Risk disclosures · startupos

Tokens launched through StartupOS are created by users and are experimental. Every launch needs StartupOS's approval signature, but nobody vets or endorses a token, its creator or its prospects. This page sets out what the contracts guarantee, then the risks you take on.

What the contracts guarantee

Fixed supply. Every token has a supply of 1,000,000,000, and nothing can mint more. Burns only lower it.
Terms fixed at launch. A token's type, fee, fee split, holder tax and anti-snipe window are recorded when it launches. Later settings changes apply only to later launches.
Liquidity locked forever. Neither StartupOS locker has any code that can remove liquidity or move a position out, and neither can be upgraded.
Non-custodial. StartupOS never holds your funds. You trade from your own wallet.
Creator payouts and claims go to their owner. An Instant token's creator address can never be changed. Anyone can trigger a creator payout or a holder claim, and the money goes only to the creator or holder it belongs to.
Anti-sniping, fixed per token. Each token's anti-snipe window is recorded at launch. With today's settings, for the first 2 blocks after launch (about 24 seconds), every wallet except the creator can buy at most 5% of the supply and hold at most 5%.

Before you buy

Copy the contract address from the token page and check it on the explorer. Names, tickers and artwork can be copied. The address cannot.
Check which network you are on. Testnet tokens have no value.
Read the safety card: how much the creator holds (Dev holds), who else holds the supply, and how much was bought at launch.
Check the token type, the fee and any holder tax, so you know what each trade costs.
If the token is paired with something other than ETH, check the pair token as well.
Read the transaction your wallet asks you to sign. Paying for a trade shows what to expect.
Put in only what you can afford to lose.

See Reading a token page for where each of these appears.

Market risk

Prices are volatile and liquidity can be thin. Most launches lose most of their value. Assume total loss is possible.
Look-alike tokens are easy to make. Anyone can launch a token with the same name, ticker and artwork as another. The contract address is the only thing that identifies a token.
Concentration is the real risk. If a handful of wallets hold most of the supply, they can sell into you. The safety card on each token page shows this.
The creator can buy any amount at launch. The anti-snipe limits do not apply to a token's creator, in the launch transaction or later in the window, and the opening price is low: an Instant token paired with ETH opens with its whole supply valued at about 0.98 ETH, and about 1 ETH buys half of it. A creator can therefore hold a large share from the first second and sell it to later buyers. Check Dev holds on the safety card before you buy.
The anti-snipe window is short. For the first 2 blocks after launch, about 24 seconds, each wallet except the creator can buy at most 5% of the supply and hold at most 5%. Anyone may buy in the launch block itself, within those limits. After that the limits end, and one buyer can take as much as they can pay for. The limits count per wallet, so someone using several wallets can buy more in total.
Round trips lose money. Standard and Auto-Burn tokens charge a 1% fee on every buy and every sell, and an Instant token with a holder tax adds 1% or 2% more. Once fees, price impact and gas are counted, buying and selling straight away is a loss. A Tax-Free token charges no fee, on its curve or in its pool. The exception is a Tax-Free curve token launched on mainnet before October 18, 2026: after graduation, its Uniswap V3 pool charges 0.05%. See Fees and burns.
A bonding curve's rise is uneven. A curve opens at a market cap of about $4,660 and ends at about $68,500, 14.7 times higher, after about $14,170 of net buying. The first half of the curve takes about $2,930 and lifts the price 2.5 times. The second half takes about $11,240. Buying late on a curve costs far more per token than buying early, for the same share of the supply. Each curve is sized in its pair currency when it launches, so these dollar figures hold at the prices of that moment.
The pair currency carries its own risk. A token can be paired with another token instead of ETH. Its fees and creator earnings, and on an Instant token its holder rewards and buybacks, are then paid in that pair token and rise and fall with it. Besides the assets on the launch list, a creator can paste in any token as the pair, and the app marks one that has not been vetted. If a pair token charges a fee on transfers, can block addresses, or stops working, trades, payouts and buybacks for that token can fail. A token paired with a basket also carries the basket's risks, set out below.

