Terms of Service

01Definitions and Interpretation

In these Terms, unless the context otherwise requires, the following capitalised expressions shall bear the meanings ascribed to them below:

• "Operator", "we", "us" and "our" means the person or entity that owns, operates and administers the Service, together with its affiliates, successors and permitted assigns.
• "Service" means the goated website, profile pages, dashboard, marketplace, auction house, application programming interfaces, Telegram bot, electronic mail aliases, file storage and all associated features, content and functionality, as modified from time to time.
• "User", "you" and "your" means any natural person who accesses or uses the Service, whether or not holding an Account.
• "Account" means the user account registered by a User, including the associated username, credentials, profile, balance and all Virtual Items associated therewith.
• "Stars" means the closed-loop, non-transferable-for-value virtual currency unit made available within the Service, which may be acquired solely by way of the purchase mechanisms designated by the Operator.
• "Virtual Items" means Stars, Collectibles, Collectible Names, Premium Features, cosmetics, templates, saved looks and any other digital item, entitlement or privilege obtainable within the Service.
• "Collectibles" means the numbered digital gifts, relics and associated artwork, models, backdrops and symbols displayed within the Service.
• "Collectible Names" means the supplementary username handles that may be minted, acquired, held, listed or transferred within the Service.
• "Premium Features" means the enhanced functionality made available to Users who have acquired premium status, including custom code, content blocks, saved looks and cosmetics.
• "User Content" means any text, image, audio, video, link, code, template, message or other material submitted, uploaded, published or transmitted by a User through the Service.
• "House Account" means the Operator-controlled account through which inventory is issued to, and may be re-acquired from, the marketplace.

Headings are inserted for convenience only and shall not affect construction. The words "including", "include" and "in particular" are illustrative and shall not limit the generality of the preceding words. References to a statute or regulation include any amendment, consolidation or re-enactment thereof. Any obligation on a User not to do something includes an obligation not to permit or facilitate that thing being done.

02Acceptance, Eligibility and Capacity

Your acceptance of these Terms is effected by affirmative electronic assent at registration and is reaffirmed on each occasion that you access or use the Service. Continued use following the publication of revised Terms shall constitute acceptance of such revisions, without prejudice to any mandatory notice requirements under applicable law.

You represent and warrant that: (a) you are at least sixteen (16) years of age or the minimum age of digital consent in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher; (b) where you are below the age of majority in your jurisdiction, any purchase is made with the express authorisation and under the supervision of a parent or legal guardian who has accepted these Terms on your behalf; (c) you possess full legal capacity to enter into a binding agreement; (d) you are not resident in, or a national of, any jurisdiction subject to comprehensive sanctions, nor identified on any applicable sanctions list; and (e) you have not previously had an Account suspended or terminated by the Operator.

The Operator reserves the right, in its sole and absolute discretion, to refuse registration, to require verification of any representation herein, and to restrict access to the Service from any territory.

03Accounts, Credentials and Security

You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your credentials and for all activities undertaken through your Account, whether or not authorised by you. The Operator shall be entitled to treat any instruction received through your Account as having been given by you. You shall promptly notify the Operator of any actual or suspected unauthorised access, and the Operator strongly recommends the enablement of two-step verification where available.

Each natural person may maintain a single Account save as expressly permitted by the Operator. Accounts are personal to the registrant and may not be sold, rented, shared, pledged, transferred or otherwise dealt with, whether for consideration or otherwise. Usernames remain subject to the Operator's naming policies and may be reclaimed or modified where, in the Operator's reasonable opinion, they infringe third-party rights, are misleading, or contravene the Community Guidelines.

The Operator shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to safeguard your credentials, from compromise of any device, email account or Telegram account associated with your Account, or from the actions of any third party gaining access thereto.

