacity, authority, and (for sellers) unencumbered title. These strings are frozen — both parties sign the exact bytes, regardless of UI language. A separate structured/v2 schema is required for any wording change.

Pact invite rate limits. To protect recipients from being used as a spam relay, we impose a per-recipient daily cap on the number of pact invitations that can be emailed to a single address, and a per-device daily cap on staging attempts. These limits are soft-enforced and subject to change. Exceeded caps return a descriptive error and do not consume your entitlement quota.

Retraction. The initiator of a pact may retract a staged pact at any time before the counter-party co-signs. Retraction is cryptographically authenticated and deletes the staged record; no qub is ever written to Arweave for retracted pacts. Once co-signed and sealed, retraction is no longer possible — the permanence disclosures in §3 apply.

12. Intellectual Property

qub, qub.social, and the qub logo are trademarks of VSPRY INTERNATIONAL PTY LIMITED ABN 59 631 026 027. The Service software is proprietary. These terms do not grant you any right to use our trademarks or to access, copy, or modify our source code.

13. Disclaimers

13.1 Third-Party Infrastructure

qub depends on third-party infrastructure that we do not control:

• Arweave for permanent storage of sealed content.
• drand for the timelock beacon that governs when content becomes decryptable.
• A third-party hosting, CDN, and edge-compute provider for serving the application and API.
• Stripe for payment processing.

We are not responsible for the availability, performance, or policies of these services. If Arweave becomes unavailable, sealed qubs may become inaccessible. If drand becomes unavailable, content may not become decryptable at the expected time.

13.2 No Guarantee of Availability

We provide qub on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at all times. We may suspend or discontinue the Service at any time with reasonable notice where practicable.

13.3 Encryption

qub uses timelock encryption based on the drand network. We make no guarantee that the cryptographic methods used will remain secure indefinitely. Advances in computing or cryptanalysis could theoretically affect the security of sealed content before its intended reveal date. We will disclose any known material risks as they arise.

14. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Operator's total liability to you for any claim arising from or related to the Service is limited to the amount you have paid to us in the 12 months preceding the claim.

We are not liable for:

• Content you seal or its consequences after reveal.
• Loss arising from the permanence of Arweave storage.
• Loss arising from the unavailability of third-party infrastructure.
• Indirect, consequential, or incidental damages.

15. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Operator, its directors, employees, and agents from any claims, losses, damages, or regulatory fines arising from your use of the Service, your content, or your violation of these terms. This includes, without limitation, any claims or regulatory action arising from you sealing personal data about third parties on the Arweave network without their consent.

16. Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Queensland, Australia. Any dispute arising from these terms or your use of the Service will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Queensland, except where prohibited by applicable consumer protection law. If you are a consumer residing in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer protection laws, you may also benefit from the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence.

17. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to qub if you violate these terms. Termination does not affect content already sealed — it remains on Arweave regardless of your account status.

You may stop using qub at any time. There is no account to close. If you wish to have your device identifier and associated entitlement records deleted, contact us at support@qub.social with the subject line prefix [PRIVACY].

18. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. Material changes will be noted with a revised effective date at the top of this page. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

19. Severability

If any provision of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force.

20. Customer Service and Contact

For all inquiries — including billing, refunds, entitlement issues, abuse reports, and general questions:

Email: support@qub.social

Use the following subject prefixes to help us route your request:

• [BILLING] — payment, refund, or entitlement issues
• [REFUND] — refund requests
• [REPORT] — content abuse reports
• [LEGAL] — legal or terms-related inquiries
• [PRIVACY] — privacy or data requests
• [SECURITY] — security vulnerability reports

We aim to respond within 2 business days.