Worker Acceptable Use Policy and Operator Terms

In short

These terms are part of your agreement with Distributive, or with the Licensee whose platform you participate in. By installing, running, registering, administering, or embedding a DCP Worker you agree to them. They sit on top of the Worker software’s open-source license, which they do not change.

1. Who this applies to

• Anyone who runs a DCP Worker on a machine they own or control ("you"), as an individual or an organization, on the public network or under an agreement with Distributive or a Licensee.
• Anyone with administrative access to a machine running a Worker, including a third party administering machines for their owner.
• Anyone who registers Workers, including for machines they do not own.
• Anyone who administers a Compute Group.
• Anyone who embeds a Worker in a web page, and the visitors' devices it runs on.

Where several parties hold these roles for the same machine, each is bound for the role it holds. If you participate under a Licensee's agreement, that agreement may add stricter terms; it cannot weaken these.

2. Run Workers only where you are allowed to

• Run a Worker only on machines you own or have explicit permission from the owner to use for this purpose. This includes employer, school, and institutional machines, and cloud or hosted services whose own terms may prohibit this use.
• A Worker embedded in a web page may not start automatically. It may run only after the visitor takes a visible, deliberate action (such as a Start button) preceded by a plain-language disclosure of what will run, roughly how much of the device it will use, and that closing the page stops it. It must stop when the page is closed and must not resume on reload without asking again. It must not collect or display identifying information about the visitor without a separate disclosure.

3. Do not look at or interfere with the work you host

• Do not inspect, copy, extract, retain, or disclose the content of any Job processed by a Worker you administer (input data, arguments, code, or results), beyond what is strictly necessary to operate your own infrastructure, such as diagnosing a crash.
• Do not use memory dumps, packet capture, debuggers, or similar tools against another party's Job data except for that operational purpose.
• Do not alter, drop, delay, or substitute Job data or results in transit.
• If you encounter content in a Job that you believe is illegal, do not retain, copy, or distribute it. Report it to abuse@distributive.network with the Job ID (for example 3WyHPo6fWLetUI9iQlThF1) so that Distributive can investigate, act, and meet any legal reporting duty.
• This is a commitment you make, not a technical guarantee Distributive can enforce from outside your machine. Job Deployers rely on it when they choose a Compute Group.

4. Keep the Worker genuine

• Do not modify the Worker's security behaviour: its sandbox isolation, network restrictions, or execution model. Use Distributive's published releases and configuration options.
• Do not reverse-engineer the Worker to defeat its isolation or to reach another party's Job data. Responsible security research is welcome; report findings to ops@distributive.network.
• Do not publish, distribute, or run a modified Worker build in a way that could be mistaken for the genuine Distributive release. Contribute fixes upstream.
• Updates are strongly recommended. You may control when your machines update, for example where devices are reset on boot, but you are responsible for the risk of running an outdated Worker. Distributive and Compute Group administrators may decline to send work to Workers running versions with known security issues.

5. Honest participation

• Do not fabricate, tamper with, or replay Job results.
• Do not create multiple Worker identities to misrepresent the capacity you offer, and do not misreport a machine's capabilities, location, or other telemetry.
• Do not exploit or manipulate escrow, payment, metering, or Compute Credit mechanics, and do not collude with a Job Deployer to record work that was not done.
• Do not interfere with the Scheduler, Bank, or Portal, or with other Workers.

6. You control your machine

• Settings you place in a Worker's local configuration take precedence over the same settings supplied remotely by whoever registered the Worker, parameter by parameter. The trust-scheduler setting lets you refuse all remote configuration.
• You may restrict the network origins a Worker may contact, limit the Jobs it accepts, pause or stop it, or uninstall it at any time. If you host Workers under an agreement that limits when you exercise these controls, that agreement governs; your technical ability is unaffected.
• Workers connect outbound only. Keep it that way; do not expose a Worker to inbound connections.