04Nature of Stars and Virtual Items

Notwithstanding any terminology employed within the Service (including "buy", "sell", "own", "value", "price" or "worth"), Virtual Items do not constitute property, currency, legal tender, electronic money, a stored-value facility, a security, a commodity or any other financial instrument. Upon acquisition of a Virtual Item, the Operator grants you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable licence to use such Virtual Item solely within the Service and in accordance with these Terms. No title to or ownership of any Virtual Item is transferred to you at any time.

Stars have no monetary value outside the Service and are not redeemable, exchangeable or convertible into fiat currency, cryptocurrency or any other item of value, whether by the Operator or any third party. The Operator does not, and shall not be obliged to, repurchase Stars or Virtual Items. Any indicative fiat-equivalent figure displayed within the Service (including any "≈ $" estimate) is presented for informational convenience only, is calculated at a notional base rate, and does not represent a price, offer, valuation or entitlement of any kind.

The Operator may, at any time and without liability, manage, regulate, modify, rebalance, re-price, rename, re-issue or discontinue any Virtual Item, including by adjusting supply, appraisal methodologies, fees, floor prices or the rarity attributes of Collectibles. You acknowledge that the apparent or estimated value of any Virtual Item may fluctuate or decline to zero, and that you have no claim against the Operator in respect of any such change.

Certain Virtual Items obtained without charge (including registration rewards and streak drops) may be subject to transferability restrictions until such time as the relevant Account has completed a qualifying purchase, as determined by the Operator for the purposes of fraud prevention and economic integrity.

05Purchases and Payment

Stars may be acquired exclusively through the payment channels designated by the Operator, which may include cryptocurrency payment processors and Operator-controlled wallet addresses. Prices, bundle compositions, bonus schedules and minimum purchase amounts (presently five United States dollars) are determined by the Operator and may be varied prospectively at any time. The quantity of Stars applicable to any purchase is fixed at the moment the corresponding invoice is generated.

You are solely responsible for: (a) remitting the exact amount specified in the invoice, in the specified asset, on the specified network and to the specified address, within the validity window of the invoice; (b) all network, gas, miner, exchange and intermediary fees; and (c) any taxes, duties or levies arising from your purchase. Payments that are insufficient, late, sent on an incorrect network or to an incorrect address, or otherwise non-conforming may be irrecoverable, and the Operator shall bear no responsibility therefor, whether or not the Operator is technically able to identify or recover such funds.

Stars shall be credited following confirmation of the payment by the relevant processor or manual verification by the Operator. The Operator may delay, withhold or reverse any credit pending investigation of suspected fraud, error, sanctions exposure or breach of these Terms.

06Premium Features, Cosmetics and Templates

Premium status, cosmetics and templates are licensed, not sold, and are made available for the lifetime of the Service or of your Account, whichever is shorter, subject always to these Terms. "Lifetime" denotes the operational lifetime of the Service as determined by the Operator and does not constitute any guarantee of duration or continuity.

Custom HTML and CSS submitted by premium Users is subject to prior human review and may be approved, rejected, modified or withdrawn at the Operator's sole discretion, without obligation to provide reasons. Templates published by Users are licensed to purchasers on a non-exclusive basis; a template's author grants the Operator and all purchasers a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use the published style within the Service. Revenue attributable to template sales is credited in Stars only, net of applicable fees, and is subject to Section 4.

07Finality of Transactions; No Refunds

Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, no refund, credit, reversal, exchange or compensation of any kind shall be due or payable in respect of, or by reason of: (a) a change of mind, dissatisfaction, or non-use of any Virtual Item; (b) any purchase made in error, by accident, or by any person accessing your Account; (c) any fluctuation, devaluation or re-pricing of Stars or Virtual Items, or any change to appraisal or rarity methodologies; (d) any marketplace, auction or offer transaction, including one later regretted; (e) the modification, suspension or discontinuation of any feature or of the Service as a whole; (f) the suspension, restriction or termination of your Account for any reason, including breach of these Terms or the Community Guidelines; (g) any interruption, outage, error, bug or unavailability of the Service; or (h) any fluctuation in the value of the asset used to make payment between invoicing and settlement.

