Terms of Service

Effective date: May 25, 2026 · Last updated: May 25, 2026

Plain-English summary (not a substitute for the full Terms): Blackwing is a tool you point at your own DigitalOcean account. The droplets, the wallets, the assets, the IPFS-pinned files, and every on-chain transaction are yours — billed to you, signed by you, controlled by you. We never hold your funds, your passphrase, your seed phrase, or your private keys. Because we have no custody and no control over what runs on your droplet, you are solely responsible for everything you do with the platform, the open-source code, and your node. The Service is provided “as is,” with no warranties, and our liability to you is limited. Illegal use of any kind is forbidden.

1. Acceptance

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) form a binding legal agreement between you (“you,” “User”) and the operators of Blackwing (“Blackwing,” “we,” “us,” “our”). By (a) accessing or using the Blackwing web application, APIs, command-line interface, sidecar binary, cloud-init scripts, open-source code, or any associated documentation (collectively, the “Service”), or (b) clicking any “I agree” / “I have read and accept these Terms” affirmation in the Service (including, without limitation, when provisioning your first or any additional droplet), you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, you must not use the Service.

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding contract in your jurisdiction. You represent that you are not a person barred from receiving the Service under the laws of the United States or any other applicable jurisdiction.

2. Nature of the Service — Non-Custodial, Sovereign Architecture

You acknowledge and agree that:

  • Your infrastructure. Every droplet the Service helps you provision runs on your DigitalOcean (“DO”) account, is billed directly to you by DigitalOcean, and remains under your sole administrative control (including root SSH access). Blackwing does not own, rent, or operate the infrastructure on which your node runs.
  • Your wallet. Your Ravencoin wallet, seed phrase (mnemonic), passphrase, signing keys, and any derived material exist only on your droplet and (where applicable) in your browser memory. Blackwing does not receive, store, hash, transmit, log, escrow, or have any means of recovering them. If you lose your seed phrase or passphrase, your funds and assets are unrecoverable. We cannot help you.
  • Your assets. Ravencoin assets you issue, reissue, transfer, freeze, broadcast, tag, untag, or otherwise transact with through the Service exist on the Ravencoin blockchain and (where applicable) on IPFS storage running on your droplet. Blackwing does not control, custody, or have administrative authority over them.
  • Your transactions. Every transaction broadcast by the Service is signed on your droplet using your wallet, at your express instruction. Blackwing has no ability to initiate, approve, reverse, freeze, censor, or modify any transaction on your behalf.
  • Your IPFS content. Any file, folder, image, document, video, audio, metadata, ballot, or other content you pin to or serve from your droplet’s IPFS node is selected, uploaded, and made available by you. Blackwing does not host, mirror, screen, moderate, index, or otherwise control such content.
  • Open-source tooling. Portions of the Service — including the Go sidecar binary, the CLI, the cloud-init provisioning script, and the marketplace protocol — are made available under open-source licenses. You may inspect, fork, audit, modify, and run them independently of Blackwing. Your decision to do so is yours alone, and you remain solely responsible for any consequences.

Blackwing acts as a software interface, not as a financial institution, money services business, exchange, custodian, broker, dealer, transfer agent, escrow agent, trust company, investment adviser, hosting provider, or content platform. Nothing in the Service constitutes legal, tax, accounting, financial, investment, or other professional advice.

2A. Sovereign Handoff at Provisioning

You acknowledge and agree that the moment your droplet is provisioned, a sovereign handoff occurs:

