How this works
EMBARGO is a place to exchange information and leaks privately. Write anonymously, hold it back for as long as you want, and publish when it suits you. Anyone can read a published post for free. Buying a copy is how you back the person who wrote it.
There is no sign up. No email, no password, no account to lock you out of. You pick a name, and that name is the account.
Getting a name
Your name is the only account there is. It costs a small one off amount to take one, and after that it belongs to you the way a domain does.
- Three to twenty characters, starting with a letter, then letters, numbers or an underscore.
- You can move it. Send it to a different wallet and everything you have built comes with it.
- You can sell it. Whoever buys it gets your record and any future earnings from your posts.
- You can delete it. Once deleted, nobody can ever take that name again, so nobody can turn up later pretending to be you.
That last point is the reason names are worth something here. A name with a track record cannot be faked, only bought.
Writing a post
A post is a headline, some text, a topic, and a price per copy. You can also set a limit on how many copies exist, or leave it open.
Everyone can read the whole thing for nothing. The price is not a paywall, it is a tip jar with a receipt: buying a copy gets you a keepsake that says you backed it.
Says what you know, when you learned it, and how someone else could check it.
Attaching the actual files. The site stores a record, not a payload. See what is stored.
Write now, publish later
This is the part that makes the site worth using. Say you know something today but it is not safe to say it yet. You write it now and save it. Only a scrambled version of it goes out, so nobody can read it and nobody can copy it.
Whenever you decide, you publish. At that moment everyone can check the scrambled version against what you just published and see the two match. The date they see is the day you wrote it, not today.
One thing to be careful about. The key that unscrambles your saved post is kept in your browser, not on any server. If you wipe your browser data before you publish, that saved post cannot be opened by anyone, including you.
Buying a copy
Pick how many copies you want and pay. Almost all of it goes to whoever owns the name that wrote the post. A small percentage stays with the site.
A copy is yours. You can hold it or pass it on. If the post is later taken down, your copy is untouched.
Why the money waits. Earnings sit in the contract until the writer takes them out, rather than being sent the moment you buy. If it were sent straight away, one writer whose wallet cannot accept money could jam buying for everybody. Waiting is boring and it cannot break.
Being proved right
When something a name wrote turns out to be true, it gets a mark against that name. Enough marks and you can see at a glance who has actually been right before.
The marks stick to the name, not the wallet. They cannot be sent anywhere on their own, so nobody can buy a reputation without buying the name that earned it. If a mark was given out wrongly it can be taken back, and the record of that stays visible too.
Deciding whether something turned out true is a judgement about the world, so a person makes it, not the code. That is worth knowing before you lean on the count.
Taking a post down
The writer, or the site, can stop a post from selling any more copies. What that does and does not do is exact:
No new copies can be bought. The post is marked as taken down wherever it appears.
Reach back for a copy somebody already bought, or erase the fact that the post existed and when.
History is not rewritten here. That is deliberate, and it is also what makes honouring a takedown cheap: distribution stops, the record stands.
What is actually stored
This matters more than anything else on the page, so it is stated plainly.
| on the chain | never on the chain |
|---|---|
| your name | files, video, audio, builds |
| the headline and text you typed | anything you did not type in yourself |
| a pointer, and the hour it was written | the thing the pointer points at |
| who owns which copy | your email, because there is not one |
EMBARGO is a record of who said what, and when. It is not a place to host the material itself, and it is not built to be one.
The money, in plain terms
| thing | what it costs |
|---|---|
| reading anything | free, always, no wallet needed |
| taking a name | a small one off amount, shown before you confirm |
| writing a post | nothing beyond the network fee |
| saving a post for later | nothing beyond the network fee |
| buying a copy | whatever the writer set, plus the network fee |
| taking your earnings out | nothing beyond the network fee |
The network fee is what the chain charges to record anything at all. It goes to the network, not to this site.
The contracts
Three of them, and nothing else. Click to copy.
They are small on purpose. The whole thing is a few hundred lines you can read in one sitting, which is the only real way to check that what this page says is true.
What can go wrong
- Nobody checks whether a post is true before it goes up. Being on the board proves someone wrote it at a certain time, and nothing more than that.
- A saved post can be lost. The key lives in your browser. Clear your data and it is gone for good.
- Prices are set by the writer. There is no market and no refund. If you buy a copy, you meant to.
- The code has not been audited. It is tested, it has been rehearsed end to end against a real fork of the network, and that is not the same thing as an audit.