Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") constitute a legally binding agreement between you ("User," "you," or "your") and Meridian Capital Partners LLC, a Delaware limited liability company doing business as Meridian Nexus Labs ("Meridian," "we," "us," or "our"), governing your access to and use of the Meridian Nexus Labs Intelligence API, the website located at meridiannexus.io, and all related services, tools, documentation, and data products (collectively, the "Service").

By accessing or using the Service in any manner, including but not limited to visiting the website, registering for an API key, executing API queries, accessing intelligence products, or submitting a Partner Alliance application, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated herein by reference. If you are using the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent and warrant that you have the authority to bind that organization to these Terms, and references to "you" shall include that organization.

If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not access or use the Service. We reserve the right to modify these Terms at any time. Material changes will be communicated through the Service interface or via email to registered users. Your continued use of the Service following any such modification constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms.

Meridian Nexus Labs is a blockchain intelligence and digital asset recovery platform that provides investigative analytics through a programmatic API. The Service includes five intelligence products — Meridian Trace, Meridian Atlas, Meridian Shield, Meridian Pulse, and Meridian Sentinel — each designed to support the identification, tracking, and evidentiary documentation of cryptocurrency-related fraud, theft, and illicit activity.

All API responses are delivered within a proprietary Evidence Envelope that includes cryptographic integrity verification, chain-of-custody metadata, and classification markings. The Evidence Envelope is designed to meet the evidentiary standards of the Federal Rules of Evidence, including FRE 901(b)(9) (authentication of system-generated records), FRE 803(6) (business records exception to hearsay), and the Daubert reliability factors for expert testimony and scientific evidence.

The Service also includes a public evidence verification endpoint that allows any party — including courts, regulators, opposing counsel, and law enforcement — to independently verify the integrity and provenance of any intelligence product generated by the platform.

The Service is available only to individuals who are at least 18 years of age and to organizations that are validly formed and in good standing under the laws of their jurisdiction of incorporation. By using the Service, you represent and warrant that you meet these eligibility requirements.

Access to the full capabilities of the Service requires registration through the Partner Alliance application process. Upon approval, you will receive API credentials consisting of an API key that must be included in the header of every authenticated request. You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your API credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You agree to notify Meridian immediately of any unauthorized use of your credentials or any other breach of security.

A demonstration API key is provided for evaluation purposes only. Use of the demonstration key is subject to these Terms and is limited to non-production, non-commercial evaluation of the Service. Meridian reserves the right to revoke, rotate, or restrict demonstration credentials at any time without notice.

The Partner Alliance is a membership-gated access model through which qualified organizations gain access to the intelligence products of the Service. Membership is granted at the sole discretion of Meridian and is contingent upon the applicant's demonstrated commitment to the digital asset recovery mission, including but not limited to case referrals, exchange intelligence contributions, jurisdictional cooperation, litigation finance, or other forms of reciprocal value.

Partner Alliance membership is not a subscription and is not available for purchase on a self-serve basis. Meridian reserves the right to deny, suspend, or revoke membership at any time for any reason, including but not limited to violation of these Terms, conduct that is inconsistent with the recovery mission, failure to maintain reciprocal contributions, or reputational risk to the Alliance.

Members of the Partner Alliance may be subject to additional terms, service level agreements, data handling requirements, and contribution obligations as set forth in a separate Partner Alliance Agreement executed between the member and Meridian. In the event of a conflict between these Terms and a Partner Alliance Agreement, the Partner Alliance Agreement shall control.

You agree to use the Service only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms. Without limiting the foregoing, you agree that you will not:

(a) Use the Service to engage in, facilitate, or support any illegal activity, including but not limited to money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, market manipulation, insider trading, or obstruction of justice.

(b) Use the Service to harass, stalk, threaten, defame, or otherwise violate the legal rights of any individual, including the subjects of intelligence queries.

(c) Attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise derive the source code, algorithms, data models, or proprietary methodologies underlying the Service, including but not limited to the Evidence Envelope cryptographic processes, the intelligence scoring models, or the fraud signature database.

