Terms, in plain language

What credits are

Credits pay for inference in the pool. They cannot be withdrawn, sold back or exchanged for money, and they cannot be moved to another account.

Each reply holds the worst-case cost of the message and settles at the tokens you actually received; the rest of the hold comes back.

Buying credits and Pro

You pay through Stripe Checkout; the lab never sees your card number. A credit pack adds its credits to your account once Stripe confirms the payment.

Pro is a monthly or yearly subscription. It raises your priority when donors are busy and adds a Pro badge, more API keys and more replies at once. It does not include credits. You can cancel it with Manage Pro; it stays active until the end of the period you paid for.

Purchases have limits: a few checkouts per hour, a cap on packs bought in 30 days and a maximum balance per account. The page tells you when you reach one.

Refunds

Refunds are made by the lab through Stripe, to the original card. A refund removes the refunded credits from your account, and credits already spent are not refunded. The lab has not set a refund window yet.

If a card payment is disputed, the account is frozen, the disputed credits are removed and Pro ends. If the lab wins the dispute the account is unfrozen; otherwise it stays frozen.

Donors earn credits, not cash

When your computer serves a reply, you receive what the reply cost minus a 5% fee, in credits. These credits pay for your own use of the pool. They are not money and cannot be exchanged for money.

The person you serve connects to your computer directly over WebRTC and can see its public IP address.

What volunteers can see

Prompts sent to the public pool are read by the volunteer computer that serves them. Never send personal data, passwords or secrets to the public pool.

The hub introduces peers and settles receipts. Prompts and replies travel between the two computers; the hub sees token counts, prices and a hash that binds each ticket to its prompt.

Bitcoin gifts

Bitcoin donations are gifts to the lab. They buy no credits, no priority and nothing else; an optional Supporter badge and a place on the supporters wall are the only recognition.

Where the money goes

Payments go to Shard Superintelligence Lab, minus the card processor's fees. They pay for the hub server, the domain and the lab's research, including cloud GPUs to train open models.

Every settled reply moves credits from the person who asked to the donor who served it. 5% goes to the shared pool that funds starter credits and the daily allowance.

Donors earn credits, not cash. Credits pay for inference in the pool. They cannot be withdrawn, sold back or exchanged for money.

A beta

Shard is a beta. The pool can be slow, busy or offline, and a reply can fail. You pay only for the tokens you receive.

Questions or a refund request: for now the only way to reach the lab is the profile link in Who we are on the home page. There is no support address yet.