How the mechanics can work against you

A new Instant token's sell side is nearly empty. Its pool starts with the token alone. The ETH or pair token you sell into is what earlier buyers paid in, so early on there is very little of it, and selling a large position soon after launch moves the price a long way against you. This is the most commonly misunderstood part of the design. See Trading and pricing.
A bonding curve stops trading when it sells out. Trading resumes once the token moves into its Uniswap pool. StartupOS's keeper usually triggers that step automatically, and anyone can, but until it happens nobody can buy or sell the token.
Graduating, or trading in a pool, says nothing about quality. An Instant token is in its pool from launch, and a bonding-curve token graduates after a set amount of buying.
Locked liquidity can never be changed. Permanent locking rules out a rug pull through liquidity withdrawal. It also means nobody can change or recover a locked position for any reason, even after a bug. See The pool and the liquidity lock.
A Uniswap V4 pool's hook is fixed for life. On every Instant token and every curve token that graduated into Uniswap V4, the hook charges the fee and any holder tax, enforces the anti-snipe window and holds each share until it is paid out. It is part of the pool's identity, so a defect in it could not be patched for tokens already launched.
Payouts wait for someone to trigger them. In a Uniswap V4 pool, a token's creator earnings sit in the hook until someone presses Deliver earnings to the creator. In a Uniswap V3 pool, a graduated token's pool fees wait until someone runs a collection, which needs a minimum amount to have built up, currently 0.005 WETH. Anyone can do either, including you.
A creator payout address in a Uniswap V4 pool can never be changed. A delivery that fails is held for that address to collect later, but a creator who loses access to the wallet loses the earnings. The contracts let the creator of a token in a Uniswap V3 pool hand its payout address over in two steps, by the creator only, and doing that from the app is not available on mainnet yet. See Creator rewards.
Holder rewards depend on StartupOS's daily calculation. StartupOS works out each day's holder rewards and publishes them for claiming, and you rely on that being correct and on time. A day whose prices cannot be confirmed is held back, and small amounts wait until you are owed at least $20. The rewards contract never pays out more than a token's rewards have been funded, and its owner cannot move the funds. You claim yourself and pay the gas. See Holder rewards and the weekly lottery.
The weekly lottery depends on its random number. Winners are drawn from the published entry list using a random number from an on-chain randomness oracle built on the Pyth Entropy design, answered by an outside provider. Nobody at StartupOS can set it. The provider cannot choose the number, but it can see it before revealing it and can withhold the reveal, which forces the draw to be requested again. Every retry is recorded on chain. If the oracle has not answered after several requests, or the week's entry list changes after it was requested, that week is drawn with a seed a StartupOS administrator submits after the entry list is published, so for that week you trust StartupOS not to choose a seed for a particular result. The same number and entry list always produce the same winners, and a drawn week is never redrawn. A week's draw is held until all seven of its days are calculated, and later weeks wait for earlier ones. See Holder rewards and the weekly lottery.
Buyback and burn is slow by design. A token's buyback budget is spent in small, price-limited steps:
- at most 0.01 ETH per buyback on an ETH pair
- at most 1% above a price recorded 5 to 60 minutes earlier
- at least 5 minutes between buybacks for the same token
- a buyback that would fill less than half its size is refused
- no buybacks during a token's anti-snipe window
- with today's settings, no buyback until it would spend at least 20 times its own gas cost, and at least $1
When the price moves quickly, buybacks wait. A token paired with another token does not buy back at all until the buyback contract's owner sets a spending limit for that pair token. Buybacks are run by an operator wallet, and if it stops, budgets wait unspent. The owner cannot withdraw a buyback budget.
Burning is not automatically good for you. A falling supply does not create demand and does not hold up a price.

Payouts on mainnet

Holder rewards, the weekly lottery prizes and buyback and burn run on mainnet for every token launched since October 18, 2026. The contracts behind them had three internal security reviews before that release, and no external audit.

Earlier mainnet tokens wait. A token launched before October 18, 2026 keeps collecting its holder tax and burn share, which are held for it, but its holder rewards, lottery prizes and buybacks have not started yet. No date is promised.
You rely on StartupOS to start them. Payouts for those tokens depend on StartupOS connecting and running their rewards and buyback contracts, and the hook's owner chooses which contracts receive those shares. See Protocol and operator risk below.

Creator earnings and the platform's share are not affected: they are paid out on every token as usual.

Baskets

A basket is a token backed by fixed amounts of 2 to 8 listed assets, such as Robinhood's tokenized stocks. Minting and redeeming read no price feed, and nobody can change a basket once it exists. The risks come from what is inside it and from how you get in and out. See Baskets.

Stock tokens answer to their issuer. The issuer of Robinhood's tokenized stocks can pause transfers of a stock, block an address, including a basket's own, and burn tokens from any balance, a basket's included. One upgrade by the issuer can change every stock token at once. Nothing in a basket can prevent this.
A paused or blocked asset can stop a full redemption. A normal redemption delivers every asset, so if one cannot move, the whole redemption fails. You can instead redeem only the assets you choose. Anything you leave behind is forfeited for good to the basket's remaining holders.
An issuer burn can leave a basket short. If an issuer burns a stock out of a basket, the basket holds less than its shares are owed, and the shortfall falls on whoever redeems last.
The dollar value shown is an estimate. It comes from price feeds, and stock feeds hold Friday's closing price over the weekend, so a basket's value can lag the market. Your ability to redeem does not depend on it.
Paying with ETH means several swaps. Minting with ETH buys each asset in its own Uniswap pool in one transaction, and buying or selling a basket-paired token with ETH goes through the basket's assets the same way. Every leg pays its pool's fee and price impact, and some stock pools are thin. Your own price limits are the real protection. A check against the price feeds is only a backstop, and it is wider while markets are closed. If one asset cannot move, an ETH route through the basket fails as a whole, and you need to use the basket shares themselves.
Fees go to the basket's creator. Mint and redeem fees, up to 1% each, are fixed when a basket is created and paid to its creator in basket shares.
StartupOS decides what can go in. Anyone can create a basket, but only from the assets StartupOS's registry lists, and a basket cannot hold another basket. The registry's owner can stop an asset being used in new baskets, and controls the price feeds behind the value shown and the ETH swap check. It cannot touch the assets inside an existing basket.
A token paired with a basket carries the basket's risks. Its price, fees and creator earnings are all in basket shares.

