Terms

1What SHILL is

SHILL is a platform for running content contests. A crypto project locks a prize in an escrow contract, creators enter by posting on X, people review every entry by hand, and winners claim their prize straight from the contract.

We are not a party to the contest. The organizer sets the rules and funds the prize; the creator makes the content. We run the platform the contest happens on, and we curate entries against the rules the organizer published.

2Beta limits and risk

SHILL is in beta. A single contest holds at most — in prize value, and the platform holds at most — across all contests at any moment.

The escrow contract has not been audited by an outside firm. Smart contracts can contain defects, and a defect could result in the loss of a deposited prize. We provide the platform as is and are not liable for that loss.

3Your account

You sign in with X. That is the only way in, and it is deliberate: the proof that a post is yours is that the handle in the post URL matches the handle on your session. Without X there is nothing to check.

• Your username on SHILL is chosen once and cannot be changed. It is the name your entries, wins and cards are attached to.
• One account per person. Running several accounts to enter the same contest more than the rules allow is grounds for a card and for removing the entries.
• Losing access to your X account means losing access to your SHILL account. We cannot move a SHILL account to a different X account.

4Running a contest

To open a contest you deposit the full prize into the escrow contract and pay the protocol fee in the same transaction. The contest does not go live until the deposit lands.

The deposit does not come back. There is no cancel, no admin withdrawal and no timeout that returns it. Money leaves the vault by settlement or by the fallback split, and by nothing else. If you fund a contest and change your mind, the prize is still paid.

• The fee is 50% of the prize value, charged on top and paid in USDC (USDG on Robinhood Chain). It goes from your wallet straight to the treasury; the vault never holds it.
• You choose the split between placings when you create the contest, and it is written into the vault. It cannot change afterwards.
• You are the only one who can release the prize, and only after curation ends. That gap is the window in which a manipulated ranking can be contested.
• If you do not settle by the deadline you set, anyone can trigger the fallback. It pays the frozen ranking using the split you announced, or splits equally among approved entries if no ranking was frozen. You lose control of who gets paid; you do not get the money back.

5Entering a contest

Entering is an explicit act and it records that you saw the rules as they stood at that moment. Read them first — an entry that breaks a rule is refused, and the rules are on the contest page before you join.

• The work has to be yours. Submitting someone else’s content, reposting, or passing off generated work as your own is grounds for a card.
• No bot engagement. Buying views, likes or replies is grounds for a card, including after you have been paid.
• The post must stay up. Deleting it removes the evidence the ranking was built on.
• You keep ownership of what you make. By entering you let the organizer and us show your entry on the platform and in posts about the contest.

6How entries are judged

Nothing is approved automatically. A rules engine checks what can be proven from the URL and flags the rest for a person. The best outcome a machine can reach here is “needs review”.

The organizer may invite judges to help review their own contest. A judge can decide entries and issue cards there, and nothing else — funding, settling and freezing the ranking stay with the organizer.

Every decision is recorded with who made it and why. Curation is final within the platform: we do not re-run a contest because someone disagrees with a placing. If you think a decision was wrong, say so during the dispute window, before the organizer settles — after settlement the payout is irreversible.

7Getting paid

Prizes are not sent to you. Once the organizer releases them, you claim from the contract with your own wallet. Anyone can pay the gas on your behalf, but the destination is inside the signed proof, so whoever pays does not choose who receives.

You need a wallet verified by signature to receive. Connecting a wallet only reveals an address, which anyone can copy — signing proves you hold it.

We cannot reverse an onchain payment, cannot claim on your behalf and cannot recover a prize sent to a wallet you lost. Check the address.

8What the escrow does and does not guarantee

Escrow guarantees that the tokens are there and that they will be paid out. It never guarantees they are worth anything. Today every prize is the dollar of the chain the contest runs on — USDC or USDG — so that gap is narrow: a dollar is worth a dollar on the day you claim.

It is not zero. A stablecoin is an issuer’s promise, not a law of nature, and the chain your prize sits on has to be running for you to claim it.

9Cards

Breaking the rules earns a card: blue lasts two months, yellow one month, red is permanent. Two active blues become a yellow automatically. Cards attach to the person, not the contest — someone who copies in one contest copies in the next.

Whoever issued a card can revoke it, because a curation mistake should not be permanent. The public board shows active cards only; keeping someone listed after a temporary punishment expires would be a permanent penalty for a temporary offence.

10What we do not do

• We never hold your prize. No key on our servers can move funds out of a vault. The contract requires the organizer to settle and a merkle proof to claim.
• We do not reverse, refund or freeze onchain payments. Nobody can.
• We do not guarantee any contest will be run well, or that a prize has value.
• We do not give financial, tax or legal advice. What you owe where is yours to work out.

11Ending your account

You can ask us to delete your account at any time. Entries already judged, payouts already made and cards already issued stay on the record — they are part of contests other people took part in, and anything already onchain cannot be removed by anyone. We can also close an account that repeatedly breaks these terms.

12Changes and contact

We will update this page as the product changes, and the date at the top says when. For anything here, reach us at @justSHILLapp. See also Privacy and Docs, which explains the mechanics in detail.