  • The droplet is a server you own and operate under your direct contractual relationship with DigitalOcean. The terms of service, acceptable-use policy, privacy policy, billing terms, suspension policy, and dispute-resolution terms published by DigitalOcean at digitalocean.com/legal govern that infrastructure as between you and DigitalOcean. Blackwing is not a party to that contract and has no authority to modify, enforce, waive, or interpret it.
  • Blackwing is not your hosting provider, lessor, sublessor, reseller, or co-tenant of any droplet. Blackwing does not have root access to your droplet, does not hold your SSH private key (unless you chose to have one minted in-browser, in which case only you ever saw it), does not have your wallet passphrase, and cannot administer, snapshot, image, destroy, or otherwise control your droplet on your behalf except by sending the same authenticated API calls to DigitalOcean that you could send yourself, and then only as a convenience reflecting an action you yourself instruct through the front-end.
  • After the handoff, every byte stored on the droplet, every process that runs on it, every IPFS pin it serves, every Ravencoin transaction it broadcasts, and every network connection it makes is your activity, governed by your contract with DigitalOcean, the rules of the Ravencoin and IPFS networks, and the laws of every jurisdiction that applies to you. Blackwing does not author, edit, host, mirror, screen, or curate any of it. Blackwing has no “back door,” “kill switch,” remote-administration channel, or master key.
  • The Service’s only role after the handoff is to provide an opt-in user-interface convenience that issues authenticated requests (a) to DigitalOcean’s API on your behalf when you click an action button, and (b) to your droplet’s sidecar over a pinned-TLS+HMAC channel that your droplet trusts. You may stop using the front-end at any time and continue to operate the same droplet, the same wallet, the same assets, and the same marketplace activity using the open-source ravenforge-cli, third-party tooling, or direct ravend / Kubo RPC calls, with no loss of capability, custody, or data.
  • Blackwing is not, and does not act as: a money transmitter; a money-services business; a virtual-asset service provider (“VASP”); a digital-asset custodian; a crypto-asset wallet provider in any custodial sense; an exchange, alternative trading system, or designated contract market; a securities broker, dealer, investment adviser, or transfer agent; a clearing agency or settlement intermediary; a trust company; a payment processor; a hosting provider; or a content platform. No statement we make, no feature we ship, and no marketing we publish creates any such relationship with you. The marketplace, bids, service-template, qualifier, restricted-asset, NFT, vote-token, on-chain-messaging, snapshot, contacts, IPFS-pinning, and site-viewer features are all interfaces to actions you sign and broadcast from your droplet.

Provisioning a droplet constitutes your acknowledgement that this handoff has occurred and that, from that moment forward, your relationship with the underlying infrastructure is with DigitalOcean (and, on-chain, with the Ravencoin and IPFS networks), not with Blackwing.

3. Your Responsibilities; Acceptable Use

You are solely and exclusively responsible for:

  1. All actions taken on or through your droplet, your wallet, your assets, your IPFS node, and your DigitalOcean account, whether initiated by you, your agents, or anyone to whom you grant access.
  2. Securing your passphrase, your seed phrase, your SSH keys, your derived encryption keys, your contacts encryption key, your DigitalOcean credentials, and your session cookies.
  3. Complying with all laws, regulations, sanctions regimes, registration requirements, licensing regimes, tax obligations, anti-money-laundering (“AML”) obligations, counter-terrorist-financing (“CFT”) obligations, know-your-customer (“KYC”) obligations, securities laws, commodities laws, consumer-protection laws, data-protection laws, intellectual-property laws, export-control laws, and all other legal and regulatory requirements that apply to you, your activities, your jurisdiction, the jurisdictions of your counterparties, and the assets and content you transact in or distribute.
  4. Determining whether any token, asset, sub-asset, qualifier, restricted asset, unique asset, vote token, NFT, service offering, or other on-chain instrument you create, issue, reissue, distribute, advertise, broadcast, list, bid on, sell, swap, freeze, tag, untag, or otherwise transact with constitutes a security, derivative, deposit, money transmission instrument, electronic money, gift card, lottery ticket, gambling instrument, or any other regulated product under any applicable law — and for ensuring full compliance with every such law before you act.
  5. Conducting your own independent diligence on every counterparty, every signed partial-transaction blob you accept, every listing you fulfil, every bid you take, every service offer you accept, every CID you pin, every file you upload, every address you tag, every contact you store, every snapshot you take, and every off-platform party you interact with.
  6. Backing up your wallet, your seed phrase, your encrypted contacts blobs, your IPFS data, and your droplet snapshots.

