Privacy Policy

1. Overview

• Novera does not require a phone number, email address, or password to use the Service. Your identity is a cryptographic keypair created on your device.
• Novera does not run advertising, does not sell or rent your information, and does not use third-party analytics or advertising trackers.
• Personal profile details and private conversations are encrypted on your device before they reach our servers, and Novera cannot decrypt them.
• Some information is deliberately not encrypted, because it has to be readable to work: your display name, listings you publish, orders you place with a business, and anything you send to the Novera AI assistant. Section 5 lists exactly what falls in each group.
• Payments use a public blockchain, so payment transactions are visible to anyone.

2. How Novera Is Designed

When you start using Novera, the app generates a cryptographic keypair on your device, protected where possible by a passkey (for example Face ID, Touch ID, or a security key). The public half of that keypair is your Novera identity and, for payments, your wallet address. The private half never leaves your device. Novera does not receive it and cannot recover it.

Encryption keys for your profile details and conversations are derived from or protected by that keypair. Encrypted data is stored on Novera's relay servers as ciphertext that only the intended recipients can open. If you lose your keys, that data becomes permanently unreadable to everyone, including Novera.

3. Information You Provide

Identity and profile

• Display name. Required to use the Service. It is stored in plain text together with your public keys so that other users, businesses, and the app can show who you are. It is publicly readable and is linked to your identity key and wallet address.
• First and last name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and home address. Optional in general; name and email are required if you want to make payments. Each of these is encrypted on your device with a key derived from your keypair before it is stored. Novera cannot read them.
• Novera does not collect Social Security numbers or government-issued identification numbers. If you buy USDC through Transak, Transak may collect such information under its own privacy policy (see Section 8).

Content and activity

• Messages, photos, and files you send in conversations and Rooms.
• Listings you create for goods, rentals, or services, including titles, descriptions, prices, locations, and photos.
• Orders, bookings, and reservations you place with a business, including the items, dates, prices, the name you give for the order, and a table number where applicable.
• Room information such as a Room's name, visibility, associated place, and its members.
• Business information if you operate a business on Novera, including menus, prices, and a payout wallet address.
• Correspondence when you contact us by email.

4. Information Collected Automatically

• Technical logs. Our servers and hosting providers keep standard technical logs for security and troubleshooting, which can include your IP address, the request path, timestamps, and error details.
• Storage on your device. The web app stores your encrypted keys, cached profile, conversations, Room keys, and your last known location in your browser's local storage and IndexedDB. Novera does not use cookies.
• Blockchain activity. When you make a payment, the transaction is recorded on the Solana blockchain and read back through a third-party RPC provider, which sees your wallet address and IP address.
• No analytics or advertising trackers. Novera does not use third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking services.

5. What Is Encrypted and What Is Not

Encrypted on your device before it reaches Novera

• Your first and last name, email, phone number, date of birth, and home address.
• Private conversations, which are sealed to each participant, and Room conversations, which are encrypted with a key shared only with Room members.
• Images sent in conversations.
• Backups of your keys and Room keys, which are sealed to your own key so that Novera holds only ciphertext.
• Escrow Transaction Agreements, which are sealed to the customer and the provider.

Stored in plain text on Novera's servers

• Your display name and public keys.
• Listings you publish and public share pages created from them.
• Orders and bookings placed with a business, including items, the names given for the order, table numbers, timestamps, and payment transaction references. This information is visible to the business and its staff, and is not encrypted.
• Business menus, prices, and payout wallet addresses.
• Room names, visibility, associated places, and member lists. Which Rooms an identity belongs to can be determined by others who use the relay.
• Photos attached to listings.
• Anything you send to the Novera AI assistant, while it is being processed (see Section 6).

Plain-text information on the relay is readable by anyone who can reach the relay and knows the relevant identifier. Treat it as information you have chosen to share.

6. Messages and the Novera AI

Conversations between people are encrypted end to end. Novera's servers relay and store the ciphertext but cannot read it. The Novera AI assistant is different: it is a participant that Novera operates, and our systems must read what you send to it in order to answer.

• In a conversation with only you and the Novera AI, every message is readable by Novera's AI systems. In a conversation with other people, messages addressed to the AI are readable by it.
• When you ask the AI something, the text of your request, recent messages in that conversation, the conversation and participant identifiers, and your approximate location (if you have granted location permission) are sent to Novera's AI servers over an encrypted connection and processed there. When you ask inside a Room, the relevant Room content is sent in the same way.
• The AI's answers are stored in the conversation like any other message, and any location included in a request to the AI remains in that conversation's history.
• Novera's AI runs primarily on infrastructure that Novera operates. Where Novera uses an outside language-model service to help process a request, that service receives only the content needed to process it and does so under its own terms. Some AI features may also run entirely on your device.
• Conversation content sent to the AI is used to answer your request and operate the Service. It is not used for advertising or profiling, and it is not sold.

7. Location

With your permission, the app uses your device's location to find businesses, listings, and services near you. If you grant permission:

• Your precise location is stored on your device.
• It is sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service to turn coordinates into a place name, and may be sent to a postal-code lookup service.
• It is sent to Novera's servers with search and AI requests so that results can be local to you.
• An approximate location (rounded to roughly a hundred meters) is included in messages you send to the Novera AI in a conversation, and other participants in that conversation can see it.
• Requests made inside a Room do not include your location.

