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- You can lose money. The value of a Savings or Funds position can fall, and you can lose some or all of the value you put in. Losses and costs are reflected in the product’s price or exchange rate in the same way as returns.
- Nothing here guarantees principal, returns or redemption timing. A guarantee of principal, returns or payment exists only where a product contract expressly includes it, with its scope and the responsible party stated.
- Rates and returns are not fixed. Displayed APY, Savings rates, yields and historical returns describe a stated period and basis. They are not a fixed rate or a promise of future performance.
- Liquidity is limited. Immediate redemption depends on liquidity already available. Larger or less liquid redemptions follow asset recovery and settlement, which can take longer than expected.
- A request is not a payment. Payouts are sent to you automatically, with no claim step, but a request receipt, token burn or “payment in progress” status does not mean you have been paid. A redemption is complete only when the asset reaches your wallet.
- Your rights come from the product terms. A token’s name or quantity does not by itself give you ownership of the underlying assets. The product documents define what you hold and against whom.
- Other parties are involved. Fund managers, custodians, issuers, lending markets, validator operators, market makers and liquidity partners all affect the outcome, and each brings its own risks.
General disclaimer
This page is a general summary for users. It is not investment, legal, tax or accounting advice, and it does not list every risk that may apply to you. Each product’s term sheet, terms of use and offering documents define your actual rights, costs and risks, and they take precedence over this page. If anything here conflicts with those documents, the product documents apply. Consider your own circumstances and, where appropriate, seek independent professional advice before you participate.Technology and smart contract risks
- Smart contracts can fail. Product tokens, vaults and their related contracts can contain errors or behave in unexpected ways. A defect or exploit can cause loss of funds, incorrect balances or blocked transactions.
- Contracts can be upgraded. Products may use upgradeable proxy contracts, where an approved change replaces the implementation behind the same address. An upgrade follows ARCO’s change approval standards, but a change can still introduce errors or alter how a product behaves. See Security and Operations.
- Networks can be disrupted. GIWA and any other network a product uses, including Ethereum for the ETH Staking Vault, can suffer congestion, outages, reorganizations or fee spikes. These can delay or prevent your transaction, or change its cost.
- Price feeds can fail or lag. Deposit and redemption quotes rely on price feeds that are checked for positive values, permitted ranges and data age. A stale or rejected price can block a transaction. A published price is a valuation input, not proof of the assets held.
- Reference code is not the release interface. The public reference implementation in the Integration Guide explains specific code behaviour. It does not establish a product’s production deployment, addresses or interface.
Wallet, signing and custody risks
- You are responsible for your own wallet. If you lose access to your wallet or its keys, or someone else gains control of them, you may lose the assets and positions it holds. Confirmed blockchain transactions generally cannot be reversed.
- Check every transaction before you sign. Confirm the product, amount, payout asset, recipient address, price and fees. Approving a token for spending is not a deposit, and sending assets to a wrong or unsupported address can make them unrecoverable.
- Completed records are not reversed. A completed burn or transfer is not undone. Any return or reissuance follows the product’s own conditions, approvals and records.
- You do not keep exclusive control of deposited assets. Once you deposit, assets move into the vault and, depending on the product, into custody accounts, MMFs, lending markets, staking or a manager’s accounts. Signing a deposit does not mean the assets stay under your exclusive control while the product operates.
- Custodians and settlement providers can fail. A custody or settlement provider’s disruption, compromise or financial distress can delay or reduce the return of assets. How holdings are segregated and returned follows the applicable contracts. See Terms and Risks.
Market and valuation risks
- Prices can fall. Product values move with their underlying assets: money market and Treasury instruments, bonds, loans, equities and crypto assets. Asset-specific price, credit, interest rate and currency risks can cause losses.
- Valuation has timing and data limits. NAV and exchange rates depend on valuation sources, valuation dates, reference currencies and cost treatment. Valuations can be delayed, revised or based on data that is not current, and the price applied to your request depends on the product’s price fixing rules.
- Different measures are not comparable. Seven-day yield, yield to maturity, target net APY, net APR and historical returns measure different things. They are not one comparable annualized rate, and past returns do not indicate future results. See NAV and Returns.
- Currency value and asset performance differ. For a crypto-native product, a change in USD value can come from the asset’s market price rather than from the strategy. Your position can lose USD value even when it gains in its reference asset, and the reverse.
Liquidity and redemption risks
- Immediate liquidity is limited. Instant routes depend on balances already available in a liquidity reserve, an Internal Liquidity Sleeve or an executable OTC quote. When those are insufficient, unavailable or paused, your redemption follows the Standard route.