7. Keys and credentials

• Keep your account credentials, API keys, registration keys, and Compute Group keys (joinKey and joinSecret) confidential, and do not share them outside your organization.
• You are responsible for all activity under your keys.
• If you believe a key has been exposed, revoke it: delete it in the Keys tab of the Portal and issue a new one. Workers registered with the old key will stop receiving work until you re-register or refresh them. Revoking is your decision; you are not required to report an exposed key to Distributive, but you remain responsible for activity under it until you do.

8. If you register Workers for others or administer a Compute Group

• Registering Workers for others. If you hold the registration key for Workers on machines you do not own, you may set the earnings account of those Workers to an account you control only with the owner's written agreement. You may not push configuration that exfiltrates data, weakens security, or exceeds what the owner agreed to, and you must tell the owner how to use the local controls in §6.
• Administering a Compute Group. Apply reasonable vetting before you admit a Worker or a Job Deployer to your group. Rotate the group's keys promptly if you believe they have been compromised. You are responsible for who you admit, and a Job Deployer relies on your vetting when it routes work to your group.

9. Security hygiene and incidents

• Restrict administrative access to machines running Workers to people who need it.
• If a machine running a Worker is compromised in a way that could affect Job data or other participants, stop the Worker and tell Distributive at ops@distributive.network.

10. Export control and sanctions

You are responsible for complying with the export control and sanctions laws that apply to you wherever your machines are located. You may not run Workers from, or for the benefit of, a sanctioned jurisdiction, person, or organization.

11. Compute Credits and earnings

• Workers earn DCP Compute Credits as they complete work. Credits are a unit of account for computing services on DCP. They have no cash value. Nothing in these terms, the Portal, or your agreement gives you a right to demand cash redemption of Compute Credits; any cash redemption that may occur is at Distributive's sole discretion and on the terms the Portal states at the time.
• If you participate through a Licensee that offers its own rewards or compensation for compute you supply, that program is the Licensee's, under the Licensee's terms. Distributive is not a party to it.

12. Warranty and liability

• The Worker software is provided under its open-source license, as is, without warranty of any kind, to the fullest extent the law allows.
• You run Workers on your own infrastructure at your own risk. To the fullest extent the law allows, Distributive is not liable for damage to your machines, data, or network, or for the content of any Job, arising from your use of the Worker.
• Distributive commits to independent penetration testing of the Worker, to publishing security patches promptly, and to not deliberately introducing malicious code. These commitments do not make Distributive liable for vulnerabilities in third-party components it does not control.
• Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under the law that applies to you, and where that law gives you rights these terms cannot exclude, those rights are unaffected. If you host Workers under a written agreement with Distributive or a Licensee, that agreement's warranty and liability terms apply in place of this section.

13. How these terms are enforced

• Reporting. Report suspected violations to abuse@distributive.network with the Job ID or Worker ID concerned.
• No monitoring. Distributive does not monitor what runs on your machines. It acts on reports and on knowledge it otherwise obtains.
• Actions. Distributive, or the administrator of the Compute Group concerned, may, in proportion to the violation and without prior notice where the matter is serious: remove your Worker from a Compute Group; ban a Worker identity or account from the platform; freeze the Compute Credits in your account during an investigation; and report illegal conduct to the authorities.
• Removal from a Compute Group stops your Worker receiving further work from that group. It does not affect your Worker's membership in other groups.
• Forfeiture. If you attempt to defraud the network, violate the privacy of others, or otherwise breach these terms, Distributive may freeze your account and the Compute Credits in it, and you forfeit both.

14. Changes

Distributive may change these terms on 30 days' notice through the Portal, the Worker application, and https://distributive.network/legal. Material changes require re-acceptance. The version you accepted governs until then.

15. Relationship to your agreement

If you run Workers on the public network, these terms are your agreement with Distributive on the matters they cover. If you run Workers under an agreement with Distributive or a Licensee, these terms apply through that agreement, which may add terms and which governs warranty, liability, and compensation.

16. Contact

• Abuse and violations: abuse@distributive.network (include the Job ID or Worker ID)
• Privacy: privacy@distributive.network
• Security incidents: ops@distributive.network

Related documents

• All legal documents
• Privacy Policy
• DCP Job Deployer Acceptable Use Policy