Risk Disclosure

1. This is a serious document. Read it.

Trading crypto-assets carries substantial risk of loss. You can lose some or all of the funds you deploy. Leveraged trading can result in losses exceeding your initial margin. Automation does not reduce these risks; it changes the speed and frequency at which they materialize. This Risk Disclosure describes the specific risks of using Vant8 so you can decide, in advance and in writing, that you accept them.

This document is part of, and incorporated by reference into, the Terms of Service. By using the Services you confirm you have read and understood this Risk Disclosure.

2. Custody — read this carefully

Vant8 operates two distinct custody models. Some Vant8 features are non-custodial; others are custodial. The model that applies depends on which surface you use, and the risks are different in each case.

Non-custodial features (default for connected venues). When you connect your own centralized exchange through trade-only API keys, your funds remain at the exchange — Vant8 cannot withdraw them and does not import your withdrawal scope. When you connect your own browser wallet through EIP-1193 or WalletConnect v2, your private keys stay in your wallet and you sign each transaction yourself. In these cases your principal counterparty risk is the connected exchange or the blockchain venue, not Vant8. If a connected exchange becomes insolvent, is hacked, suspends withdrawals, or fails to honour your orders, your exposure is to that venue and we cannot recover it for you.

Custodial features (opt-in or FREE-tier default). Two Vant8 surfaces involve Vant8 holding either your funds or your signing key:

• Platform Custodian. On the FREE tier you deposit USDT into a Vant8-managed platform wallet, and Vant8 trades on platform-operated KuCoin and MEXC accounts on your behalf. Vant8 holds those funds in its own exchange accounts. If those accounts are frozen, restricted, hacked, or otherwise compromised, your funds in them are exposed to that event with no fallback. Platform-tier balances are pooled inside a single Vant8 account per exchange; per-user balances are tracked in Vant8’s internal accounting but the underlying exchange wallet is shared.
• Blockchain Wallet. When you opt in to the Blockchain Wallet to enable unattended on-chain automation (Hyperliquid perpetuals, scheduled DEX flows, on-chain strategy bots), Vant8 derives a wallet and holds its signing key encrypted at rest. Compromise of Vant8’s master-key infrastructure would compromise that derivation. The wallet operates under a single-key model — no multi-signature, no social recovery, no insurance. You can withdraw funds out of a Blockchain Wallet at any time.

Vant8 is not registered with any securities, commodities, banking, or money-services regulator and is not authorised to act as a regulated custodian. The investor-protection regimes that apply to regulated brokers, banks, or licensed custodians do not apply to us. Funds you deploy through Vant8 — in either custody model — are not protected by any deposit-insurance or investor-compensation scheme.

3. Market risk

Crypto-asset prices are highly volatile. They can move sharply in either direction over short periods, can gap (jump discontinuously) past your intended entry or exit, can become illiquid (no price at which you can trade), and can lose all value. Historical volatility is not a ceiling on future volatility.

4. Leverage and liquidation risk

Perpetual-futures trading on Vant8 involves leverage, which magnifies both gains and losses. Specifically you should understand:

• You can lose more than your initial margin. Leveraged positions can be liquidated automatically when your margin falls below the venue’s maintenance threshold, and adverse moves can occur faster than human or automated risk management can react.
• Funding rates erode positions. Holding a perpetual contract through funding intervals can produce continuous payments to or from the counterparty side; over time these can become a significant cost.
• Cross-margin vs. isolated. Cross-margin mode lets a single losing position consume your account-wide margin; isolated mode contains the loss to the position’s isolated margin but increases its liquidation probability.
• Slippage on liquidation. When a position is force-closed, the realized fill can be much worse than the stated liquidation price, especially in fast markets.

5. AI and strategy risk

Strategy AI is a recommender system. Specifically you should understand:

• Recommendations are not advice. A high score from Strategy AI is not a recommendation to deploy capital. We do not consider your personal financial situation, objectives, or risk tolerance. You decide whether to deploy.
• Backtests are historical. Any backtest performance shown is a simulation against historical data. It does not include every cost or market condition you will face live (e.g. exact slippage, fee schedules, funding-rate changes, liquidity gaps, exchange downtime). Past simulated performance is not indicative of future results.
• Backtest annotations, not gates. Strategy AI may flag a recommendation that fails consistency or drawdown checks but it does not always remove that recommendation from your list. You are responsible for reading the annotation.
• Parameter tuning is not protection. Tuned parameters reflect what fit the data window. Markets evolve; the same parameters may underperform live.
• Learning is bounded. The recommender adapts over time to outcomes but cannot predict regime shifts or one-off events. It can keep recommending an approach that worked in one regime after the regime has changed.

