Privacy Policy

Effective Date: June 20, 2023

Alliance cares deeply about individual privacy and data security. This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) applies to this website and its subdomains (the “Site”) through which DeFi Alliance LLC and its affiliates (“Alliance”, “we”, and “us”) may provide information, software, and services, including our application process for the Alliance Accelerator and the webapp for Alliance cohorts and alumni that is accessible through the Site (collectively, the “Services”) and explains what information we collect from users of our Services (a “user” or “you”), including Personal Information (defined below) and how we use it.

We encourage you to read the details below. This Policy applies to any user or visitor to or user of our Services. By accessing the Site or using Services, you consent to the practices described in this Policy. If you do not agree to this Policy, do not access the Site, use the Services, or provide any information to us through either the Site or the Services. 

1. Modification. We reserve the right to change this Policy at any time. We will notify you of any changes to this Policy by sending notice to the primary email address specified in your account or by a prominent notice on our website. Significant changes will go into effect thirty (30) days following such notification. Non-material changes or clarifications will take effect immediately. You should periodically check our website, including this privacy page, for updates. You acknowledge that your continued use of our Services after we publish or send a notice about our changes to this Policy means that the collection, use and sharing of your Personal Information is subject to the updated Policy.

2. Collection of Personal Information

As used in this Policy, “Personal Information” means information that, alone or in combination with other information, identifies you or could be used to identify you. Please note that Personal Information that is aggregated or anonymized such that it can no longer be used to identify you is not considered Personal Information.

‍We will collect and process the following types of information about you where you have given us your consent, where necessary for the performance of a contract with you (such as our Website Terms of Use), and where we have legitimate interests permitted by law:

a. Directly Provided. We collect Personal Information whenever you provide it directly to us by filling out a form (such as by creating an account or registering for one of our events) or communicating directly with us (such as by sending us an email or messaging us on social media). We may also collect any Personal Information you provide as part of User Content (as that term is defined in our Terms of Use). 

b. Application Information. We collect Personal Information in the application form to the Alliance Accelerator (“Application Information”). Categories of such information includes your name, title, email address, messaging app handles, social media profile information, professional and academic background, applicable personal history in response to specific prompts, and any relevant or prompted information relating to your proposed products, business, or technology, and any other information you are willing to provide within freeform text fields as part of the application. Any information we collect later in the application process, such as your answers to questions we may ask and any notes, recordings, or other information is also considered Application Information under this Privacy Policy.

c. Social Media Information. When you interact with us on social media sites like Twitter, Medium, YouTube, podcast pages via Apple Music or Spotify, or any other Alliance-affiliated social media account (“Social Media Pages”), we will collect the Personal Information you provide to us as well as any Personal Information publicly accessible on your social media profile or otherwise accessible to us through that interaction. In addition, the service providers that host our Social Media Pages may provide us with information and analytics regarding your interactions with our Social Media Pages.

d. Technical Information. When you visit, use, and interact with our Site or Services, we may receive certain technical information related to your engagement with the Site or Services (“Technical Information”), such as your IP address, browser information, mobile device ID number, other information about the device you use in the interaction; and usage information, such as time of visit, which pages you visited, the domains through which you accessed our site, browser information and settings, frequency and types of actions you take on the site, log data, and similar usage information we may generate by aggregating such information. Technical Information may also include information collected from Cookies and Tracking Technologies as described in more detail below.

3. Cookies and Tracking Technologies.

‍A "cookie" is a small file placed on your hard drive by some of our web pages.  We, or third parties we do business with, may use cookies to help us analyze our web page flow, customize our services, content and advertising, measure promotional effectiveness and promote trust and safety. Cookies are commonly used at most major transactional websites in much the same way we use them in our Services.

You may delete and block all cookies from our Services, but parts of the Services may not work. We want to be open about our cookie use.Even if you are only browsing the Services, certain information (including computer and connection information, browser type and version, operating system and platform details, and the time of accessing the Services) is automatically collected about you. This information will be collected every time you access the Services and it will be used for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.

