Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using elyonfondation.org (the "Website"), operated by Elyon Foundation ("we", "us", or "our"), you agree to these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Website.

2. About Elyon Foundation

Elyon Foundation is a grant-making organization. We fund selected projects aligned with our mission. The Website explains our work and lets the community vote and suggest projects when those features are enabled.

We do not solicit or accept donations from the public through this Website. We do not process payments here.

3. Using the Website

You may browse the Website without an account. Some features — saving a public ID to your votes, viewing your voting history, changing your key, and opting in to email updates — require an account.

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account or submit content. You must use the Website lawfully and in good faith.

4. Accounts

Accounts do not use email or a password. Creating an account is open to everyone. The server applies anti-abuse limits (a 5-second bot-wall, a per-browser rate limit, a per-network limit and a global rate limit). When you sign up you receive a unique access key. You agree to:

Each account also has a public ID. That ID appears with your votes when you are logged in. It is not a secret, but it is not a login credential. Your session cookie elyon_session is Secure and SameSite=Lax (1 year, 1-hour inactivity timeout).

You can change your key or delete your account from My Account while you are logged in. Deleting an account permanently removes the account and also deletes votes, proposals, funding applications, contact messages, and the newsletter subscription linked to it.

If you lose your key and are no longer logged in, we cannot restore access. There is no email recovery.

We may suspend or disable accounts that violate these terms. To prevent abuse, we limit 2 accounts per hashed network (ip_hash = h_ + HMAC of your IP). We may review account IDs and hashed and raw network addresses in our staff-only network_log and audit_log if we suspect abuse. We do not publish that information, and we do not sell it.

5. Voting

You may vote for listed projects with or without an account. Votes help us understand community interest and inform future grant decisions. Votes are:

You may remove your own votes from My Account; removed votes are moved to a trash table and permanently deleted after 30 days. You may not manipulate voting through bots, extra accounts, fake identities, or any other method meant to produce artificial results. Votes must reflect your genuine opinion. The hidden honeypot field and rate limits apply.

6. Project Proposals

You may suggest a project for consideration. We may review it. We will not necessarily reply. A proposal may be taken into account; it does not mean we will fund it or list it.

If you include a name, we may show that name with an approved proposal. Limits: 2 proposals per hashed network per 24 hours. Do not submit spam, copies of existing listings, or content you do not have the right to share. The honeypot and bot-wall apply.

7. Request Funding

Independent creators may apply for guidance, structure, or capital through the request-funding form. A clear, well-defined project with a precise impact objective is required. You may submit a concept or work already launched. A name is optional; a pseudonym is allowed. You must leave an email address or another way to reach you and you must check the acknowledgement box.

Sending an application does not create a duty for us to fund, to partner, or to reply. There is no automatic validation. If many people apply, we may not respond. Asking for a stretch of survival is a valid request. If we choose a project, we will not abandon it. A visible act of creation will be required. That condition is not a sales target. It exists to show that the implicit contract is being honored, and that honoring it is worth it. If the work takes and needs more capital, we may offer exclusive, investment-like deals with the creator. For artistic work, support may include buying pieces, introducing buyers, or material and social help that lets the artist keep making. Files you attach (images or PDF, up to 8 files, 50 MB total) are stored as one encrypted archive per application in Cloudflare R2 and are used only to review the application. You receive a confirmation email only if you left an email.

Limits: 1 application per hashed network per 6 hours. You must have the right to share anything you upload. Do not submit spam, malware, or content that is unlawful or that you do not own. The honeypot field applies.

8. Contact

The contact form is for genuine questions, partnership requests, and related messages. Provide accurate information. Do not use it for spam, threats, malware, or unlawful content. Limits: 1 per minute and 5 per hour per network or email (local and server). A receipt is sent to you if you provided an email; our team is notified via Lettermint.

Sending a message does not create a duty for us to respond or to enter into any agreement. The honeypot applies.

9. Email Updates

If you are logged in, you may opt in from My Account to receive occasional emails about grants, projects, and votes. This is optional. We will not subscribe you automatically.

Providing an email for updates does not change how you log in. Your access key remains the only way to sign in. We do not promise a schedule or a number of emails. Limits: 8 per hour per IP and 10-second debounce per account. Each subscription gets a 32-hex unsubscribe token.

You can unsubscribe at any time from My Account or from the List-Unsubscribe link in those emails, including anonymously via /newsletter/unsubscribe?token=… with List-Unsubscribe-Post: One-Click support. Unsubscribing stops future update emails. It does not delete your account. We suppress email-enumeration — we do not reveal whether an address is already taken by another account.

10. Your Content

You keep ownership of comments, proposals, and funding applications you submit. You grant us a non-exclusive right to display public content on the Website and to use submitted material to review projects and inform grant decisions. Funding applications are not published by default.

You are responsible for what you post. Do not submit content that is unlawful, misleading, defamatory, or that infringes someone else's rights. We may refuse, hide, or remove content that violates these terms or that we consider harmful, spam, or off-topic.

11. Grants and Project Information

Information on this Website about grants and the projects we follow is informational. It is not a promise to pay a specific amount to a specific recipient on a specific date. Dollar amounts are not published.

We publish donations after they are made, not before. Listing a project does not create an obligation to fund. Grant decisions are ours alone.

12. Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to:

13. Intellectual Property

Content we publish on the Website — including text, graphics, logos, and layout — is owned by Elyon Foundation or its licensors and is protected by applicable law. You may not copy, distribute, or create derivative works from it without our prior written consent, except for ordinary viewing and sharing of public pages.

Project names and trademarks mentioned on the Website belong to their respective owners. Listing a project does not mean we own or speak for that project.

14. External Links

The Website may link to third-party sites. We are not responsible for their content, availability, or privacy practices. A link is not an endorsement.

15. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Website is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components.

We make no guarantee about the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of information on the Website, including project descriptions or voting results.

16. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Elyon Foundation is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising out of your use of the Website. Our total liability shall not exceed the amount you paid us, if any, to access the Website. You pay nothing to use the Website.

17. Changes

We may change these terms at any time. Changes take effect when posted on this page. Continued use of the Website after a change means you accept the revised terms. V1 stable is the baseline at commit c497938 (2026-08-27); open signup replaced the invite-only gate.

We may also change, pause, or stop features of the Website — including voting, proposals, funding applications, accounts, horizons and email updates — without notice. Community features are currently paused.

18. Governing Law

These terms are governed by applicable law. Disputes shall be resolved in the competent courts of the applicable jurisdiction. If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.

19. Contact Us

Questions about these terms: use our contact page.