Risks and limits
Specie runs several checks before it lets a wallet sign anything. This page is the other half: what those checks cannot catch, and what nobody here can undo for you.
What Specie cannot do to you
- It never holds your funds. There is no deposit and no balance of yours on our side.
- It never asks for a private key or a seed phrase. Nobody who does is us.
- It cannot move your assets. Every transfer of value is a transaction you signed.
- It cannot place an order for you, cancel one, or reverse one.
What Specie cannot protect you from
| Risk | Why the checks do not cover it |
|---|---|
| A wrong recipient | A transfer is simulated for success, not for intent. An address that works is not an address that is right, and a sent transfer cannot be reversed by anyone, Specie included. |
| Smart contract failure | Swaps run through Uniswap v3, v4, Aero and Permit2, which are not ours. No contract here has been audited on our behalf, and we do not claim otherwise. |
| Issuer risk | USDC, EURC, USYC and cirBTC are Circle's. WETH on Arc is a bridged token, and which bridge mints it is not visible on chain, so Specie names no issuer for it. What happens if an issuer or a bridge freezes, redeems or changes terms is between you and them; issuer terms are not quoted on this site yet. |
| A thin pool | The 3% rule refuses the worst of it, but a pool can be thin without being refused, and depth can leave between the quote and the fill. |
| An old oracle price | Stock prices carry their publish time and are marked stale, but a price being labelled does not make it current. Nothing here is a reason to trade off it. |
| A chain that stops | If the RPC or the chain is unavailable, quotes stop rather than fall back to a cached number. A page that cannot read the chain says so. |
Approvals outlive the trade
Buying with USDC grants nothing. Selling EURC or cirBTC grants Permit2 an allowance the Universal Router can spend, with an expiry of 30 days rather than forever. That is still an allowance sitting there after your trade settles. If you want it gone sooner, revoke it in your wallet or with any allowance tool. Specie has no way to revoke it for you.
A trade routed through Aero is different: its router takes a plain allowance with no expiry, so Specie asks for exactly the amount of that trade and no more. Once the trade settles, nothing is left approved.
An oracle price is not a share
The stage this is at
Swaps on Arc are new, and perpetuals are in development. The product is early enough that the honest advice is to read the numbers, check the contracts yourself, and start with sizes you would be comfortable losing while the code meets real money for the first stretch of its life.
Nothing on this site is financial advice, an offer, or a recommendation. Trading carries risk, including the loss of everything you put in.