You can reduce the information cookies collected from your device.  An easy way of doing this is often to change the settings in your browser. If you do that you should know that (a) your use of the Services may be adversely affected (and possibly entirely prevented), (b) your experience of this and other sites that use cookies to enhance or personalize your experience may be adversely affected, and (c) you may not be presented with advertising that reflects the way that you use our and other sites. You find out how to make these changes to your browser at this site: www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/.  Unless you have adjusted your browser settings so that it will refuse cookies, our system will send cookies as soon as access our Services.  By using the Services you consent to this, unless you change your browser settings.  

Web beacons may be used to track the traffic patterns of users from one page to another in order to maximize web traffic flow. Our third-party advertising service providers may also use web beacons to recognize you when you visit the Site or access the Services and to help determine how you found the  Services. If you would like more information about this and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please visit: the Digital Advertising Alliance’s website, http://www.aboutads.info/, or the Network Advertising Initiative’s website, http://networkadvertising.org/consumer/opt_out.asp.

4. Use of Personal Information We Collect.

‍We use the Personal Information we collect to:

• Deliver and improve the Services and your overall user experience;
• To protect, investigate, and deter against fraudulent, unauthorized, or illegal activity;
• To link or combine user information with other Personal Information;
• To compare and verify information for accuracy and update our records;
• Email, text, message, or otherwise contact you with information and updates about us and the Services;
• To respond to your comments and questions and provide customer service;
• To send you information including confirmations, invoices, technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages;
• Analyze how you use the Services with tools such as Google Analytics and other tools to help us understand traffic patterns and know if there are problems with the Services;
• To aggregate and anonymize Personal Information; and
• Create targeted advertising to promote the Services and engage our users. 

With respect to Application Information, except as explicitly described below, we will not share it with any third parties other than for purposes of evaluating your application or as necessary for our internal analytics purposes. When we do share Application Information that is unique to you or your business, we will use reasonable efforts to ensure that both internal evaluators and external third parties agree to treat Application Information as confidential information. Notwithstanding the foregoing, due to the volume of applications we receive and process, you agree that you will not hold Alliance liable for any misuse or disclosure of general information or generally known knowledge about you, your business, or your industry that you may have provided to us as Application Information. You agree that we may use or disclose such general information or generally known knowledge for any purpose and in any manner.

5. How We Share Personal Information.

‍We do not rent, sell, or share your Personal Information with other people or non-affiliated third parties except with your explicit consent or as necessary to complete any transaction or provide any service you have requested or authorized.

To help us do our work, we may provide limited access to some of your Personal Information to the following third parties:

• Partners: Sometimes we collaborate with other organizations to deliver the Services. In these cases, we may share your name, contact information and other details you provided when making an account with our partners.
• Affiliates: We may share your information with our affiliates and/or subsidiaries.
• Service Providers: We work with a wide range of third party providers, notably our database administrators, cloud computing services, advertising services, data analysts, application service providers, bulk SMS services, and other non-governmental organizations.
• Payment processors:  We work with payment processors such as Stripe to help process credit card transactions and other payment methods made through the Services. These payment processors will store certain information about you. Please refer to their privacy policies to learn more about how they use your Personal Information.
• Other Users: We may share redacted information of our users with other users of our Services for the purpose of getting your consent to make introductions for relevant opportunities.

We may store information, using our internal tools, such as your contact information and employment details, that are necessary to enable us to operate effectively and deliver our services to you. We may also transfer your Personal Information to a third party as a result of a merger, acquisition, reorganization or similar transaction; when required by law or to respond to legal process; to protect our customers; to protect lives; to maintain the security of the Services; and to protect the rights or property of Alliance. In such event, and to the extent legally permitted, we will notify you and, if there are material changes in relation to the processing of your Personal Information, give you an opportunity to consent to such changes.

We currently do not share Personal Information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes without your consent.