You will not, and will not permit, encourage, facilitate, or instruct any other person to, use the Service or any associated open-source tooling for, or in connection with, any of the following:

  • Any activity that violates any applicable law, regulation, sanction, court order, or governmental directive in any jurisdiction.
  • Money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, tax evasion, market manipulation, insider trading, wash trading, fraud, theft, extortion, ransom payments, bribery, or any other financial crime.
  • Issuing, marketing, distributing, listing, bidding on, or trading unregistered securities, unregistered commodities, unregistered derivatives, unlicensed money-services-business activity, unlicensed gambling instruments, or any other instrument that requires a license, registration, or exemption that you do not hold.
  • Hosting, pinning, broadcasting, distributing, linking to, or otherwise making available: child sexual abuse material (“CSAM”); non-consensual intimate imagery; content that incites or threatens violence; terrorist or extremist content; content that infringes any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, right of publicity, or other intellectual-property right; defamatory, harassing, threatening, or abusive content; malware, ransomware, spyware, botnet command-and-control infrastructure, phishing kits, or any other malicious software; or any content prohibited by the laws of any jurisdiction in which it is hosted, broadcast, or accessed.
  • Interfering with, disrupting, attacking, or attempting to gain unauthorised access to the Service, our infrastructure, our DigitalOcean OAuth integration, any third party’s droplet or node, the Ravencoin network, IPFS network, or any other system; reverse-engineering for circumvention of security; or violating any rate limit, quota, or access control.
  • Misrepresenting your identity, your affiliation, your jurisdiction, the provenance of any asset or content, the authority under which you issue any token, or any material fact in any on-chain message, broadcast, listing, bid, service offer, qualifier tag, restricted-asset issuance, NFT mint, or contact record.
  • Acting as a counterparty to, or facilitating any transaction with, any person or entity that is the subject of U.S. or other applicable sanctions (including OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals list).

We reserve the right (but assume no obligation) to suspend or terminate your access to the front-end portion of the Service (the hosted website and the platform API we operate) if we reasonably believe you are in breach of these Terms, are placing other users at risk, or are creating legal exposure for us. We cannot — and we make no representation that we can — stop, censor, or recover anything running on your droplet or on the Ravencoin network. Your droplet, your wallet, and your assets continue to function independently of our front-end.

4. No Custody; No Fiduciary Duty; No Brokerage

You acknowledge that Blackwing:

  • holds no funds, assets, keys, passphrases, or seed phrases belonging to you or any other person;
  • owes no fiduciary, agency, trust, custodial, or similar duty to you;
  • does not provide brokerage, dealer, exchange, clearing, settlement, custodian, escrow, transfer agent, money-transmission, or money-services-business services;
  • does not match buyers and sellers off-chain — the marketplace is a passive bulletin board for user-signed, user-broadcast partial-transaction blobs, with settlement occurring atomically on the Ravencoin network without any Blackwing intermediation;
  • does not, and cannot, guarantee the existence, value, liquidity, legality, fitness for any purpose, or future availability of any Ravencoin asset, sub-asset, qualifier, restricted asset, unique asset, vote token, NFT, service template, or other on-chain instrument; and
  • does not endorse, vet, or warrant any issuer, counterparty, seller, buyer, bidder, service provider, qualifier authority, restricted-asset verifier, or content publisher you encounter through the Service.

5. Third-Party Services

The Service requires you to use, and integrates with, third-party services including DigitalOcean (for hosting), the Ravencoin peer-to-peer network (for chain settlement), the IPFS / Kubo network (for content addressing), and may also interact with optional third-party services you elect to use (including, where applicable, Tailscale, third-party RPC providers, third-party LLM providers, third-party pinning services, etc.). Your use of those services is governed by their own terms, prices, and privacy policies. Blackwing is not responsible for the availability, performance, security, fees, billing, suspension, termination, or any other act or omission of any third-party service. Charges from DigitalOcean and any other third party are entirely your responsibility.

6. Marketplace, Bids, Service Templates, On-Chain Messaging

The marketplace, bids, service-template, on-chain messaging, qualifier-tagging, restricted-asset, vote-token, snapshot, IPFS site-viewer, contacts, and any related features (collectively, the “Trading Features”) are peer-to-peer. Every signed partial-transaction blob, every bid, every service-offer acceptance, every tag, every freeze, every reissue, every broadcast, and every fund movement is initiated and signed by you, on your droplet, with your passphrase. Blackwing does not select, vet, screen, match, escrow, clear, settle, reverse, or otherwise control any Trading Feature transaction. You agree that you understand the cryptoeconomic, technical, regulatory, and counterparty risks of every Trading Feature you use, and you accept all of those risks.

