Legal

Terms of Service

Effective August 19, 2026

These terms govern your use of Root Witness, a service operated by MVM Ventures, LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company ("MVM Ventures," "we," "us"). By creating a log, calling the API, or paying for a plan, you agree to these terms. If you are using the service on behalf of a company, you confirm you have authority to bind that company, and "you" means the company.

If you do not agree to these terms, do not use the service.

1 · What the service is

Root Witness is a tamper-evident audit log. You send us records (or hashes of records); we append them to a cryptographic transparency log, sign checkpoints over the log's state, and give you receipts and inclusion proofs that anyone can verify independently — including with our open-source witness tool, without trusting us.

The service is designed so that tampering is detectable, not impossible. Section 8 describes what the service cannot do. Read it; it is part of these terms, and our marketing does not promise more than it says.

2 · Accounts and log names

You create a log by choosing a log name and receiving an API key. You are responsible for:

• keeping your API key secret. Anyone holding the key can append to your log;
• the accuracy of what you submit. We record what you send; we do not verify that it is true;
• choosing a log name that does not infringe anyone else's rights or impersonate anyone.

We may reclaim log names that are inactive on the free tier, infringing, or misleading, with notice where practical.

3 · Plans and billing

• Free — one log with limited capacity, suitable for evaluation and small projects.
• Team ($99/month) — higher capacity and hash-only privacy mode.
• Regulated ($799/month) — adds write-once archival and external anchoring, provisioned per account after onboarding.

Billing is monthly through Stripe, our payment processor. Paid plans renew automatically until cancelled. You can cancel at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and we do not prorate partial months. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice; price changes apply from your next billing period after the notice period ends.

If a payment fails and remains unpaid after we notify you, we may downgrade the log to free-tier limits. Downgrading does not delete the log's existing entries.

4 · Your content and privacy

What we hold depends on the mode you use. In standard mode, we store the records you submit. In hash-only privacy mode, you send us only cryptographic hashes, and we never receive the underlying content.

You retain all rights to your content. You grant us only the license needed to operate the service: to store your submissions, incorporate their hashes into the log structure, serve them back to you, and serve proofs (which contain hashes, not content) to anyone you share them with.

You are responsible for making sure that what you submit to us is lawful for you to share with us, and that submitting it does not violate anyone's privacy or confidentiality rights. If your records contain personal data subject to privacy law, prefer hash-only mode.

Our privacy policy describes what we collect about you as an account holder.

5 · Acceptable use

Do not:

• submit content that is unlawful for us to store;
• use the service to create a false or misleading evidentiary record — for example, backdating fabricated records to make them appear contemporaneous;
• probe, overload, or interfere with the service or other customers' logs;
• resell the service as your own without a written agreement with us.

We may suspend a log that violates this section. Where the violation is curable, we will tell you what the problem is and give you a reasonable opportunity to fix it before suspension becomes termination.

6 · What the service does

For each accepted submission, the service:

• appends an entry to an append-only transparency log (a Merkle tree, following the design of RFC 6962);
• returns a signed receipt binding your submission to a position in that log;
• periodically publishes signed checkpoints committing to the entire log state;
• makes inclusion and consistency provable with standard cryptographic proofs that third parties can check with our open-source witness or their own tooling.

On the Regulated tier, entries can additionally be archived to write-once storage and anchored to an external timestamping system, so that the log's history is co-witnessed by infrastructure outside our control.

7 · Service levels

We aim for high availability but do not promise uninterrupted operation. The free and Team tiers carry no service-level commitment. Regulated-tier customers may negotiate a service-level agreement in writing; if we sign one with you, it supplements these terms.

Planned maintenance will be announced when it is expected to interrupt service. Your witness continues to be able to verify previously issued proofs even while the service is unavailable.

8 · What this service cannot do

• We cannot prevent tampering; we make it detectable. If someone alters or truncates the log, verification fails and witnesses detect the inconsistency. Detection is the product. Prevention of all interference with a running computer system is not something we or anyone can deliver.
• We cannot verify the truth of your records. A signed receipt proves that a specific record existed at a specific log position at a specific time. It does not prove the record's contents are accurate or honest.
• We cannot recover content we never had. In hash-only mode we hold hashes. If you lose the underlying records, your proofs remain valid but the content is gone.
• We cannot make you compliant by ourselves. Root Witness can support record-keeping obligations (for example under SEC Rule 17a-4 or FINRA Rule 4511), but whether your overall system meets a regulation depends on how you use it. We do not represent that subscribing to any tier makes you compliant with any law or rule.
• We cannot stop a key holder from appending. If your API key leaks, an attacker can append entries to your log until you rotate the key. Those entries will be detectably present — the log shows exactly what was appended and when — but the service cannot know they were not yours.
• A small operator stands behind this. Root Witness is operated by a small company. The design compensates for this: proofs are independently verifiable, the witness is open source, and Regulated-tier anchoring places evidence outside our infrastructure — so the value of receipts you already hold does not depend on trusting us, or on our continued existence.

9 · Export and portability

You can retrieve your entries, receipts, and checkpoints through the API at any time. If you cancel, the export path stays available on free-tier limits for at least 30 days after cancellation. Proofs you have already downloaded are self-contained and remain verifiable without us.

10 · Intellectual property

The service, its software, and its documentation are owned by MVM Ventures, LLC or its licensors. The witness tool is open source under the license published in its repository; that license, not these terms, governs your use of it. "Root Witness" and associated marks are trademarks of MVM Ventures, LLC; these terms do not license them.

Feedback you send us may be used to improve the service without obligation to you.

11 · Termination

You may stop using the service and cancel at any time. We may terminate or suspend your access for material breach of these terms that remains uncured 14 days after notice, for non-payment under Section 3, or where required by law. We may discontinue the service entirely with at least 90 days' notice, during which export under Section 9 remains available.

Sections 4 (your rights in your content), 8, 9 (for its stated period), 10, 12, 13, and 14 survive termination.

12 · Disclaimers

Except as expressly stated in these terms, the service is provided "as is" and "as available." To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will meet any regulatory requirement applicable to you, or that operation will be uninterrupted or error-free.

13 · Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

• neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or lost profits, revenue, or data, even if advised of the possibility;
• our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the service is capped at the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or $100 if you paid nothing.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under applicable law, including liability for willful misconduct or fraud.

14 · Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify MVM Ventures, LLC against third-party claims arising from your content, your use of the service in violation of these terms, or your violation of law — except to the extent the claim results from our breach of these terms.

15 · Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For material changes we will give at least 30 days' notice by email to the address on your account or by notice in the service. Changes apply prospectively from the effective date in the notice. If you do not agree to a change, cancel before it takes effect; continuing to use the service after the effective date is acceptance.

16 · General

• Governing law and venue. These terms are governed by Pennsylvania law, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes will be resolved in the state or federal courts sitting in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and both parties consent to that venue.
• Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our consent, except to a successor in a merger or sale of substantially all assets, with notice to us. We may assign them to a successor of the business.
• Entire agreement. These terms, together with the privacy policy and any signed order or SLA, are the entire agreement about the service and supersede prior discussions.
• Severability; waiver. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stands. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver.
• Notices. Legal notices to us: hello@rootwitness.com. Notices to you: your account email.

17 · Contact

MVM Ventures, LLC
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
hello@rootwitness.com — general and legal
support@rootwitness.com — support