- Standard redemption depends on recovery and settlement. Assets may need to be recovered from MMFs, lending markets, external funds, staking or a manager before you are paid. External business days, cutoffs, settlement cycles and network withdrawal or exit queues can extend the timeline.
- Targets and estimates are not payout deadlines. Recovery objectives such as T+1 for Stablecoin Savings, replenishment targets and network estimates describe operating aims. They are not guaranteed payout times.
- The price may be set later. Some products fix the price at request; others use a settlement valuation. Where settlement valuation applies, the amount you receive is determined after you submit the request.
- Limits apply. Issuance limits, processing capacity, payout capacity and minimum amounts can restrict or delay deposits and redemptions.
- OTC routes have their own terms. An OTC quote has its own price, fees, validity period and payment timing, and in an acquisition the liquidity partner takes your tokens rather than burning them.
Third-party and counterparty risks
- ARCO products rely on other parties. Asset and strategy managers, external issuers and distributors, custodians, settlement providers, Morpho lending markets and their borrowers, validator operators, market makers and OTC liquidity partners each perform part of a product. Their failure, default, delay, error or misconduct can cause losses or delays.
- Names do not establish roles. A manager’s or partner’s name, a cooperation announcement or a product introduction does not establish that a party is an issuer, custodian or guarantor of your position.
- External protocols follow their own rules. When you use ArcoUSD in a DEX or lending protocol, that protocol’s terms, parameters and risks apply, not ARCO’s.
Operational and administrative permission risks
- Products can be paused. Global and function-level pauses can restrict new deposits and redemptions. Depending on what is paused, transfers, issuance, burns and payouts for already accepted redemptions may also be affected.
- Administrators hold powers that affect you. Administrative permissions cover issuance and burns, price publication, transfer restrictions by address, fund movements to external strategies, pauses and upgrades. These powers follow approval procedures, but a mistake, a compromised key or misuse can affect balances and payouts. See Security and Operations.
- Addresses can be restricted. Product token addresses can be allowlisted or blocked to apply participation, transfer and compliance policies. An address linked to abnormal fund movements, or placed on a blacklist for compliance reasons, can have its deposits, transfers or redemptions restricted until the matter is resolved under the product’s procedures.
- Operations can fail. Errors in processing, reconciliation, pricing or support can delay transactions or require correction under the product’s procedures.
Legal, regulatory and rights risks
- Token quantity is not ownership. A product token records the quantity of an ARCO product you hold. Whether you hold an external token or fund interest directly, or participate in its performance through a separate product contract, and the party against whom you have a claim, are defined in the product documents.
- Eligibility and regions vary by product. Deposits and purchases through ARCO vaults do not require you to submit identification information, but each product defines its permitted regions and transfer conditions. A few Funds products carry participation restrictions set by their issuer. ARCO lists products without such restrictions wherever possible, and a restricted product shows a notice on its page. A product appearing in an app, or being technically callable, does not mean it is available to you.
- Licenses belong to the party that holds them. An external issuer’s, manager’s or distributor’s license applies to that party, its jurisdiction and its activities. It does not give ARCO or every user the same permissions or protections.
- Rules can change. Laws, regulations and their interpretation can change, and a change may restrict a product’s availability, transfers or redemptions in some regions.
- Product documents are still being finalized. These guides describe mainnet products in draft form. Contracting entities, launch parameters, addresses and fees are provided in each product’s launch announcement and terms.
Fee and cost risks
- Costs reduce what you receive. Instant Redemption routes for Savings and Funds products apply a redemption fee under the product terms. ArcoUSD has no redemption fee, but a payout in a stablecoin other than USDC includes a conversion fee. Network costs apply to on-chain transactions.
- Some costs are inside the price. Management, strategy and other product costs are reflected in NAV or the exchange rate rather than charged separately. Check each cost’s calculation basis, charging time and the party that bears it in the product terms.
Product-specific risks
ArcoUSD
- ArcoUSD is not a yield product. Ordinary ArcoUSD balances do not increase with investment performance. The scope of any legal guarantee, custody and claim behind ArcoUSD is defined in its contractual terms; the 1:1 basis is a redemption policy, not a legal guarantee.
- The 1:1 basis applies under normal conditions. One dollar’s worth of a supported stablecoin is exchanged for 1 ArcoUSD under normal dollar exchange conditions. If a supported stablecoin departs from its dollar value, the product specification’s treatment of price deviations applies.