7. NO WARRANTIES; “AS IS”

THE SERVICE, THE OPEN-SOURCE CODE, THE SIDECAR BINARY, THE CLI, THE CLOUD-INIT SCRIPTS, THE DOCUMENTATION, AND ALL CONTENT MADE AVAILABLE THROUGH OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERVICE ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITH ALL FAULTS, AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, BLACKWING AND ITS OPERATORS, CONTRIBUTORS, AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, AND LICENSORS (THE “BLACKWING PARTIES”) DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, ACCURACY, AVAILABILITY, RELIABILITY, COMPATIBILITY, SECURITY, FREEDOM FROM DEFECTS, FREEDOM FROM VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL CODE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTIES ARISING OUT OF ANY COURSE OF DEALING, COURSE OF PERFORMANCE, OR USAGE OF TRADE.

WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, THE BLACKWING PARTIES MAKE NO WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION THAT: (a) THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS; (b) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; (c) ANY DEFECT WILL BE CORRECTED; (d) ANY TRANSACTION YOU INITIATE WILL CONFIRM, SETTLE, OR BE FINAL; (e) ANY COUNTERPARTY WILL PERFORM; (f) ANY ASSET WILL RETAIN VALUE; (g) ANY CONTENT YOU PIN WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE; (h) THE RAVENCOIN NETWORK, IPFS NETWORK, OR DIGITALOCEAN WILL CONTINUE TO OPERATE; OR (i) THE SERVICE OR ANY OPEN-SOURCE COMPONENT IS COMPLIANT WITH THE LAW OF ANY PARTICULAR JURISDICTION.

8. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW:

(a) No indirect damages. THE BLACKWING PARTIES WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR ENHANCED DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, GOODWILL, BUSINESS, DATA, USE, ASSETS, FUNDS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE, THESE TERMS, OR YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, STATUTE, STRICT LIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE, AND WHETHER OR NOT THE BLACKWING PARTIES HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

(b) Aggregate cap. THE TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF THE BLACKWING PARTIES TO YOU FOR ANY AND ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (i) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$100), OR (ii) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO BLACKWING (IF ANY) IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM. You acknowledge that you do not pay Blackwing for the use of the open-source non-custodial Service itself, and that any amounts payable to DigitalOcean or other third parties are not “amounts paid to Blackwing.”

(c) Specifically excluded. Without limiting subsections (a) or (b), the Blackwing Parties will have no liability whatsoever for: (i) loss of cryptocurrency, tokens, assets, NFTs, or other on-chain instruments resulting from a forgotten or compromised passphrase or seed phrase, a destroyed or misconfigured droplet, a chain reorganisation, a sidecar bug, an upstream ravend or Kubo bug, a Ravencoin network failure, a malicious counterparty, a fraudulent listing or bid, a malicious or counterfeit asset, a malicious or counterfeit qualifier or restricted asset, a malicious IPFS pin, a malicious on-chain broadcast, or any user error; (ii) any content uploaded, pinned, served, broadcast, or otherwise made available by any User, including via the IPFS site viewer or chain messaging primitive; (iii) any third-party act or omission, including by DigitalOcean, the Ravencoin network, IPFS network, or any optional integration; (iv) any regulatory action, civil action, or criminal action taken against you for any use you make of the Service; (v) any tax liability arising from any transaction or holding; or (vi) any failure of any Trading Feature counterparty to perform.

(d) Essential basis. You acknowledge that the limitations in this Section 8 are an essential basis of the bargain between you and Blackwing, and that absent these limitations Blackwing would not provide the Service to you.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation or exclusion of liability for certain damages. The exclusions and limitations in Sections 7 and 8 apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

9. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Blackwing Parties from and against any and all claims, demands, actions, proceedings, losses, liabilities, damages, judgments, settlements, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees and disbursements) arising out of or relating to: (a) your access to or use of the Service or any open-source component; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) your violation of any law, regulation, sanction, or third-party right (including any intellectual-property right, privacy right, publicity right, or contractual right); (d) any content, asset, qualifier, restricted asset, NFT, service offer, listing, bid, broadcast, message, contact record, IPFS pin, or other artefact you create, issue, distribute, host, broadcast, or transact in through the Service; (e) any transaction you initiate; (f) any act or omission of any counterparty you engage with; (g) any tax, regulatory, or compliance obligation owed by you in any jurisdiction; and (h) any acts or omissions of any person you authorise to access your droplet, your wallet, your DigitalOcean account, or your Blackwing session. Blackwing reserves the right, at its own expense, to assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, in which case you agree to cooperate with Blackwing’s defence of such matter.

