These terms govern the use of DeFi Research Data Services (DFRDS, “the
platform”), operated by Northern Vector Systems (“we”, “us”). By opening an
account, accepting an invitation to an organization, or using the platform in
any other way, you agree to them. If you are accepting on behalf of a
university, a research desk, or another institution, you confirm that you are
authorised to bind it, and “you” in these terms means that institution as well
as the person at the keyboard.
[REVIEW: legal entity name, registered office and company number of Northern
Vector Systems.]
1. The service
The platform is a research record of on-chain finance: an explorer over
Ethereum’s raw logs, price series rebuilt from those logs, tracked lending
protocols, a research workspace with citations that are re-checked against the
chain, data exports, an API, and the documentation that describes them. The
features available to you depend on the plan that covers your organization
(see section 4 below and the plans guide).
We may add, change or withdraw features. Where a change removes something you
pay for, we tell the organization’s admins at least 30 days ahead and, if the
change materially reduces what you bought, you may end the subscription and we
refund the unused part of the term. [REVIEW: refund commitment.]
2. Accounts
You need an account to use anything beyond the public pages. You are
responsible for what happens under your account: keep the password to
yourself, turn on two-factor authentication where your role allows it (it is
required for staff and partners), and tell us at security@dfrds.com as soon as
you suspect it has been used by someone else.
An account belongs to a person. A university or team is an organization
with seats; its admins invite members, change their roles and remove them, and
the organization’s plan decides what those members can do. When an
organization removes you, you keep your account and your personal
organization, and lose the organization’s plan.
You must be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live, to open an
account. [REVIEW: minimum age.]
3. Acceptable use
You may use the platform for research, teaching, analysis and the products
you build on it, subject to the following limits. You must not:
- attempt to reach data or accounts that are not yours, probe or load-test
the service without written permission, or interfere with other users’
work; - share one seat between several people, or use scripts to circumvent plan
limits, rate limits or the row cap on exports; - resell raw exports of the warehouse as a competing data product
[REVIEW: redistribution rights per plan; the academic tiers may need a broader licence for teaching material]; - use the platform to break the law, including sanctions and market-abuse
rules that apply to you; - remove or obscure citation hashes, provenance links or attribution from
anything you take out of the platform and present as ours.
If you find a security problem, please report it under our
vulnerability disclosure policy rather than
exploiting it. We will not pursue good-faith research that follows that
policy.
4. Plans, billing and seats
Subscriptions belong to organizations, not people. An organization’s admins
buy a plan through Stripe, our payment processor, or on invoice under a
separate order form; the plan sets the organization’s features, limits and
seat count. A person covered by more than one organization receives the best
of their plans.
Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each term unless cancelled in the
billing portal before renewal. Fees are exclusive of taxes; where we must
collect VAT or sales tax we add it to the invoice. Extra seats are charged at
the rate the organization already pays. Refunds beyond those described in
section 1 are at our discretion. [REVIEW: refund and cancellation policy;
consumer-law carve-outs in jurisdictions where an individual buyer is a
consumer.]
A lapsed subscription falls back to the Free plan: nothing is deleted, and the
organization’s members keep the data they could reach on Free. Retention
windows shrink to the Free plan’s (see the privacy policy).
5. Your data and ours
Your research is yours. Research pages, notes, annotations, saved
transactions, exports and anything else you or your organization create stay
your property. You give us a licence to store, process, back up and display
them as needed to run the service, including to the people you share them
with and, where you publish a page, to the public. You can take your work out
at any time as markdown, CSV and zip, and delete your account under the rules
in the privacy policy.
The warehouse is ours. The on-chain record itself is public, and we make
no claim to it. Our selection, decoding, derived series and the platform’s
software and design are ours or our licensors’, and this agreement grants you
a licence to use them, not a transfer.
Attribution. A citation hash resolves publicly on purpose: it lets a
reader check a figure without an account. When you publish work that rests on
a cited figure, keep the hash. You do not have to name us.
6. Confidentiality and processing personal data
We treat unpublished research as confidential and read it only to operate the
service, to answer a support request you raise, or when the law requires.
Staff access is logged, and impersonation of an account is announced to its
holder by email.
Where the platform processes personal data on your organization’s behalf (its
members’ names, emails and activity), our data processing addendum
applies and lists our sub-processors.
7. Availability and support
We aim for the platform to be available continuously and publish its live
state at /status. Maintenance that we expect to interrupt service
is announced there ahead of time. We do not promise a particular uptime under
these terms; institutions that need a service level agreement can ask for one
under an order form. [REVIEW: whether a standard SLA is offered, and its
credits.]
Support is by email at support@dfrds.com during [REVIEW: business hours and
time zone].
8. Warranties and liability
The data on the platform is rebuilt from a public blockchain by software that
we test but cannot guarantee. It is provided for research and is not
investment, legal or tax advice. You are responsible for checking a figure
before you rely on it; the platform gives you the tools to do so (the
citation hash, the block it was read at, the verification state), and we
expect you to use them.
To the extent the law allows, the platform is provided as is, and we exclude
implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and
non-infringement. Our total liability under this agreement in any twelve-month
period is limited to the fees your organization paid us in that period, and we
are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits or lost data
that you could have exported. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be
limited by law, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by
negligence. [REVIEW: liability cap and exclusions under the governing law
chosen in section 11.]
9. Suspension and termination
You may close your account at any time from the account page. An organization
may cancel its plan at any time from the billing portal; the plan runs to the
end of the paid term.
We may suspend an organization or an account when we reasonably believe it is
breaking these terms, when an invoice is more than 30 days overdue, or when
continuing to serve it would put other users or the service at risk. A
suspended organization keeps its data and loses its plan’s features until the
matter is resolved; a suspension is not a deletion. We may end this agreement
on 30 days’ notice if we stop offering the service, in which case we refund
any prepaid fees for the period after termination and keep your export
available for the notice period.
10. Changes to these terms
We version these terms. When a new version changes your rights or obligations
we email the organization’s admins and every account holder at least 14 days
before it takes effect, and the platform asks you to read and accept the new
version at your next sign-in. If you do not accept, you may stop using the
service and, where the change is material and adverse, end a paid term with a
pro-rata refund. [REVIEW: notice period.]
11. Governing law and disputes
[REVIEW: governing law and courts. The draft assumes a single governing law
for all customers; universities outside that jurisdiction commonly ask for
their own, so decide whether to accept it under order forms.]
Before starting a claim, either side will raise the matter with the other in
writing and allow 30 days to resolve it.
12. General
This agreement, the privacy policy, the cookie notice, the data processing
addendum and any order form form the whole agreement between us. If one
clause is unenforceable the rest stand. Neither side is liable for delay
caused by events outside its reasonable control. You may not assign this
agreement without our consent; we may assign it to a successor of the
business. Notices to us go to legal@dfrds.com; notices to you go to your
account email and, for an organization, to its billing email.