- The reserve carries market, credit and liquidity risk. About 50% of the liquidity reserve is held in stablecoins and about 50% in MMFs linked to uMINT, BENJI and RRDY. The value and liquidity of the reserve depend on those stablecoins’ issuers and those funds’ managers, valuations and redemption terms.
- Immediate withdrawal depends on the stablecoin reserve. Withdrawals are paid immediately from the stablecoin reserve in the same transaction that burns your ArcoUSD. Network conditions, exceptional market events and pauses can still affect execution. The T+0 to T+2 replenishment target describes MMF recovery into the reserve; it is not a payout schedule for you.
- Third-party use adds risk. Trading prices in GIWA pools are set by those markets and can differ from the 1:1 redemption basis. Collateral posted in a lending market is subject to that market’s liquidation rules.
Stablecoin Savings
- The sArcoUSD exchange rate can fall. Returns accrue per second through the sArcoUSD exchange rate to ArcoUSD, and losses and costs are reflected the same way. Dollar denomination does not guarantee principal, a fixed exchange rate or uninterrupted redemption.
- The treasury carries asset and lending risk. Arco directs the Savings treasury across MMFs, an Arco-curated Morpho vault that supplies crypto-backed and RWA-backed lending markets, and a 10% liquidity reserve. MMF values and settlement terms affect the treasury.
- Lending markets can lose value or lock up. Borrower behaviour, collateral price changes, liquidation performance or oracle failures in a Morpho market can reduce recovery. A Morpho market returns supplied assets only up to its unborrowed liquidity, so high utilization can delay recovery.
- Large redemptions can wait. Redemptions within the 10% liquidity reserve are paid immediately. Larger amounts follow capital recovery with a T+1 recovery objective, which is not a guaranteed payout time.
- Exiting to a stablecoin takes two steps. sArcoUSD is redeemed into ArcoUSD, and ArcoUSD is then redeemed into a stablecoin. Each step has its own quote and costs, and the ArcoUSD risks above apply to the second step.
Crypto-native Savings
These risks apply to the Arco Saving Vault family for XRP, ETH and BTC.- Strategies differ by vault. The asset name identifies the product family, not the strategy. An XRP or BTC product does not imply native staking. Each vault’s specification defines how assets are received, deployed, valued and returned.
- Asset representations are not interchangeable. A native asset, a wrapped token and a custody balance are different representations, and moving assets between chains adds bridge, network and processing risk.
- Staking assets are not always available. Actively staked assets and assets in return settlement are not necessarily available for immediate payment.
Funds
- Underlying assets can lose value. Asset-specific price, credit, interest rate, currency and liquidity risks can cause losses.
- Risk labels are relative. The catalog’s Low, Medium and High labels are relative strategy groupings. They are not ratings or assurances.
- Purchases settle externally. Your ArcoUSD is received and burned when you buy, and the treasury then settles the external purchase. External purchase and receipt can be delayed, and burning ArcoUSD alone does not complete the purchase. The product terms define your claim if a purchase is not completed.
- Redemption follows the underlying product. Standard Redemption follows each underlying product’s business days, cutoffs and settlement cycle. Instant Redemption depends on available internal or OTC liquidity and carries a redemption fee. The payout asset is defined per product, and redemption does not necessarily mirror the purchase flow.
- Reference figures are not your returns. Catalog AUM, TVL, yields and returns describe the external underlying product or strategy at a stated date. They do not represent assets held in an ARCO vault or returns earned by ARCO users.
- External parties define part of your rights. Issuer, manager and custodian roles, claim structures and participation restrictions come from the external product’s documents together with the ARCO product contract.
HOME. HOME’s policy rate is a target, reset monthly, and the catalog’s approximately 7% is a target net APY. Its approximately 5% first-loss capital is a target buffer intended to absorb portfolio losses before holders; neither the target buffer nor the target rate guarantees principal or returns. NUVA describes typical withdrawal processing within three U.S. business days, and ARCO redemption routes add their own liquidity and settlement conditions. See HOME.
See Funds.
Using ARCO through a partner application
- The partner’s service adds its own layer. When you use ARCO products through a partner application, that partner’s interface, access policies, support and availability also affect your experience. A partner’s outage or error can delay what you see or when you can act.
- Integration does not change product risk. A partner’s API connection does not guarantee principal, a fixed return or immediate withdrawal, and API access does not authorize spending your assets. A product being available in a partner application does not mean it is enabled for every user or region.