10. Open-Source Components

Certain components made available through the Service are released under open-source licenses (including, where applicable, the MIT License for the marketplace protocol, sidecar binary, and CLI). Your use of those components is governed by the applicable open-source license in addition to (and, to the extent of any conflict relating solely to that open-source component’s use, in priority over) these Terms. Nothing in these Terms is intended to restrict any right granted to you under an applicable open-source license, but the disclaimers and limitations in Sections 7, 8, and 9 above apply to your use of those components when accessed through, or relied upon in connection with, the Blackwing Service.

11. Modifications to the Service; Sunset

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the front-end portion of the Service at any time, in whole or in part. Because the architecture is non-custodial and sovereign, your droplet, your wallet, your assets, your IPFS pins, your seed phrase, and your ability to transact on the Ravencoin network all continue to function independently of the Blackwing front-end. Consistent with sovereignty guarantee G7, we will provide at least thirty (30) days’ prior notice before any planned shutdown of the hosted Blackwing front-end. Any such notice is cryptographically signed by an offline key whose fingerprint is pinned into your droplet at provisioning, so that you can independently verify the notice is genuine even if our front-end is no longer reachable. We will publish documentation enabling you to continue operating your droplet, your wallet, and your marketplace activity using the open-source CLI and your existing sidecar.

12. Modifications to These Terms

We may revise these Terms from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top of these Terms reflects the most recent revision. Material changes will be surfaced in the Service. Your continued use of the Service after revised Terms take effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to the revised Terms, you must stop using the Service.

13. Termination

Either you or we may terminate your right to use the front-end portion of the Service at any time, with or without cause. Sections 2–4 and 6–17 survive any termination. Termination of your use of the front-end does not terminate your droplet, your wallet, your assets, your IPFS pins, or your DigitalOcean account, which remain entirely under your control.

14. Governing Law; Jurisdiction; Dispute Resolution

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service are governed by the laws of the United States of America and, to the extent not preempted by federal law, the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Informal resolution first. Before commencing any formal proceeding, you agree to attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute with us informally by sending written notice to a contact address designated by Blackwing for legal notices, and to give us at least sixty (60) days to respond.

Binding arbitration. Except as set out below, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that is not resolved informally will be resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration administered in the United States under the then-current Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”), by a single arbitrator, conducted in English, with the seat of arbitration in Delaware. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Class-action waiver. You and we each agree that any dispute resolution proceeding will be conducted only on an individual basis, and not as a class, collective, consolidated, or representative action. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims and may not preside over any form of representative or class proceeding.

Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual action in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction to protect its intellectual-property rights or to enforce the confidentiality obligations in these Terms.

15. U.S. Government End-Users

The Service is a “commercial item” as defined in 48 C.F.R. § 2.101, consisting of “commercial computer software” and “commercial computer software documentation.” Any use, duplication, or disclosure of the Service by the U.S. Government is subject to these Terms.

16. Export Controls; Sanctions

You represent and warrant that you are not (a) located in, or a national or resident of, any country subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions (currently including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine), and (b) not listed on any U.S. government list of restricted persons (including OFAC’s SDN list). You will not access or use the Service in violation of any U.S. or other applicable export-control or sanctions law.

17. Miscellaneous

  • Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any applicable open-source license, constitute the entire agreement between you and Blackwing regarding the Service and supersede all prior agreements.
  • Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force, and the unenforceable provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable.
  • No waiver. Our failure to enforce any right or provision is not a waiver of that right or provision.
  • Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms to any successor or affiliate.
  • No agency. Nothing in these Terms creates any agency, partnership, joint venture, employment, or franchise relationship between you and Blackwing.
  • Headings. Section headings are for convenience only.
  • Force majeure. Neither party is liable for any delay or failure to perform caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including chain reorganisations, network partitions, infrastructure outages, governmental action, or acts of God.
Final reminder: Blackwing is a tool you point at infrastructure you own. You are the operator. You are the issuer. You are the signer. You are the publisher. You are the responsible party. Use the Service only if you understand and accept that responsibility.