(d) Use automated means (including bots, scrapers, or crawlers) to access the Service in a manner that exceeds your authorized rate limits or that is designed to circumvent usage restrictions.

(e) Redistribute, resell, sublicense, or otherwise make available the intelligence products or API responses to any third party without the prior written consent of Meridian, except as expressly permitted for evidentiary purposes in legal proceedings, regulatory submissions, or law enforcement cooperation.

(f) Remove, alter, or obscure any proprietary notices, classification markings, Evidence Envelope metadata, or copyright notices included in or on the Service or any intelligence product.

(g) Use the Service in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the Service or interfere with any other party's use of the Service.

(h) Misrepresent your identity, organizational affiliation, or the nature of your intended use when applying for access or using the Service.

(i) Use intelligence products generated by the Service to tip off, alert, or otherwise notify the subjects of an investigation in a manner that could compromise an ongoing recovery effort, legal proceeding, or law enforcement action.

Access to the Service is subject to rate limits and usage quotas that vary by membership tier. The current tier structure includes Demo, Partner, and Enterprise classifications, each with distinct rate limits, service level commitments, and feature access as described in the Service documentation.

Meridian reserves the right to throttle, suspend, or terminate access to any account that exceeds its authorized rate limits, engages in abusive query patterns, or otherwise places an unreasonable burden on the Service infrastructure. Repeated violations of rate limits may result in permanent revocation of API credentials.

The Service, including all software, algorithms, data models, intelligence products, the Evidence Envelope architecture, documentation, trademarks, trade dress, and all other intellectual property embodied in or associated with the Service, is and shall remain the exclusive property of Meridian Capital Partners LLC. These Terms do not grant you any ownership interest in or to the Service or any component thereof.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, Meridian grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service solely for your internal business purposes in connection with legitimate investigative, legal, regulatory, or compliance activities. This license does not include the right to modify, adapt, translate, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works based on the Service.

Intelligence products generated by the Service in response to your queries are licensed to you for use in connection with the specific investigation, legal proceeding, or compliance matter for which they were generated. You may submit intelligence products as evidence in legal proceedings, share them with co-counsel, provide them to regulators and law enforcement, and include them in client reports, provided that the Evidence Envelope metadata and integrity hash remain intact and unaltered. You may not aggregate, compile, or create databases from intelligence products for resale or redistribution.

The Evidence Envelope architecture, including the cryptographic sealing methodology, the chain-of-custody journal, the RFC 8785 canonicalization process, and the public verification system, constitutes proprietary trade secret information of Meridian. You agree not to disclose the technical implementation details of the Evidence Envelope to any third party, except to the extent necessary to authenticate evidence in legal proceedings.

All intelligence products generated by the Service are classified under the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) as indicated in the Evidence Envelope metadata. Users are required to handle, store, transmit, and disclose intelligence products in accordance with the applicable TLP classification:

TLP:WHITE — Disclosure is not limited. Information may be shared freely.

TLP:GREEN — Limited disclosure. Information may be shared within the recipient's community but not via publicly accessible channels.

TLP:AMBER — Limited disclosure. Information may be shared only with members of the recipient's organization who need to know, and with clients or customers who need the information to protect themselves or prevent further harm. This is the default classification for Partner Alliance intelligence products.

TLP:RED — Not for disclosure. Information is restricted to the specific individuals or organizations identified in the Evidence Envelope. Sharing beyond the named recipients is prohibited.

Violation of TLP handling requirements constitutes a material breach of these Terms and may result in immediate termination of access, revocation of Partner Alliance membership, and legal action for damages.

The integrity of the evidentiary record is fundamental to the Service. You acknowledge and agree that:

(a) You will not alter, modify, truncate, or otherwise tamper with any intelligence product, Evidence Envelope, integrity hash, custody event identifier, or chain-of-custody record generated by the Service.

(b) When submitting intelligence products as evidence in any legal proceeding, regulatory filing, or law enforcement action, you will present the complete and unaltered Evidence Envelope, including all metadata and audit fields.

