This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) sets out activities that are prohibited when using the Spondula platform. It applies to all users of the Spondula wallet, Payment Gateway, Spondula Chain, S Handles, contacts, and messaging features. This policy supplements our Terms of Service and is part of your agreement with Spondula.

1. Financial Crime and Sanctions

You must not use the Service to:

• Launder the proceeds of crime, layer funds across wallets, or otherwise disguise the origin of assets.
• Finance terrorism or the proliferation of weapons.
• Transact with, on behalf of, or for the benefit of any person or entity subject to sanctions by the UK (OFSI), EU, UN, or US (OFAC); or access the Service from a jurisdiction that is subject to comprehensive sanctions.
• Structure transactions (“smurfing”) to evade KYC tier caps, reporting thresholds, or monitoring rules.
• Pay, receive, or arrange bribes, kickbacks, or facilitation payments.
• Evade tax or use the Service to conceal taxable income.

2. Fraud, Impersonation, and Scams

• No phishing, spoofed login pages, or fraudulent emails or messages pretending to come from Spondula.
• No impersonation of another person, business, Operator, Spondula staff member, or a Prop Trader.
• No investment scams, “pig-butchering” romance fraud, fake giveaways, or Ponzi / pyramid schemes.
• No recovery-scam services offering to “unlock” lost wallets — Spondula is non-custodial and nobody can recover a lost recovery phrase.
• No transacting in goods or services that are counterfeit, stolen, or misrepresented.

3. Operator and Cash-in / Cash-out Abuse

• No uploading of fake, edited, or recycled cash-receipt images when dealing with Regional or Local Operators.
• No collusion with an Operator to fabricate liquidity, wash trades, or circumvent KYC.
• No attempts to charge back or reverse a fiat payment after S-Assets have been delivered.
• No harassment, threats, or physical intimidation of Operators or their staff.

4. Payment Gateway Abuse

• No chargeback fraud — deliberately disputing a legitimate card payment after receiving tokens or goods.
• No card-testing, BIN-farming, or bulk testing of stolen card numbers against gateway endpoints.
• No merchant account used for activity that differs materially from the verified business profile.
• No use of the gateway for high-risk verticals without prior written approval and appropriate enhanced due diligence.
• No refunds issued to a payment method that is not the original source (“third-party payouts”).

5. Chain and Infrastructure Abuse

• No denial-of-service attacks, transaction flooding, or other attempts to overload the Spondula Chain or its supporting infrastructure.
• No attempts to replay, forge, or tamper with signed transactions; no attempts to exploit software bugs in the Spondula Chain for financial gain.
• No unauthorised scraping of balances, transactions, or user lists via the Spondula Chain, Firestore, or the admin panel.
• No bots, scripts, or automation submitting transactions at a rate designed to crowd out other users.
• No reverse-engineering, decompiling, or attempting to extract credentials, keys, or private endpoints.

6. S Handle Abuse

S Handles (such as #yourname) must be used in good faith.

• No impersonation of another person, public figure, Operator, merchant, or brand.
• No squatting — registering handles solely to block others or to resell for profit.
• No offensive, obscene, hateful, or discriminatory handles.
• No attempts to abuse the 90-day change cooldown or 30-day grace period to confuse or defraud recipients (for example, by releasing a well-known handle and then abusing the grace-period resolution).
• Spondula reserves the right to reclaim any handle that breaches this policy or that is required for trademark, legal, or brand-protection reasons.

7. Messaging, Chat, and Contacts

• No spam, bulk unsolicited messaging, or abuse of the read-receipt and typing-indicator features.
• No harassment, hate speech, threats, doxxing, or sharing of sexual content involving anyone.
• No distributing scam links, malware, phishing URLs, or links that circumvent security warnings.
• No harvesting of other users' personal data via the contacts feature — contacts sync is intended to help you find people you already know.
• Note that in-app messages are stored (not end-to-end encrypted) and may be reviewed by Spondula for abuse investigation where necessary.

8. KYC, Tier, and Compliance Circumvention

• No submission of forged, stolen, tampered, or AI-generated KYC documents.
• No use of someone else's identity, documents, or face at any point in the verification flow, including at the selfie / liveness stage.
• No operation of multiple accounts to circumvent KYC tier caps, transaction limits, or bans.
• No deliberate misrepresentation of source of funds, occupation, or intended use of the account.
• No attempt to pay in from a third-party account whose name does not match your verified Spondula name (“third-party funding”).

9. Transaction Monitoring

To protect users and comply with AML / CTF regulations, we monitor on-chain activity, gateway pay-ins and pay-outs, and metadata patterns for indicators of suspicious activity. Monitoring is automated and does not involve manual review of the content of your personal chat messages. Transactions inconsistent with your profile may trigger additional verification, temporary holds, or a suspicious-activity report to the relevant Financial Intelligence Unit.

10. Reporting Violations

If you become aware of a breach of this policy — including scams, fraudulent Operators, impersonation, or abusive handles — please report it to abuse@spondula.com. Include wallet addresses, handles, transaction hashes, and screenshots where possible. We take all reports seriously and investigate promptly. We will not retaliate against users who report in good faith.

11. Enforcement

Violations of this policy may result in any of the following, at our sole discretion:

• Warning and required education or re-verification.
• Temporary feature restriction (for example, disabling outbound transfers, messaging, or gateway pay-ins).
• Forced KYC tier downgrade pending review.
• Handle reclaim.
• Permanent account suspension and blocking of the associated wallet addresses from Spondula services.
• Reporting to law enforcement, the UK's National Crime Agency, the relevant Financial Intelligence Unit, or other regulators.
• Civil or criminal legal action.

We may act with or without prior notice depending on the severity of the breach and the risk to other users, Operators, or Spondula. Because the Spondula Chain is immutable, enforcement does not unwind transactions already confirmed on-chain.

12. Changes

We may update this policy at any time. Material changes will be communicated via in-app notification or email. Continued use of the Service constitutes acceptance.

13. Contact

Report abuse: abuse@spondula.com. General questions: legal@spondula.com.