What Quake Name is

The Quake Registry is a public registry of real earthquakes, drawn from the USGS catalog, and a market in collectible digital deeds and commemoratives about them. You place a standing bid on a slot — a region and magnitude band — and choose a name. When the next earthquake matching that slot is cataloged, the highest standing bid is filled and the bidder receives the deed to that entry, carrying the name they chose.

That is the whole product. It is not a security, a derivative, an insurance contract, a prediction market, or a wager, and it is not a financial product of any kind. Nothing on the service promises that any earthquake will occur, anywhere, ever. Historical counts shown on slot pages are facts about the past.

What Quake Name is not

We do not offer, and these terms do not cover, any of the following: custody of your assets or keys; exchange or conversion of digital assets; lending; interest-bearing accounts; portfolio management; or investment, legal, or tax advice. If a page anywhere on the service appears to offer one of those things, it is an error — tell us and we will correct it. Write to legal@quake.name.

Acceptance and changes

You accept these terms the first time you place a bid, make a claim, or mint, and each time you do so afterwards. We record the version you accepted and the time you accepted it.

We may change these terms. When we do, we publish the new version with a new version identifier and ask you to accept it before your next transaction. Changes are never retroactive: a bid you have already placed stays governed by the version in force when you placed it.

Eligibility

To use the service you must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher, and legally able to enter into a contract. You must not be located in, ordinarily resident in, or a national of a jurisdiction subject to comprehensive sanctions, and you must not appear on any sanctions list, including the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals.

We screen wallet addresses against published sanctions data before issuing a session, and we block access from sanctioned jurisdictions where we can determine location. Both checks fail closed: if we cannot complete a check, access is refused rather than allowed. You remain responsible for compliance with the law where you are.

Your wallet, your assets

You transact from your own Solana wallet. Every transaction on the service is built by us, presented to you unsigned, and executed only after you sign it. We do not hold your funds, your private keys, or your collectibles at any point, and we cannot move, freeze, or recover them.

The corollary is that self-custody risks are yours: a lost key, a lost recovery method, a mistyped address, or a transaction you signed by mistake cannot be undone by us or by anyone else. If your wallet is created through an email or social sign-in provider, your relationship with that provider governs recovery, not these terms.

Standing bids — what you are buying

A standing bid is a pre-order. You commit an amount of SOL, in a program escrow on the Solana blockchain, for the right to be filled first when a matching earthquake is cataloged, in price order against every other standing bid on that slot.

You are not buying exposure to an event, a payout, or a position that settles for more or less than you paid. There is no win-or-lose outcome anywhere in the product. The two possible ends of a standing bid are: it fills and you receive a collectible, or you cancel it and take your money back.

Prices shown in dollars are conversions of a SOL amount at a recent market rate and are indicative only. The SOL amount is the price.

Cancellation and refund

You may cancel any standing bid that has not yet been filled, at any time, without giving a reason, and the full escrowed amount is sent back to your wallet in the same transaction. This right is enforced by the on-chain program, not by our goodwill: the escrow account can be exited by you and by nobody else.

The only cost you cannot recover is the Solana network fee for the transactions themselves, which the network charges and we do not receive.

Fulfilment — when a bid fills

When a matching earthquake is cataloged, settlement runs as a sequence: the escrow is released on-chain and split, the collectible is minted to your wallet, and the registry entry is recorded. Between the first and second step there is a short window in which your bid is filled — so it can no longer be cancelled — and the collectible does not yet exist.

That window is normally seconds. Settlement retries automatically and indefinitely until it completes, and the mint is designed so that a retry cannot produce a second collectible. In practice the failure mode is delayed delivery, not lost delivery.

We state this plainly because our description of a standing bid as a pre-order rather than a wager depends on it being true. A bid is never at risk of a worse-than-paid outcome; it can, in a fault, be delayed.

If delivery cannot be completed

If a filled bid cannot be delivered — a defect on our side, a permanent chain condition, or any cause that makes the collectible impossible to mint — our remediation policy is, in order: (1) repair and complete the delivery; (2) if that is impossible, mint the equivalent entry for the same event by another route; (3) if that too is impossible, refund the full amount you paid, in SOL, to the wallet that paid it.

A refund under (3) is made from our own funds, because the escrow has already been split by then. It is our obligation, not a discretionary gesture, and it is the reason we can describe a standing bid as carrying no risk of loss. We will publish the reason on the affected registry entry.

This policy does not cover the market value of a collectible after delivery, which we do not promise and cannot control.

Names, dedications, and moderation

You choose the name attached to a registry entry. Names are public, permanent, and attached to a real event that harmed real people. Every name and dedication passes a moderation check before a bid is accepted, and the check fails closed — a name we cannot evaluate is refused, not admitted.

We refuse names that are hateful, harassing, obscene, impersonating, commercially misleading, or that appropriate the identity of a real person without a plausible connection, and names that infringe a trademark. We may refuse a name for any reason and are not obliged to explain the specifics of a refusal, though we will tell you the category.

A refused name costs you nothing: the bid is not placed and no funds move. Once a name is settled onto a registry entry it is part of the permanent record and cannot be edited. In the rare case where a settled name must be withdrawn — a court order, or a moderation failure we caused — the entry is annotated rather than rewritten, and the original is disclosed.

What you get, and what it carries

A collectible is a digital asset on Solana recording a fact from the USGS catalog and the name you chose. It carries no utility, no revenue share, no governance right, no claim on us or on any asset, and no promise of value. We do not undertake to maintain a market in it, to buy it back, or to support its price.

You own the token and may transfer or sell it freely. We license you the artwork and metadata for personal, non-commercial use, and for resale of the specific piece you own. We keep the copyright in the artwork, the generative system that produces it, and the registry as a compilation.