6. Smart Order Router risk

The Smart Order Router scores venues for each order. You should understand:

• Best price is best-effort, not guaranteed. Prices, fees, and liquidity change between scoring and execution. The realized fill may differ from the scored quote.
• AI-assisted routing has a confidence threshold. When the model is not confident, the router falls back to deterministic best price. We do not represent that the model improves outcomes in every order or even on average over short windows.
• Limit-order fill probability is a signal. The estimate is informational. It does not execute, cancel, or re-price your order. It does not guarantee a fill.
• No cross-venue order splitting. One order routes to one venue. Large orders can move the local book on that venue.
• No MEV protection on DEX. On-chain trades are subject to front-running, sandwich attacks, and other MEV strategies. The router uses a configurable slippage tolerance to refuse very bad fills but does not bundle transactions privately.

7. On-chain (DEX) risk

• Gas and fee volatility. On-chain transactions cost gas which varies with network congestion. Failed transactions still consume gas.
• Smart-contract risk. DEX protocols, AMMs, and tokens are smart contracts that can have bugs, be exploited, or rug. Once a transaction is mined it cannot be reversed.
• Slippage tolerance. The configured slippage tolerance is a maximum the router will accept. Setting it too low risks transaction failures and lost gas; setting it too high risks bad fills.
• Token risk. Many tokens are illiquid, manipulated, or technically rugged. Listing on a DEX does not validate a token.

8. Exchange and counterparty risk

• Exchange operational risk. Exchanges can experience outages, partial outages, rate-limiting, downtime during maintenance, withdrawal pauses, or full freezes. Strategies running against an exchange in these conditions can place orders that fail, miss exits, or get filled at adverse prices.
• Exchange policy risk. Exchanges may delist tokens, change fee schedules, change margin requirements, or change order-type semantics with little notice. These changes can affect running strategies.
• API behaviour. Exchange APIs sometimes return inaccurate or incomplete data — missing fills, stale balances, late status updates. We mitigate this by reconciliation, but we cannot eliminate it.
• Sanctions / KYC. Exchanges may freeze or close your account based on their own compliance review. We have no control over those decisions.

9. Automation-specific risk

• Strategies run when you sleep. Automation continues placing orders in conditions you may not have anticipated when you deployed. Use risk limits, drawdown caps, and circuit breakers — and review your strategies daily.
• Configuration errors. A mistake in symbol, side, size, leverage, or scope can be acted on immediately and at scale. Double-check before deployment.
• Stop-losses are not guarantees. A stop-loss is a trigger to send a market order at the stop level. In fast markets that order can fill far below the stop. On DEX, a stop-loss may not be supported at all and must be simulated by the strategy.

10. Platform availability and bugs

The Services depend on cloud infrastructure, third-party APIs, blockchain RPCs, and our own code, all of which can fail. We make best efforts to keep the Services available, but we do not guarantee uptime. Downtime can prevent strategies from reacting to market events, can prevent you from cancelling or modifying orders, and can occur at the worst possible moment. You should not rely on the Services to react during periods of extreme market stress.

11. Tax

Crypto trading has tax consequences in most jurisdictions. We do not provide tax advice. Keep your own records and consult a qualified tax adviser.

12. Past performance

Any performance figure shown in the Services — including backtest returns, win rates, Sharpe ratios, strategy leaderboards, live P&L, and AI recommendation scores — describes a historical sample. It is not a forecast, projection, or guarantee. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

13. No liability for losses

Subject to the limitations set out in the Terms of Service, Vant8 is not liable for trading losses, missed opportunities, or any other financial consequence of your use of the Services. You are solely responsible for your trades, your configuration, and your risk management.

14. You should not use Vant8 if

• You cannot afford to lose the funds you deploy.
• You do not understand the assets you are trading or the strategies you deploy.
• You require regulated investor protection.
• You are in a Restricted Jurisdiction.
• You are looking for guaranteed returns. There are none.

15. Contact

Questions about this Risk Disclosure can be sent to legal@vant8.com.