You can decline or revoke location permission in your browser or device settings. Some local features will not work without it.

8. Payments, Wallets, and the Blockchain

• Your wallet. Your Novera identity key is also your Solana wallet address. Because your display name is public, the link between your display name, identity, and wallet address is public too.
• Blockchain transactions are public by design. Anyone can see the addresses, amounts, and timing of payments, escrow funding, releases, and refunds involving your wallet. Novera cannot remove information from the blockchain.
• Transak. If you choose to buy USDC through Transak, the information needed to start and complete that purchase, which may include profile details you have entered and your wallet address, is provided to or processed by Transak in accordance with Transak's own terms and privacy policy. Transak collects and verifies identity information itself, including government identification where required by law. Novera does not receive the documents you give Transak.
• Escrow records. The Transaction Agreement for an escrow is stored on Novera's servers encrypted for the customer and the provider only, and a cryptographic hash of it is recorded on the blockchain. Novera cannot read the agreement itself.
• Order and booking records associated with a payment, including the payment's transaction signature, are stored in plain text as described in Section 5.
• RPC provider. Reading your balance and submitting transactions goes through a Solana RPC provider, which sees your wallet address and IP address.

9. Push Notifications

If you enable notifications, Novera delivers them through OneSignal, a third-party notification service, and through your platform's notification system. A message notification contains the sender's display name and a short preview of the message, so that text passes through those services in plain text. Notifications about requests carry no message text.

10. Third-Party Services

Novera uses the following services to operate. Each handles data under its own policies.

• Transak for buying USDC with traditional currency, including identity verification.
• The Solana blockchain and a Solana RPC provider for payments and wallet balances.
• Vercel for hosting the websites and web application.
• Google Maps Platform (Places) for address autocomplete when you type an address into your profile.
• OpenStreetMap Nominatim and a postal-code lookup service for turning coordinates into place names.
• OneSignal for push notifications.
• Novera-operated infrastructure, including relay servers in the United States and Europe, AI servers, and media storage (which may use the IPFS protocol to store files by content address).

Links from Novera to businesses, listings, and other websites lead to services Novera does not control.

11. How Information Is Shared

• With other users. Your display name and public keys are visible to others. Messages go to the participants you send them to. Orders, bookings, and reservations go to the business you place them with.
• Publicly. Listings you publish, and share links you create, are public web pages. Their title, description, and image are also sent to link-preview services of any app the link is pasted into.
• With service providers listed in Section 10, to the extent needed for their function.
• For legal reasons. We may disclose information if required by law, subpoena, or court order, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Novera, our users, or others. Because most personal information is encrypted with keys we do not hold, what we can disclose is limited to what we can read.
• Business transfers. If Fitouch, LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, information we hold may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to this policy.

Novera does not sell personal information and does not share it with advertisers.

12. Retention and Deletion

• Information stored on your device stays there until you sign out or clear your browser data. Signing out removes your keys and locally stored data from that device only; it does not delete anything from Novera's servers.
• Novera does not currently offer self-service account deletion in the app, and the relay does not automatically expire or delete stored entries.
• Encrypted information becomes permanently unreadable, to you and to Novera, once the keys that protect it are gone.
• Plain-text information described in Section 5 (such as your display name, published listings, order records, and Room information) remains on our servers. Novera does not currently have a routine process for deleting it on request, and cannot delete information from the blockchain. If you have a request about information we hold, contact us at hello@novera.co; we will tell you what we can and cannot do and will act as applicable law requires.
• Information recorded on the blockchain cannot be deleted by Novera or anyone else.
• Technical logs are retained for security and troubleshooting purposes and are not used to profile users.

13. Security

Novera protects information primarily through on-device encryption and by not holding your keys, and uses encrypted connections between your device and our servers. No system is perfectly secure, and the security of your data also depends on the security of your own device and passkeys. If you believe your keys or device have been compromised, contact us right away.

14. Your Choices and Rights

• You can use Novera with only a display name. Every other profile field is optional unless you make payments.
• You can decline location and notification permissions in your browser or device settings.
• You can choose not to publish listings or create share links, and you can keep Rooms private.
• You can update your profile at any time in the app.
• Depending on where you live, you may have rights under applicable law regarding your personal information, such as rights of access, correction, or deletion. To make a request, contact us at hello@novera.co. Because we cannot read encrypted information and, as described in Section 12, do not currently have a routine deletion process, we will explain in each case what we are able to do.

15. Children

Novera is not intended for anyone under 18, and our Terms of Service require users to be at least 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with information, contact us and we will take steps to remove what we are able to.

16. Where Data Is Processed

Novera operates servers in the United States and Europe, and our service providers may process information in other countries. By using the Service you understand that information may be processed in a country other than your own, where privacy laws may differ.

17. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as Novera evolves. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated revision date, and for material changes we will make reasonable efforts to notify active users in the app.

18. Contact

Novera is operated by Fitouch, LLC. Questions about this policy or your information can be sent to hello@novera.co. Our Terms of Service describe the rules for using the Service.