The underlying facts — magnitudes, coordinates, times — are public data from the USGS and are owned by no one.

Data accuracy and later revisions

Every registry fact traces to a USGS catalog record. The USGS revises and occasionally deletes records. Where that happens after an entry has settled, the entry stands as the record of the event as it was cataloged at settlement, and the revision is disclosed on the entry. We do not re-award, re-price, or reverse a settled entry on a later revision, because doing so would make every settled entry provisional forever.

Fees

Solana charges a network fee and a rent deposit for the accounts a transaction creates. Those go to the network, not to us.

Where we have enabled it, we may pay the network fee and account rent on your behalf so that a wallet holding no SOL can still transact. Doing so never gives us authority over your assets: you remain a required signer on your own instruction, and a fee payer cannot move your funds or your collectibles.

We take a royalty on resales through our marketplace, disclosed at the point of listing.

The relief share

50% of net proceeds go to earthquake relief. For deeds the split is executed inside the same on-chain transaction that awards the piece. The share and the destination wallet are set in an on-chain program configuration held by a multi-signature authority: changing either takes a signed governance action, and the values in force are always published on the relief page.

It is a governed commitment, not an immutable constant, and we describe it that way because the program is public and anyone can read it.

Taxes

You are responsible for determining and paying any tax arising from your use of the service, including on the acquisition, disposal, or transfer of a collectible. We do not provide tax advice and do not withhold or report on your behalf unless the law requires it.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the service for money laundering, sanctions evasion, terrorist financing, or any other unlawful purpose
• bid on behalf of a person who is themselves ineligible
• manipulate the queue through coordinated accounts, wash trading, or artificial bidding intended to move a displayed price
• submit a name or dedication intended to harass, defame, impersonate, or infringe
• scrape, overload, probe, or interfere with the service or its infrastructure, or circumvent a rate limit, a moderation gate, or an eligibility check
• reverse engineer the service except to the extent that restriction is unenforceable where you live
• misrepresent the service as an investment, a payout mechanism, or a position that settles for a variable amount

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these terms, if we are required to by law, or if we reasonably believe your use exposes other users or us to legal or security risk. Suspension never takes your assets: your collectibles are in your wallet and stay there, and any unfilled standing bid remains cancellable by you through the on-chain program regardless of your account status.

You may stop using the service at any time. Cancel any open bids first — nobody else can cancel them for you.

Third-party services

The service depends on things we do not control: the Solana network and its validators, wallet and sign-in providers, the USGS catalog, hosting and content-delivery providers, and any marketplace where a collectible is resold. We are not responsible for their acts, omissions, outages, or terms, and their terms govern your relationship with them.

Disclaimer of warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that any collectible will have or hold any value. Blockchain software is novel and carries risks including protocol failure, network congestion, and undiscovered defects in smart contract code.

Nothing in this section limits the specific obligations we take on elsewhere in these terms — in particular the cancellation right and the remediation policy, which are commitments and not warranties.

Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, Quake Name AND ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS AND CONTRACTORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, AND WHETHER OR NOT WE WERE ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS.

We do not exclude liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for anything else that cannot be excluded by law. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusions above; where that is so, they apply only to the extent permitted.

Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Quake Name and its affiliates, officers, employees, agents and contractors from any claim, damage, loss, liability, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the service, a name or dedication you submitted, your breach of these terms, or your violation of any law or of a third party's rights.

Time limit on claims

Any claim arising from these terms or the service must be brought within one year of the date the claim arose, or it is permanently barred, except where a longer period is required by law.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. For any matter not subject to arbitration under the next section, the courts located in Orange County, California have exclusive jurisdiction, and you consent to that jurisdiction and venue. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Dispute resolution and arbitration

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. IT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS, INCLUDING YOUR RIGHT TO BRING A CLAIM IN COURT AND TO HAVE A DISPUTE HEARD BY A JURY.

First, talk to us. Send a description of the dispute to legal@quake.name and we will try in good faith to resolve it informally. If we have not resolved it within sixty days, either of us may begin arbitration.

Any dispute arising from these terms or the service will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered under the American Arbitration Association's Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator, seated in Orange County, California or conducted remotely at your election. The arbitrator decides questions of arbitrability. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Three carve-outs: either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies; either of us may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorized access; and a claim for public injunctive relief is not arbitrable and is heard in court.

If twenty-five or more people bring similar claims through the same or coordinated counsel, we and they agree the cases may be grouped into batches and a small number heard first, with the outcomes used to try to resolve the rest. This is to keep arbitration workable at volume, not to delay any individual claim, and it does not change what anyone can recover.

You may reject this arbitration agreement by writing to legal@quake.name within thirty days of first accepting these terms. Rejecting it changes nothing else in these terms.

Class action and jury trial waiver

You and we each agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding. You and we each waive any right to a jury trial.

Nothing in this section waives your right to seek public injunctive relief. A claim for public injunctive relief is severed from arbitration and heard in court, and the rest of this section continues to apply to every other claim. We say this explicitly because California law makes a waiver of public injunctive relief unenforceable in any forum, and a clause that tried to waive it could take the whole arbitration agreement down with it.

If this waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim is severed from arbitration and heard in court; the rest of this section survives.

General

If any provision of these terms is held unenforceable, it is limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you.

These terms, together with the disclosures, the privacy policy, and the cookie notice, are the entire agreement between you and us about the service, and supersede any earlier understanding.

You agree to receive notices and other communications about the service electronically — posted on the site, or sent to an address you gave us.

Contact

Questions about these terms: legal@quake.name. Privacy requests: privacy@quake.name.