(c) You will not represent any modified, excerpted, or summarized version of an intelligence product as the original output of the Service without clearly disclosing the nature and extent of the modification.

(d) You understand that the public verification endpoint allows any party to independently verify the integrity of any custody event, and that any alteration to an intelligence product will be detectable through this verification process.

(e) Meridian maintains a Custody Journal — an append-only, immutable record of all intelligence queries and their associated Evidence Envelopes. This journal serves as the authoritative record of the Service's output and may be produced in legal proceedings to establish the authenticity and integrity of intelligence products.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ACCURACY. MERIDIAN DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, SECURE, OR FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS.

INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTS GENERATED BY THE SERVICE ARE BASED ON PUBLICLY AVAILABLE BLOCKCHAIN DATA, PROPRIETARY ANALYTICAL MODELS, AND THIRD-PARTY DATA SOURCES. WHILE MERIDIAN EMPLOYS COMMERCIALLY REASONABLE EFFORTS TO ENSURE THE ACCURACY AND RELIABILITY OF ITS INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTS, MERIDIAN DOES NOT GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, TIMELINESS, OR RELIABILITY OF ANY INTELLIGENCE PRODUCT, RISK SCORE, COMPLIANCE RATING, FRAUD SIGNATURE MATCH, OR OTHER OUTPUT OF THE SERVICE.

INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTS ARE NOT LEGAL ADVICE. THE SERVICE DOES NOT PROVIDE LEGAL, FINANCIAL, TAX, OR INVESTMENT ADVICE. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR DETERMINING THE APPROPRIATE USE OF INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTS IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR LEGAL, REGULATORY, AND BUSINESS ACTIVITIES. YOU SHOULD CONSULT WITH QUALIFIED LEGAL COUNSEL BEFORE RELYING ON ANY INTELLIGENCE PRODUCT IN CONNECTION WITH LEGAL PROCEEDINGS, REGULATORY FILINGS, OR ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MERIDIAN, ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, MEMBERS, MANAGERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, PARTNERS, OR AFFILIATES BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, GOODWILL, USE, DATA, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STATUTE, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF MERIDIAN HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, MERIDIAN'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS PAID BY YOU TO MERIDIAN IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE LIABILITY, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($100.00).

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Meridian, its officers, directors, members, managers, employees, agents, partners, and affiliates from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees and court costs) arising out of or in connection with: (a) your use of the Service; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) your violation of any applicable law, regulation, or third-party right; (d) your submission of intelligence products as evidence in any legal proceeding; (e) any claim that your use of the Service or intelligence products infringed or misappropriated the rights of any third party; or (f) any action taken by you or any third party based on intelligence products generated by the Service.

Meridian may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Without limiting the foregoing, Meridian may immediately suspend or terminate your access if Meridian reasonably believes that: (a) you have violated these Terms; (b) your use of the Service poses a security risk to the Service or any third party; (c) your use of the Service may subject Meridian to liability; (d) your use of the Service is fraudulent; or (e) you have failed to maintain the reciprocal contribution obligations of the Partner Alliance.

Upon termination, your right to access and use the Service will immediately cease. You must immediately stop using the Service and destroy all copies of API credentials in your possession. Sections 7 (Intellectual Property), 8 (Data Handling), 9 (Evidence Integrity), 10 (Disclaimers), 11 (Indemnification), 13 (Governing Law), and 14 (Dispute Resolution) shall survive any termination of these Terms.

Intelligence products previously generated and properly stored in accordance with these Terms may continue to be used for the specific matters for which they were generated, subject to the ongoing obligations regarding evidence integrity and TLP classification handling.

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. You agree that any legal action or proceeding arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be brought exclusively in the federal or state courts located in Wilmington, Delaware, and you hereby consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of such courts.

