SARDENE — Terms of Service

Effective: 2026-08-21 · Applies to: sardene-protocol v0.3.0 (beta) and later License: the software itself is AGPL-3.0-only (see LICENSE). These terms govern use of the software and of sardene.com. The license governs the code. If the two ever seem to conflict, the license wins for the code and these terms win for everything else.

The short version, up front: SARDENE is a tool, not a service. You run it, on your hardware, at your risk, for your own reasons. Nobody custodies anything, nobody owes you anything, and the money never passes through us — so there is nothing for us to refund, reverse, or recover.

1. What SARDENE is (and is not)

SARDENE is free, open-source software that donates your spare CPU power to recipients you choose, by mining Monero (XMR) through a mining pool directly to their wallet addresses — or to your own.

SARDENE is not: a financial product, an investment, an exchange, a custodian, a money transmitter, a bank, or a promise of income. No tokens are issued. No yield is promised. There is no account to hack and no company wallet to drain, because there is no account and no company wallet.

2. No custody — and what that means for you

The software never holds, routes, or touches funds. Mining pools pay the recipient's wallet address directly. Consequences, plainly:

We cannot reverse, refund, freeze, or recover any transaction. Nobody can. That is how Monero works.
Your keys are your responsibility. Sardene includes an optional, local wallet generator. If you use it, the seed phrase and spend key are generated on your device, shown to you once, and never transmitted anywhere. Lose them and the wallet is gone — not "locked," gone. No support ticket can fix this, because nothing is recoverable by anyone.
An encrypted .sardine backup file is only as strong as the passphrase you choose. A forgotten passphrase is mathematically identical to a lost seed.

3. Your legal obligations

You agree that:

You will only run SARDENE on hardware you own or are explicitly authorized to use. Running mining software on machines you don't have permission to use (employers, schools, libraries, other people's computers) is unauthorized use — it may violate computer-misuse laws where you live, and it is exactly the behavior this project exists to be the ethical alternative to. Don't.
Mining is not legal everywhere, and the rules change. You are responsible for knowing whether mining, holding, or transacting Monero is lawful in your jurisdiction.
Taxes are yours. Mining proceeds and donations may be taxable events where you live. The software keeps a local contribution ledger for your own records; what you do with that information is your obligation, not ours.
Electricity and bandwidth are your cost. Mining consumes power and a small amount of network data (measured and published — see docs/DATA_USAGE.md, also published at sardene.com/DATA_USAGE.md). On metered connections or tight power budgets, that cost is yours to weigh before you start.

4. Third-party pools and services

SARDENE connects to mining pools and public price/stats APIs that we do not operate (the default is a public pool; you can point it at any pool, including a self-hosted one).

Pools set their own payout thresholds, fees, and rules. A pool can go offline, change terms, delay payment, or fail. Balances below a pool's payout threshold are between you and the pool — we have no visibility into or control over them.
A pool can see your IP address and your hashrate unless you enable the built-in Tor support. Choose your pool accordingly.
The app can optionally fetch a public directory of self-declared creator addresses. The directory is a cached mirror, not a curated list; Sardene does not vet or approve entries. Always verify a recipient's address against their own published source (each entry links to the creator's proof for exactly this reason).

5. No warranty

This is beta software, provided as is and as available, without warranty of any kind, express or implied — including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. The AGPL license text contains the controlling warranty disclaimer and is incorporated here by reference.

Without limiting that: we do not warrant that mining will be profitable (it usually isn't, in dollar terms, on a home computer — SARDENE is a donation mechanism, not an income scheme), that earnings estimates are accurate (they are live arithmetic from your current hashrate and public network statistics, and both move constantly), or that the software will be uninterrupted or error-free.

Hardware: mining produces heat and consumes battery. SARDENE ships with thermal gates, battery pauses, and idle-priority scheduling, but you are responsible for your own hardware. If your machine runs hot, stop mining.

6. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law: in no event will the authors, contributors, or the SARDENE project be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages — including lost funds, lost keys, lost profits, hardware damage, electricity costs, or data overages — arising from or related to your use of the software or this site, however caused, under any theory of liability, even if advised of the possibility. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid us for the software, which is zero.

7. The site and the beta program

sardene.com provides downloads, documentation, and an optional beta signup. The signup sheet stores only what you type into it, on a server we control, and is never displayed publicly.
Beta software can break. Builds are checksummed and the update files are hash-verified against what we publish, but you participate in the beta at your own risk.
We may change, suspend, or end the beta, the optional directory mirror, or this site at any time. The software on your machine keeps working regardless — it does not depend on us running anything.

8. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms; the current version lives at sardene.com/TERMS.html and in the source repository. Continued use after a change is acceptance of the change. If a change is material, the beta portal will say so.

9. Unauthorized access and scanning

You may access this site and use the SARDENE software only through the public interfaces we provide (web pages, documented APIs, and the open-source application). The following are expressly prohibited and constitute unauthorized access unless you have our prior written consent:

automated scanning, probing, fuzzing, or crawling of sardene.com or any SARDENE-related host, API, path, or port;
attempting to access administrative, backup, source, configuration, or version-control paths (including but not limited to /wp-admin, /admin, /.env, /config, /.git, /phpmyadmin);
credential stuffing, brute-force attacks, or any automated submission of credentials, tokens, keys, or payloads;
exploiting or attempting to exploit any vulnerability, misconfiguration, or exposed endpoint.

We deploy honeypots, tarpits, rate limits, and logging for defensive purposes. Any prohibited activity is logged and may be reported to the attacker's network provider, hosting platform, law enforcement, or other appropriate parties. Continued prohibited activity after viewing any page of this site is intentional, unauthorized access.

10. Contact

The project is reachable through the channels listed on sardene.com. There is no customer support department; there are maintainers, and they read bug reports.

Plain-language summary (not legally binding): don't mine on machines you don't have permission to use; guard your seed phrase because nobody can get it back; expect heat, power draw, and a small data trickle; pools are other people's servers with their own rules; don't probe or scan our servers — we log it and report it; and the software is a gift with no strings and no guarantees — AGPL, as is, forever.