Any attempt to procure a refund through a chargeback, payment dispute, reversal or similar mechanism shall constitute a material breach of these Terms, shall entitle the Operator to suspend or terminate the relevant Account and to forfeit all Virtual Items associated therewith without compensation, and shall render you liable for all costs, fees and losses incurred by the Operator in connection therewith.

This Section 7 applies to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any non-waivable statutory right that you may have as a consumer under the mandatory laws of your jurisdiction; where any such right applies, it shall apply only to the minimum extent required and, where permitted, you expressly request immediate performance and acknowledge that you thereby lose any statutory right of withdrawal in respect of digital content supplied immediately upon purchase.

08Marketplace, Auctions and Offers

The Service facilitates peer-to-peer transactions in Virtual Items between Users. The Operator is not a party to any such transaction except where the House Account acts as counterparty, and makes no representation as to the availability, liquidity, demand for or resale value of any Virtual Item. Prices are set by Users or, in the case of House Account inventory and newly minted Collectible Names, by the Operator.

Stars committed to bids and offers are held by the Service and are released or applied in accordance with the mechanics displayed at the time of commitment. Bids are binding and may not be withdrawn. Auctions may be extended where a bid is placed shortly before closing. The Operator levies transaction fees on marketplace sales, auctions and template sales, which are deducted automatically and are not refundable.

The Operator may, at its discretion and without liability, cancel, void, reverse or unwind any transaction that it reasonably suspects to have resulted from error, exploitation of a defect, fraud, collusion, wash trading, shill bidding, market manipulation, compromised credentials or any other breach of these Terms or the Community Guidelines, and may re-allocate the affected Virtual Items and Stars accordingly.

Trading, selling or offering Virtual Items, Accounts or Stars outside the Service in exchange for fiat currency, cryptocurrency or any other consideration is strictly prohibited and shall not be recognised by the Operator.

09User Content

You retain such rights as you may hold in your User Content. You hereby grant the Operator a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable licence to host, store, reproduce, display, adapt, modify, distribute and otherwise use your User Content for the purposes of operating, providing, promoting and improving the Service. This licence survives the deletion of your User Content to the extent of any copies retained in backups, logs or caches, or embodied in templates or transactions involving other Users.

You represent and warrant that you possess all rights, licences and consents necessary to grant the foregoing licence and that your User Content does not infringe any third-party right or contravene any law or the Community Guidelines. The Operator is under no obligation to monitor User Content but may review, remove, disable or refuse any User Content at any time, for any reason, without notice.

10Prohibited Conduct

In addition to the standards set out in the Community Guidelines, you shall not, and shall not attempt to, directly or indirectly:

1. exploit, or fail to promptly report, any bug, error, vulnerability or design defect in the Service, including any defect capable of generating, duplicating or misappropriating Stars or Virtual Items;
2. access, probe, scan or test the vulnerability of the Service or any related system other than in accordance with the responsible disclosure provisions of the Community Guidelines;
3. use bots, scripts, automation, scrapers, crawlers or other non-human means to access or interact with the Service, save as expressly authorised;
4. register or operate multiple Accounts, or coordinate Accounts, for the purpose of farming rewards, manipulating rankings, likes or views, circumventing limits, or transferring value;
5. circumvent, disable or interfere with security features, rate limits, review processes or access controls;
6. decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or derive source code from any non-public component of the Service;
7. impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity, including the Operator or Telegram;
8. use the Service in connection with fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion or any other unlawful purpose; or
9. impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the Service's infrastructure, or interfere with any other User's use of the Service.

11Suspension, Termination and Forfeiture

The Operator may, at any time and in its sole discretion, with or without notice and with or without stated cause, suspend, restrict, limit or terminate your Account or your access to all or any part of the Service, remove or disable any User Content, and cancel any pending transaction. Without limitation, such action may be taken where the Operator reasonably believes that you have breached these Terms or the Community Guidelines, that your Account presents a security, legal or reputational risk, or that such action is required by law.

