Twelve sections. No surplusage.

This is the operating draft of the AION Terms. It is the document the maintainer of record signs the canary against, the document any future Foundation will inherit on filing, and the document referenced by the Gate on every cryptographic operation. It is written in plain English by an engineer and is intended for counsel review before any paid sealing. Where a clause is stricter than required, the strictness is intentional.

Revision:v0.2 · 2026-05-03Status:Pre-launch · no paid service offeredBound by:Gate v0.2 at commit v0.3.0

• AION. The cryptographic protocol whose public documentation appears at the AION website, whose cryptographic library will be published as a public repository at the close of Phase 1, and whose website currently resolves at the Vercel production alias until the custom domain is purchased, DNS-verified, and published. Includes any successor domain published by the Maintainer of Record under the AION Trademark Covenant.
• Service.The cryptographic flows of AION at the commit hash specified in the User’s Gate acceptance, including /seal, /unseal, /seal/memory, and /unseal/memory. The Service excludes any feature, primitive, or capability not present at that commit.
• Maintainer of Record. The natural or legal person identified to the protocol by the public signing key once that real key is generated, adopted, and published at /.well-known/aion-maintainer.asc. Until that publication, the route is intentionally unpublished and may return 404; AION does not rely on a placeholder key or a private fingerprint. See /maintainer.
• Vault. An AES-256-GCM ciphertext produced by the Service together with the Shamir shards required to reconstruct its key. AION holds the ciphertext and routing metadata. AION does not hold the key.
• Sovereign Holder. Each of up to seven independent custodians of Shamir shards, each operating under a Stewardship Covenant that incorporates Sunset on Notice.
• Cryptographic Incapacity.AION’s mathematical inability to perform decryption, key recovery, or content inspection of any Vault, established by the cryptographic primitives at the commit hash specified in the User’s Gate acceptance.
• User Content. The plaintext you encrypt before it enters the Service. AION never sees User Content; AION sees only the Vault.
• Gate. The clickwrap acceptance recorded at /gate and required before any cryptographic flow. Each acceptance binds the User to these Terms at the commit hash recorded with the acceptance.
• Force Majeure.Includes Cryptographic Incapacity, sovereign action triggering Sunset on Notice, and any other event beyond the Maintainer of Record’s reasonable control. Cryptographic Incapacity is a permanent and continuing Force Majeure event.
• AI Output. Reserved. The Service in v0.3 produces no AI Output. This term is defined in advance so that future addition of AI features does not require re-acceptance for non-AI users.

AION operates open-source cryptographic primitives that encrypt, split, and time-lock secrets on the User’s device, and coordinates routing of encrypted shards to Sovereign Holders. AION publishes the Codex, the doctrine, the threat model, the audit reports (when signed), the warrant canary, and the transparency report.

AION is not a money transmitter, money services business, payment processor, virtual-asset service provider, custodian of crypto-assets, bank, broker-dealer, fiduciary, investment adviser, insurer, law firm, estate-planning firm, legal representative, backup service, identity provider, or publisher of User Content within the meaning of 47 U.S.C. § 230. AION is a transport for ciphertext and a coordinator of shard routing.

3.1 The architecture is the disclaimer. The Service’s inability to decrypt, identify, recover, or inspect User Content is established by the cryptographic primitives at the commit hash specified in the User’s Gate acceptance. Those primitives are open source, auditable, and deterministic. They define the outer boundary of what AION can be ordered to perform.

3.2 Adaptive binding.This clause binds to the cryptographic state of the Service at the moment of acceptance. A change to the primitives — by the Maintainer of Record, by a fork, or by any successor — requires a fresh Gate acceptance for that change to bind the User. Vaults sealed under prior commits remain governed by the primitives at their original commit; AION’s incapacity to read them is similarly fixed.

3.3 Burden shifting. Any party asserting that AION can perform an act this clause says it cannot bears the burden, as a precondition of the assertion, of either (a) publishing a cryptographic flaw in the primitives at the relevant commit in a peer-reviewed forum, or (b) demonstrating a fork of the AION codebase that performs the asserted act while preserving the AION Trademark Covenant. Until one of those conditions is met, AION pleads impossibility under Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 261, UCC § 2-615, and the analogous European and Commonwealth doctrines, and respectfully requests dismissal of any claim premised on the asserted capacity.

3.4 Permanence.Cryptographic Incapacity, once established for a given Vault by the primitives at its sealing commit, is permanent. No subsequent change to the protocol restores AION’s capacity to read that Vault. Plaintiffs and demanders proceed accordingly.

THE SERVICE AND ALL VAULTS, CIPHERTEXT, SHARDS, MEMORY-LAYER OPERATIONS, TIME-LOCKS, AUDIT-CHAIN ENTRIES, CANARY STATEMENTS, AND ASSOCIATED MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, QUIET ENJOYMENT, AND TITLE. AION DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; THAT ANY VAULT WILL REMAIN OPENABLE; THAT ANY SOVEREIGN HOLDER WILL CONTINUE TO HOLD ITS SHARD; OR THAT ANY CRYPTOGRAPHIC PRIMITIVE WILL REMAIN UNCOMPROMISED IN THE FUTURE. NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE GIVEN BY THE MAINTAINER OF RECORD CREATES A WARRANTY.

5.1 CAP.IN NO EVENT SHALL AION’S AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO YOU EXCEED THE GREATER OF (a) FIFTY UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($50.00) OR (b) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID AION FOR THE SUBJECT VAULT IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

5.2 EXCLUDED DAMAGES. AION SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, COST OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES, AND DAMAGES ARISING FROM ANY VAULT BECOMING UNRECOVERABLE.

5.3 BASIS OF THE BARGAIN. THESE LIMITATIONS APPLY EVEN IF AION HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND NOTWITHSTANDING THE FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY LIMITED REMEDY. THE PARTIES ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE FEES (IF ANY) FOR THE SERVICE REFLECT, AND WOULD NOT BE OFFERED ABSENT, THIS ALLOCATION OF RISK.

5.4 Non-derogability.Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain damages. In those jurisdictions, AION’s liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

You release and forever discharge AION, the Maintainer of Record, the Sovereign Holders, and each of their respective successors, predecessors, contractors, and licensors (collectively the “Released Parties”) from any and all claims, actions, demands, liabilities, damages, costs, and expenses, known or unknown, accrued or contingent, arising out of or in any way related to your use of the Service, the loss or unrecoverability of any Vault, the publication or non-publication of any canary statement, the sunset of any Sovereign Holder, or the cessation of operation by any Maintainer of Record. You expressly waive any protections of California Civil Code § 1542 and analogous statutes elsewhere that would otherwise limit the effect of this release to known claims.

7.1 INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY ONLY. YOU AND AION AGREE THAT EACH MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN AN INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY, AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, COLLECTIVE, REPRESENTATIVE, PRIVATE-ATTORNEY-GENERAL, OR CONSOLIDATED PROCEEDING. NO ARBITRATOR OR JUDGE MAY CONSOLIDATE CLAIMS WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF BOTH PARTIES.

7.2 JURY WAIVER. TO THE EXTENT ANY CLAIM REACHES A COURT (E.G., AN INTELLECTUAL-PROPERTY OR EQUITABLE CLAIM CARVED OUT FROM ARBITRATION), YOU AND AION KNOWINGLY, VOLUNTARILY, AND IRREVOCABLY WAIVE THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY.

7.3 Severability of class waiver. If the class waiver is held unenforceable as to any claim, that claim is severed from arbitration and proceeds in court; the remainder of this Section, including the Individual-Capacity rule, remains in full force.

8.1 Mandatory arbitration. Except as carved out in § 8.3, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service (a Dispute) shall be resolved exclusively by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules; or, for consumers ordinarily resident in the European Economic Area, by JAMS under its International Arbitration Rules. The seat of arbitration is the Maintainer of Record’s ordinary residence as published at /maintainer unless mandatory law requires otherwise. The language is English.

8.2 Pre-arbitration notice.Before initiating arbitration, the claimant shall give thirty (30) days’ written notice to the other party stating the nature of the Dispute, the relief sought, and the claimant’s contact information. The parties shall negotiate in good faith during the notice period.

8.3 Carve-outs.The following may be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction notwithstanding § 8.1: (a) claims for injunctive or equitable relief by AION to protect its trademark, source code, or doctrine; (b) intellectual-property claims by either party for which arbitration would not afford an adequate remedy; (c) small-claims-court actions within that court’s jurisdictional limit, brought on an individual basis.

8.4 No adhesion to foreign forum. A User ordinarily resident in a jurisdiction that prohibits ex-ante consumer waiver of local courts may proceed in their local court for non-derogable consumer claims; all other claims remain subject to § 8.1.

8.5 Cross-jurisdictional discovery refusal. Cross-jurisdictional discovery vehicles (28 U.S.C. § 1782, the Hague Evidence Convention, EU Production Orders under Regulation 2023/1543, MLAT mechanisms generally) are forbidden by these Terms as a discovery vehicle for AION-related matters. A party who invokes such a mechanism breaches these Terms and the breach is itself a cause of action.

9.1 Prohibited content.You will not use the Service to seal, route, or store: (a) child sexual abuse material; (b) material whose encryption is itself a criminal act in your ordinary residence; (c) sanctions- targeted technology specifications, weapons-design documentation prohibited under your domicile’s export-control regime, or classified state intelligence stolen from its lawful custodian; (d) infringing copies of works you do not have the right to reproduce; (e) personal data of identifiable third parties without their lawful consent.

9.2 Detection disclaimer. AION cannot inspect the sealed content. Compliance with § 9.1 is your exclusive responsibility. AION is not a publisher or distributor of User Content within the meaning of 47 U.S.C. § 230 or any analogous law; AION is a transport for ciphertext.

9.3 Reporting. AION will cooperate with lawful, narrowly-scoped reports from rightsholders and law enforcement to the limited extent technically possible (i.e., routing metadata; never plaintext, which AION cannot produce). All cooperation is reported in the next transparency report unless gagged, in which case the warrant canary records the event by its absence.

9.4 Repeat-infringer. A User account associated with three (3) substantiated DMCA notices within twelve (12) months will be terminated; the underlying ciphertext remains subject to the same Sunset on Notice rules as any other Vault. The DMCA process is described at /dmca.

10.1 Minimum age.The Service is not available to anyone under 18 years of age, regardless of any lower minimum permitted by local law. The Gate requires explicit attestation of age. AION applies COPPA (15 U.S.C. §§ 6501–6506), GDPR Article 8, the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, and analogous regimes by exclusion: AION serves no children. On actual or constructive knowledge that a User is under 18, AION terminates that User’s account and declines further sealings.

10.2 Capacity attestation. Sealing a Vault is treated, for purposes of these Terms, as analogous to executing a testamentary instrument. The User attests at each Gate acceptance, under penalty of perjury, to (a) sound mind, (b) absence of duress, coercion, or undue influence, (c) absence of an active mental-health crisis, (d) absence of a guardianship or conservatorship order that would forbid the action, and (e) understanding of cryptographic irrevocability. The attestation is recorded in the audit chain alongside the commit hash.

10.3 No service on behalf without authority. The User will not use the Service on behalf of any third party (including a child, an elderly relative, a disabled person, or any other vulnerable user) without lawful authority demonstrable on demand. Use in violation of this clause is a breach of these Terms and a misrepresentation under Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 164.

10.4 No professional advice. AION is not legal advice, financial advice, investment advice, tax advice, medical advice, mental-health counseling, estate planning, or therapy. The Service makes no recommendations regarding what to seal, whether to seal, who should inherit, or what consequences flow from any action. The User is responsible for retaining qualified professional advice for any decision the User is making in connection with the Service.

10.5 Crisis resources. A User experiencing thoughts of suicide or self-harm is urged to contact a crisis resource before sealing or unsealing anything irreplaceable. United States: 988 or text HOME to 741741. United Kingdom: 116 123. Other jurisdictions: findahelpline.com. Crisis resources and the broader vulnerable-user doctrine are at /safety.

