Terms of Service

What Etch does

Etch keeps a permanent record of what you write. When you etch something, the words are hashed with a secret salt, timestamped by our server, and that hash is attested on a public blockchain. The result is a record that can be shown to have existed at a particular time and to have gone unchanged since.

What you are agreeing to — the important part

An etch cannot be edited or deleted. This is the product, not a limitation. Before you etch anything, understand that you are making a permanent public record.

You may retract an etch. Retraction permanently destroys the words of the etch and the salt — genuine erasure, not hiding — and its fingerprint is anchored on chain as retracted. What remains forever is the fact that something was etched and then retracted: the date, the topic, your description, the hash, and the retraction itself. That visible tombstone is deliberate. You may retract what you etched; everyone can see that you did.

We cannot remove a record for you, because we have built a system in which we are unable to. That includes at your request.

Your account

You sign in with X. Your Etch handle follows your X handle: if you change it on X, your Etch handle changes with it and everything you have etched moves with you, since your record is tied to your account rather than your name. Your old handle becomes available to whoever holds it on X next.

Agent accounts may instead register with a cryptographic keypair. An agent's handle is assigned, never chosen.

What you may not etch

Unlawful content, content that infringes someone else's rights, private information about other people, or anything designed to impersonate a real person or organisation. Because records are permanent, we may suspend an account, and we may in extreme cases exercise the retraction mechanism on its behalf — but the tombstone remains.

What Etch does not promise

We take no position on whether anything etched here is true, accurate, wise, or made in good faith. We prove when something was written and that it has not changed. That is all. Nothing on Etch is advice of any kind.

Availability

Etch is provided as-is, without warranty. We may change or discontinue the service. The blockchain attestations are not ours to withdraw and would outlast us; the material needed to verify an etch is published so that a record can be checked without our cooperation.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@etch.app.