The FOMO jackpot

The FOMO jackpot is a game, and you can lose what you put in. See The FOMO jackpot for the full rules.

Only the last buyer takes the big share. When the clock runs out, the last buyer takes 50% of the pot. Anyone can take that place from you with the smallest buy, 1 USDG, right up to the end.
The final seconds favour the fastest. Whoever lands the last transaction wins, so bots with a faster connection, and the network's own ordering of transactions, have an edge at the end.
Late tickets cost far more. The ticket price climbs steeply with the pot: at five times the seed, a ticket costs 40 times what it did at the opening. Every ticket earns the same share of the 30% ticket pool.
Players share 80% of the pot. 10% goes to the platform and 10% to the next round's seed, so players as a group get back less than the whole pot.
Everything is in USDG. USDG is a stablecoin its issuer controls. If the issuer freezes the jackpot contract, every claim stops until it is unfrozen. If it freezes one wallet, only that wallet's claim stops.
Paying with ETH adds a swap. An ETH buy is swapped to USDG on the spot. It is refused if the swap lands more than 2% away from the price feeds, or if a feed is out of date. Buying with USDG avoids both.
You claim your own winnings. Nothing is sent to you automatically. Winnings never expire, but you claim them yourself and pay the gas.
StartupOS runs the game. StartupOS opens the first round with its own seed, sets the rules for each round before it opens, can add to the seed, and can pause the game, which stops new rounds and holds the first buy of a round that has not started. Later rounds open automatically when the one before settles, unless the game is paused or the carried-over seed is below the minimum StartupOS sets, in which case the next round waits. StartupOS cannot take money from a pot, choose or change a winner, change a round's rules once it has opened, or stop a round in play from ending and paying out.

Protocol and operator risk

StartupOS's contracts have not been through an external security audit. They have had internal security reviews only, on every network. Some features reach one network ahead of the other, and Network and addresses says which are available where.
The contracts cannot be upgraded. A bug cannot be patched in place. Fixing one means deploying new contracts, and tokens already launched stay on the code they launched with. Older factories already exist on mainnet.
Owner keys control settings for new launches. The factory's owner, and an admin if one is set, can switch off a launch model, a token type or the holder tax option, and change fees, fee splits and the anti-snipe window for future launches. Tokens already launched keep their terms. Caps written into the contracts limit these settings: an Instant token's fee plus holder tax can never exceed 10%. The owner or admin can also change the minimum a graduated bonding-curve token's pool fees must reach before a collection, and that applies to tokens already graduated. On mainnet the factory owner is a single wallet key, with no multi-signature protection.
The factory can be paused. While it is paused, nobody can launch, trade on a bonding curve or graduate a token. Instant tokens keep trading, because their pools have no pause.
The hook, rewards and buyback contracts have owners too. The hook's owner can change which treasury, rewards contract and buyback contract receive those shares for every token in its pools, and can never change a creator's address. The current mainnet hook accepts only rewards and buyback contracts built for it, or none. The rewards contract's owner can only replace the account that publishes rewards. The buyback contract's owner chooses the operator wallet and can set the most each buyback may spend, with no upper limit. It can tune the other buyback limits within fixed bounds: at most 5% above the recorded price, 60 seconds to 1 day between buybacks, and a recorded price between 60 seconds and 1 day old. The lockers have no owner functions at all.
Launching depends on StartupOS's servers. Every launch needs a signature from StartupOS. If that service is unavailable, no new tokens can be created. Tokens already launched keep trading.
Parts of the app can be switched off. StartupOS can hide or disable app features while it works on them. Your tokens and funds stay in your wallet and in the contracts.
The app can be wrong. Charts, market caps, P&L and holder figures are built from on-chain data and can lag, have gaps or display incorrectly. The chain is the source of truth.

Operational risk

Bridging and network mistakes cannot be reversed. Sending funds to the wrong chain is the most common way people lose money here. Withdrawing through the chain's official bridge can involve a waiting period and a final transaction that costs gas. Check current timings on the chain's own bridging page before you bridge in. See Getting ETH onto Robinhood Chain.
Testnet and mainnet look alike. Testnet tokens have no value and nothing carries over. Check the network in your wallet before you trade.
Move funds only through the app. ETH sent straight to a StartupOS contract, outside a trade or launch in the app, cannot be pulled back by the sender.
Third-party services can fail. Wallets, bridges, IPFS gateways and RPC providers can fail independently of StartupOS, and StartupOS cannot reverse their failures.

What StartupOS is

StartupOS is an interface to public smart contracts. It is not a broker, a custodian or an adviser. It never holds your funds, gives no investment advice, and makes no representation about the quality or prospects of any token.

The app's Terms, Privacy, Disclosures and Risk warning pages, linked in its footer, are the governing documents. This page is a practical summary, and those documents govern.