10.6 Trusted Observer (forthcoming). For Users self-identifying as 70 years old or older, or for any User who chooses the option, the Service will introduce in v0.5 a Trusted Observer mechanism: a person other than any heir co-attests at sealing that the User appeared to act with capacity and without coercion. The attestation travels with the audit chain.

10.7 Cooling-off (forthcoming).For Vaults the User marks as “irreplaceable” at sealing, the Service will introduce in v0.4 a 24- to 72-hour cooling-off window during which the User may abort the seal without consequence.

10.8 Animals and biological assets. AION custodies cryptographic keys only. A Vault sealed in connection with a pet, animal, organ donation, gamete storage, or any biological asset contains keys; it does not contain the asset. Pet trusts (Uniform Trust Code § 408 in most US states; analogous instruments elsewhere), organ-donor directives, and analogous instruments operate under their own legal regimes; AION is the secure messaging layer between the Holder and the named caretaker, no more.

10.9 Heir disputes.AION’s role ends at the cryptographic operation. Disputes between heirs, family members, or other claimants regarding the contents, lawful inheritance, or distribution of a Vault are matters of the Holder’s domicile’s family, succession, and estate law. AION is not a party to those disputes and will not appear in them. AION will not modify the architecture to produce an outcome the Holder did not record at sealing.

10.1 DMCA. AION designates a DMCA Agent at /dmca to receive notices under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2). Submission and counter-notice procedures are at /dmca.

10.2 Section 230 / equivalents.AION operates as an interactive computer service and as a provider of access; AION does not create or develop User Content. Each User is the information content provider with respect to that User’s Vault. AION invokes 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1) and the analogous transport-liability rules of EU Directive 2000/31/EC Articles 12–14 and the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).

10.3 Anti-SLAPP.The Codex, the Charter, the Threat Model, the Transparency report, the Warrant Canary, and the audit attestations are public-interest speech. A claim arising out of or based on that speech is a strategic suit against public participation. AION will move under California Code of Civil Procedure § 425.16, Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 27.001 et seq., New York Civil Rights Law § 70-a, the EU Anti-SLAPP Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1069), the United Kingdom’s SLAPP provisions, and analogous regimes at the earliest procedural moment, seeking dismissal, costs, and fees.

12.1 Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force. The invalid provision shall be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to render it enforceable; if reformation is not possible, the provision is severed.

12.2 Amendment. AION may amend these Terms by posting the amended Terms at /terms and, for material amendments, by displaying a notice in the Gate for thirty (30) days. Continued use of the Service after the notice period constitutes acceptance. Amendments that add new categories of User obligation or otherwise materially prejudice the User require explicit re-Gate acceptance. Amendments to the cryptographic primitives bind only Vaults sealed under the new commit; prior Vaults remain governed by the primitives at their original sealing commit.

12.3 Survival. Sections 1 (Defined Terms), 3 (Cryptographic Incapacity), 4 (Disclaimer), 5 (Limitation), 6 (Release), 7 (Waivers), 8 (Disputes), 9 (Acceptable Use), 10 (Eligibility & Capacity), 11 (Safe Harbors), and 12.1 (Severability) survive any termination.

12.4 No waiver · no oral modification. No failure or delay by AION to enforce any provision is a waiver. These Terms may not be modified orally.

12.5 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Gate and the Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and AION with respect to the Service and supersede all prior understandings.

12.6 Successors and assignment.These Terms bind any successor Maintainer of Record adopting AION under the Trademark Covenant. The Cessation Protocol does not extinguish accrued claims; it transfers them to the successor along with the corresponding defenses. You may not assign your rights or delegate your obligations under these Terms without AION’s prior written consent. Any purported assignment in violation of this section is void.

12.7 Contact. The sealedaion.com domain is live. Role mailboxes are published below; email forwarding may still propagate after MX setup. Mail sent before routing is verified may not be received: legal@sealedaion.com for service of process; privacy@sealedaion.com for data-subject requests; security@sealedaion.com for coordinated disclosure; dmca@sealedaion.com for takedown notices; hello@sealedaion.com for general correspondence.