Any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service, including the breach, termination, or validity thereof, shall first be submitted to good-faith negotiation between the parties for a period of thirty (30) days following written notice of the dispute. If the dispute is not resolved through negotiation, it shall be finally resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association ("AAA") in accordance with its Commercial Arbitration Rules. The arbitration shall be conducted by a single arbitrator in Wilmington, Delaware. The language of the arbitration shall be English. Judgment on the award rendered by the arbitrator may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to prevent the actual or threatened infringement, misappropriation, or violation of intellectual property rights, trade secrets, or confidential information.

YOU AGREE THAT ANY DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCEEDINGS WILL BE CONDUCTED ONLY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT IN A CLASS, CONSOLIDATED, OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. YOU WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT OR CLASS-WIDE ARBITRATION.

The Service may be subject to United States export control and sanctions laws and regulations, including the Export Administration Regulations ("EAR") administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the sanctions programs administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC"). You represent and warrant that: (a) you are not located in, organized under the laws of, or a resident of any country or territory that is the subject of comprehensive U.S. sanctions (currently Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine); (b) you are not identified on any U.S. government restricted party list, including the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List ("SDN List"), the Commerce Department's Entity List, or the State Department's Debarred List; and (c) you will not use the Service in violation of any applicable export control or sanctions law or regulation.

The Service is designed to support anti-money laundering ("AML"), counter-terrorist financing ("CTF"), and sanctions compliance efforts. However, the Service is not a substitute for a comprehensive AML/CTF compliance program. You are solely responsible for ensuring that your use of the Service complies with all applicable AML/CTF laws and regulations, including the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, and any applicable regulations issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ("FinCEN"), as well as equivalent laws in your jurisdiction.

You agree not to use the Service to facilitate, conceal, or further any money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, or other financial crime. If Meridian has reason to believe that your use of the Service is connected to money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illicit activity, Meridian may immediately suspend your access and report such activity to the appropriate authorities.

In the course of using the Service, you may receive or have access to confidential information of Meridian, including but not limited to proprietary algorithms, data models, fraud signature databases, intelligence methodologies, business strategies, partner information, and the technical implementation details of the Evidence Envelope ("Confidential Information"). You agree to: (a) hold all Confidential Information in strict confidence; (b) not disclose Confidential Information to any third party without the prior written consent of Meridian; (c) use Confidential Information solely for the purposes permitted under these Terms; and (d) protect Confidential Information with at least the same degree of care you use to protect your own confidential information, but in no event less than reasonable care.

The obligations of confidentiality do not apply to information that: (a) is or becomes publicly available through no fault of yours; (b) was rightfully in your possession prior to disclosure by Meridian; (c) is independently developed by you without reference to Confidential Information; or (d) is required to be disclosed by law, regulation, or court order, provided that you give Meridian prompt written notice of such requirement and cooperate with Meridian's efforts to obtain a protective order or other appropriate remedy.

Entire Agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any applicable Partner Alliance Agreement, constitute the entire agreement between you and Meridian with respect to the Service and supersede all prior or contemporaneous communications, proposals, and agreements, whether oral or written.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect. The invalid, illegal, or unenforceable provision shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid, legal, and enforceable while preserving its original intent.

Waiver. The failure of Meridian to enforce any right or provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. Any waiver of any provision of these Terms shall be effective only if in writing and signed by Meridian.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any rights or obligations hereunder without the prior written consent of Meridian. Meridian may assign these Terms without restriction. Any attempted assignment in violation of this section shall be null and void.

Force Majeure. Meridian shall not be liable for any failure or delay in performing its obligations under these Terms if such failure or delay results from circumstances beyond Meridian's reasonable control, including but not limited to acts of God, natural disasters, war, terrorism, riots, embargoes, acts of civil or military authorities, fire, floods, epidemics, pandemics, blockchain network failures, or interruptions in telecommunications or internet services.

Notices. All notices required or permitted under these Terms shall be in writing and shall be deemed given when delivered personally, sent by confirmed email, or sent by nationally recognized overnight courier to the addresses specified in the applicable Partner Alliance Agreement or, for Meridian, to [email protected].

If you have any questions about these Terms of Service, please contact us at: