Developer community guidelines

Why We Publish Community Guidelines and a Code of Conduct

Purpose

Community time is scarce. If you show up, you deserve clarity and a fair process. We publish two documents so no one has to guess.

What each document does

Community Guidelines — how to participate well, what belongs where, and how we treat each other. Friendly and practical.
Code of Conduct — enforceable rules, how to report issues, and next steps.

Who is covered

Everyone in Arc spaces: Discord, Gradual resources, GitHub orgs, live events, workshops, and social channels run by Arc or Circle. Program access and channel eligibility depend on the work you want to do here.

Ways to contribute

Builders ship code, integrations, and deployments. Expect deeper channels, reviews, and pilots.
Contributors improve docs, participate in QA, test matrices, and give feedback. Answer other members’ questions when you have relevant knowledge. Help host events and engage politely in events hosted by others.
Discoverers move up by doing useful work such as providing reproducible examples, submitting doc pull requests, or performing user testing and feedback. The fastest way to unlock more is to produce artifacts that help others build: a repo, test case, verified deployment, demo, smart contract, tutorial, or short video.

What you can expect from us

Bring content with reproducible details, logs, and links.
Respect people and context. No scams, impersonation, or price talk.
Do not post secrets or customer data, and do not solicit it from others.
Disclose affiliations when sharing your own projects.

What we expect from you

Bring signal with reproducible details, logs, and links.
Respect people and context. No scams, impersonation, or price talk.
Do not post secrets or customer data.
Disclose affiliations when sharing your own projects.

The documents

Arc Community Guidelines — culture and participation patterns.
Arc Code of Conduct — rules, reporting, and consequences.
Arc Discord Server Rules — the short version pinned in the server.
Arc Guest Blog Guidelines — the quality bar for posts.

We version and date each document and adjust as we learn. Feedback is welcome at devmarketing@circle.com.

Arc Community Guidelines

Do

Build-first. Ask specific questions, ship, and share what worked and what didn’t.‍
Use the right resource. See Channel & Page quick map below.‍
Protect secrets. Redact keys, IDs, balances, and any customer data.‍
Read the docs. It's best to look through our documentation for answers before asking here.‍
Report Scammers. Tag a team member and tag the scammer, and explain what happened. These people are not welcome and there is never a reason for someone to get your secret seed phrases or keys. Circle/Arc staff will never DM you first. We will never ask for your password, passphrase, or other secret information. Do not share your secrets with anyone under any circumstance.

Don’t

Talk about token prices, request airdrops, or ask for or give financial advice.
Ask for roles or post spam.
Send unsolicited DMs claiming to be “team.” (Note: We won’t DM you.)‍
Engage in scams, hate, impersonation, or spreading NSFW content or malware.
Link shorteners/redirectors; no “mystery” URLs.
Post links without permission.
Trust AI-generated content implicitly; there may be errors.

Community Hub Forum Guidelines

Keep titles clear; add a 1-2 line Summary and canonical Links only.
No Personally Identifiable Information, secrets, or vendor sales pitches.
If a resource instructs action, include Warnings/Prereqs and last-updated.

User Safety

Circle/Arc staff will NOT DM you first. Verify staff roles; when in doubt, ask in-channel.
Never sign unknown transactions or paste seed phrases — ever.
Report suspicious content:
- In Discord, tag a team member and explain the issue.
- On Gradual, click the “help” link and send us a message about the complaint.

Legal

By using Arc spaces you agree to follow these guidelines and applicable law.
These guidelines set forth our expectations for the Arc spaces communities. They do not establish any legal rights, guarantees, or service commitments for you.
Participation is at will. We may change policies, roles, or access at any time to protect users and content. Updates to these guidelines will take effect immediately once posted here. Continued participation in our community constitutes your acceptance.
The product features described in Arc spaces are for informational purposes only. All product features may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without prior notice, at any time and in our sole discretion.
By providing any submission to us, you represent that the work is original to you and does not incorporate any third-party intellectual property.
- For submissions that are comments or ideas about improvement to Arc ("Feedback"), you agree that your submission was voluntary, unsolicited by Circle, and delivered without any obligations to you or restrictions. You hereby assign to Circle all right, title, and interest in and to any Feedback that you provide. Circle is free to use, copy, display, perform, distribute, modify and re-format such Feedback in any manner that the Company may determine, without any attribution or compensation to you.
- For other submissions, and you grant us an exclusive right to publish, modify, create derivative works of, and promote the submission with attribution.
Access to Arc spaces and all related content are provided “as is” and “as available.” Do your own verification against canonical docs. To the maximum extent permitted by law, (i) we disclaims all representations and warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement and (ii) we will not be liable for any damages or liabilities in connection with your participation in Arc spaces (including incidental, indirect, direct, special, punitive, consequential, or similar damages). In all other cases, our aggregate liability for any such claim shall not exceed USD $10.
We do not endorse or warrant advice, links, or code posted by community members or third parties. Follow links and run code at your own risk.
We are not responsible for third-party services, bots, or links used in Arc spaces. Use of such tools is at your own risk and subject to their respective terms.
Nothing here is legal, financial, or tax advice.
Moderators may remove content, restrict access, or end participation at their discretion to keep the space safe.
If these guidelines ever conflict with the Code of Conduct, the Code of Conduct controls.
These guidelines are governed by the laws of Delaware. If any provision is invalid, the remainder remains in effect.

Versioning

Last updated: 10-21-2025

Code of Conduct

Scope

All Arc spaces: Discord, Gradual, GitHub orgs, live events, workshops, and social channels run by Arc or Circle.

Applies to

Everyone: builders, contributors, enterprises, and other participants. Program eligibility is separate from conduct.

Our standard

Participation must be safe, harassment-free, and professional across roles and backgrounds.

Unacceptable behavior

Harassment or hate, including those targeting identities or personal traits.
Sexualized language or imagery, unwelcome advances, NSFW content.
Threats of violence, stalking, or doxxing.
Spam, scams, phishing, fake support, or impersonation of staff.
Posting secrets, keys, seed phrases, or customer data.
Price or trading talk, bounty or points farming that is not authorized.
Off-topic disruption, filter evasion, brigading.

Reporting

Use platform report tools or tag an @Arc Moderator on discord with URLs, screenshots, and timestamps. For the Arc Community Hub or GitHub you can also email security-dnr@circle.com with permalinks.

Enforcement

Moderator discretion applies. Actions may include content removal, warning, timeout, temporary ban, permanent ban, role removal, channel gating, or rate limits. Severe violations such as scams, non-consensual contact, threats, doxxing, illegal acts, credible self-harm risk, or coordinated abuse can trigger immediate action without prior notice. We may coordinate with relevant services or authorities when appropriate. Patterns and risk signals can drive action, not only single messages.

Appeals

Decisions are final. If you have an active commercial relationship with Circle, raise concerns through your account channel.

Versioning

Last updated: 2025-10-21

Discord Server Rules

Content

Be respectful. No harassment, slurs, or personal attacks.
Keep it clean. No NSFW or disturbing content.
Security first. Never share keys, seeds, or confidential data.
Staff will never DM you first. Treat unsolicited support DMs as scams and tag @Arc Moderator.
Stay on topic per channel and use threads for deep dives.
No spam or aggressive self-promo. Launches go in the right channel with repos.
No price or trading talk and no reward farming unless a channel explicitly allows it.
Do not bypass filters or moderation.
Language: English primary. Spanish supported in designated threads.
Violations may result in mute, kick, or ban at moderator discretion.
Additional rules as defined by server administration, and listed in the #rules channel of the server.

For additional details and requirements, see the Arc Community Guidelines and Code of Conduct.

‍

Arc Guest Blog Contribution Guidelines

Editorial standards

Educational, original, and practical. Frame a concrete problem and show the solution with code, logs, and diagrams where applicable.
Accuracy over hype. No token price claims; disclose affiliations and sponsorships.
Reproducibility. Include versions, commands, env details; link a repo or gist.
Security and compliance. No secrets; discuss risks and mitigations.
Voice. Clear, direct, minimal marketing.

Submission requirements

Length: 900–1,800 words.
Structure: title, TL;DR, context, walkthrough, code samples, results, takeaways.
Assets: up to 5 images/diagrams; include alt text and attribution.
Code samples: TypeScript/Rust preferred; include license headers.
Citations: link to specs, docs, and prior art.
Language: English.
AI Usage: AI-generated content must be fact-checked by a human reviewer and clearly disclosed.
Subject to: Submissions are subject to our Community Guidelines.

Review process

Technical review (by Arc engineers), editorial review, compliance pass.
Edits may be requested; we may decline or postpone.
Target: one review cycle before publishing when standards are met.
Content will be reviewed by staff and approved by appropriate departments prior to publication.