Upon suspension or termination for any reason, all licences granted to you hereunder shall cease, and all Stars and Virtual Items associated with your Account shall be forfeited without compensation, refund or any other liability on the part of the Operator.

You may close your Account at any time by contacting the Operator. Closure shall have the same consequences in respect of Stars and Virtual Items as termination. Sections 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17 and 18 shall survive any termination or expiry of these Terms.

12Intellectual Property and Third-Party Marks

The Service, including its software, design, look and feel, text, graphics, trade names and logos (excluding User Content), is owned by or licensed to the Operator and is protected by intellectual property laws. Except for the limited licences expressly granted herein, no right, title or interest is conveyed to you.

goated is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored or approved by Telegram or any of its affiliates. Any references to, or depictions of, Telegram gifts, collectibles or associated artwork are made for descriptive and interoperability purposes only, and all related marks and works remain the property of their respective owners. The Operator may remove or replace any such material at any time.

13Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Service and all Virtual Items are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise, including any implied warranty of merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, availability, security or uninterrupted or error-free operation.

The Operator does not warrant that the Service will meet your requirements, that any defect will be corrected, that the Service will be free of harmful components, or that any data, balance or Virtual Item will be preserved. Any reliance you place on information obtained through the Service, including estimated values, appraisals, rankings and price charts, is strictly at your own risk.

14Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall the Operator be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, opportunity or Virtual Items, howsoever arising, even if advised of the possibility thereof. The Operator's aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall not exceed the greater of (a) fifty United States dollars (USD 50) and (b) the amount actually received by the Operator from you in the three (3) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

15Indemnification

You shall defend, indemnify and hold harmless the Operator and its officers, personnel, contractors and agents from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or in connection with: (a) your use of the Service; (b) your User Content; (c) your breach of these Terms or the Community Guidelines; (d) your violation of any law or third-party right; or (e) any chargeback or payment dispute initiated by you or on your behalf.

16Modifications to the Service and to these Terms

The Operator may modify, suspend or discontinue the Service or any feature, Virtual Item or economic parameter at any time, temporarily or permanently, without liability. The Operator may amend these Terms from time to time by publishing a revised version with an updated version identifier. Where an amendment is material, the Operator may require you to re-accept the revised Terms as a condition of continued use. If you do not accept the revised Terms, your sole remedy is to cease using the Service, subject to Section 7.

17Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms and any non-contractual obligations arising out of or in connection with them shall be governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Operator is established, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Prior to commencing any formal proceedings, you agree to notify the Operator in writing of the dispute and to engage in good-faith negotiations for a period of not less than thirty (30) days.

To the extent permitted by applicable law, any dispute shall be resolved on an individual basis, and you waive any right to participate in a class, collective or representative action. Any claim must be commenced within one (1) year after the cause of action arises, failing which it shall be permanently barred. Nothing in this Section deprives a consumer of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of their habitual residence.

18General Provisions

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Community Guidelines and any supplemental terms presented within the Service, constitute the entire agreement between you and the Operator and supersede all prior understandings.
• Severability. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to render it enforceable, and the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect.
• No waiver. No failure or delay in exercising any right shall operate as a waiver thereof, nor shall any single or partial exercise preclude any further exercise.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer any right or obligation hereunder. The Operator may assign, novate or transfer these Terms without restriction.
• Force majeure. The Operator shall not be liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including outages of networks, blockchains, payment processors, hosting providers or third-party platforms.
• Language. These Terms are drafted in English, which shall prevail over any translation.
• Notices. The Operator may give notice through the Service, by notification, by Telegram message or to any email address associated with your Account.

19Contact

Enquiries, notices and responsible disclosure reports concerning these Terms or the Service may be directed to the Operator through the support channels published within the Service.

goated — Terms of Service, version 2026-10-04. By using the Service you agree to these Terms and to the Community Guidelines.