6. ‍Protection of Alliance and Others

‍We will also share Personal Information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Alliance if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of your Personal Information is reasonably necessary to detect or protect against fraud or security issues, enforce our terms of use, meet any enforceable government request, defend against legal claims, or protect against harm our legal rights or safety.

7. Data Security

We implement commercially reasonable technical, administrative, and organizational measures to protect Personal Information both online and offline from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.  The safety and security of your Personal Information also depends on you. If you have an account with us, you are responsible for keeping your membership details confidential. Your account is protected by your account password and we urge you to take steps to keep your Personal Information safe by not disclosing your password and by logging out of your account after each use. We further protect your Personal Information from potential security breaches by implementing certain technological security measures including encryption, firewalls and secure socket layer technology. However, these measures do not guarantee that your Personal Information will not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed by breach of such firewalls and secure server software. By using the Services, you acknowledge that you understand and agree to assume these risks.

Where Application Information contains sensitive business information, please take special care in deciding what you send to us as we cannot guarantee that information sent through our form or through email will be secure during transmission.

We retain your Personal Information while your account is in existence, as needed to provide you Services, or as otherwise permitted by law.

8. Your Choices.

‍You have several choices regarding the use of Personal Information on the Services:

‍Changing or Deleting Your Personal Data. All users may review, update, correct or delete the Personal Information furnished by a user in their user account (including any imported contacts) by contacting us at [contact email] or by accessing your user account. For your protection, we may only share and update the Personal Information associated with the specific email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before doing so. We will try to comply with such requests in a reasonably timely manner. If you completely and permanently delete all of your Personal Information, then your user account may become deactivated. If you wish to cancel your account, you may do so through your account page, and any personally identifiable information associated with your account will be deleted as soon as is reasonably practical or as required by applicable law. Please note that we may retain information that is otherwise deleted in anonymized and aggregated form, in archived or backup copies as required pursuant to records retention obligations, or otherwise as required by law. We may retain an archived copy of your records as required by law or for legitimate business purposes.

‍Download or Access Personal Information. You can ask us for a copy of your Personal Information and can ask for a copy of Personal Information you provided in machine readable form by emailing us at [email protected].

‍Opting Out of Email Communications. We may use some of the information we collect for marketing purposes, including to send you promotional communications about new Alliance features, products, events, or other opportunities. If you wish to stop receiving these communications or to opt out of use of your information for these purposes, please follow the opt-out instructions, such as clicking "Unsubscribe" (or similar opt-out language) in those communications. You can also contact us at [email protected] to opt out. Despite your indicated e-mail preferences, we may send you service related communications, including notices of any updates to our terms of service or privacy policy.

8. ‍Links to Third Party Websites

‍We may provide links to other websites. We have no control over these websites and they are subject to their own terms of use and privacy policies. As such, we do not endorse and are not responsible for the availability of, or for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from, these third party websites. Please refer to our Website Terms of Use for additional information regarding Third Party Site and Content (as that term is defined therein).

9. ‍How We Respond to Do Not Track Signals

‍Your browser settings may allow you to automatically transmit a Do Not Track signal to websites and other online services you visit. We do not alter our practices when we receive a Do Not Track signal from a visitor’s browser because we do not track our visitors to provide targeted advertising. To find out more about Do Not Track, please visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.

10. Children

‍The Services are not directed to individuals who are under age of sixteen (16) and we do not solicit nor knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of sixteen (16). If you believe that we have unknowingly collected any Personal Information from someone under the age of sixteen (16), please contact us immediately at [email protected] and the information will be deleted.

11. ‍A Note to Users Outside the United States

‍Our Alliance is a remote-first organization with a primary base of operations within the United States. The Services are controlled and operated by us from the United States and are not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any state, country or territory other than that of the United States. Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and by using the Services you consent to the transfer of information to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country. In certain circumstances, courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies or security authorities in those other countries may be entitled to access your Personal Information.

12. ‍Contact Us

‍If you have any questions about this Policy, your Personal Information, or the Services, you can contact [email protected].