Terms of Service

1. What Locke is

Locke is software that helps a business protect what it holds or buys against price moves. It sizes a hedge, opens it on a third-party trading venue, watches it and tells you when it needs attention. Locke runs on Base: it hedges on Veranta (veranta.xyz), from a vault contract on Base that you own.

Locke is a tool, not a broker, bank, exchange, fund, insurer or investment adviser. It does not give financial, legal or tax advice, and nothing it shows is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. A hedge is not insurance: it can lose money on its own.

2. Your money stays yours

Your USDC sits in a vault contract that your wallet owns. Locke's keeper can trade it only within the limits written into the vault (market, side, leverage and size), and can never withdraw. You can withdraw or remove Locke's keeper from your wallet at any time, without Locke, and close the hedge whenever its market is open.

We never hold your private keys or seed phrase, and we will never ask for them.

3. Who can use Locke

• You must be at least 18 and able to enter a binding contract.
• You must not use Locke where the law forbids it, where Veranta does not allow you to use its service, or if you are subject to sanctions. You are responsible for checking the rules that apply to you.
• You must not use Locke to break the law, to move the proceeds of crime, or to interfere with Locke, Veranta or any network.

4. Stock plans

• Stock plans are not available to US persons (US citizens and residents, and businesses set up or based in the US), or to anyone in a country where tokenized stocks or derivatives on stocks are restricted. When you create a stock plan, you confirm that neither you nor the business you act for is one of them.
• A stock plan hedges the price only. It holds a perpetual future on Veranta that follows a stock or index; it is not a share and carries no voting or dividend rights. Locke never buys, sells, holds or moves stocks or stock tokens for you.
• Tokenized stocks, such as Coinbase's on Base, stay in your own account. Locke only reads them to size a plan. Whether you may hold them is a matter between you and their issuer.
• Locke is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Coinbase, or by any company whose stock or index a plan follows. Their names and tickers are used only to say which market a plan follows.
• Stock markets on Veranta follow US trading hours. While a market is closed, Locke's keeper can't add margin and you can't close the hedge, and prices can open far from where they closed.

5. Risk

Hedging with leveraged perpetual futures carries real risk, including losing the margin you put in. Read the Risk Disclosure before you create a plan. Locke asks you to confirm that you understand the risks before it opens protection.

6. What Locke does and doesn't do for you

• Locke calculates sizes, margin and alert levels from the numbers you give it and from market data. Check your inputs: a wrong amount gives a wrong hedge.
• Locke watches open vaults and adds margin from the vault's buffer when a hedge runs low, within the vault's limits. It does this on a best effort basis. Monitoring can be late or fail (for example when a venue, a network, a price feed or our servers are down), and a position can be liquidated before Locke acts.
• Locke does not guarantee any outcome, price, fill, or that a hedge will offset a loss elsewhere.

7. Fees

• A vault can carry a Locke fee of at most 0.20% of the value of a hedge the keeper opens. It is owed when the keeper places the hedge and paid only once Veranta has opened it (an order that never fills is never charged), and it is charged at most once per market every 30 days, however often the hedge is reopened. The rate is fixed when you create the vault, shown before you do, and included in the deposit Locke asks for.
• Venues and networks charge their own fees: trading fees, funding and borrow costs, spreads and network fees. Locke shows its best estimate of them, but they are set by those services.

8. Third-party services

Locke works on top of services we don't control, including Veranta, the Base network, price oracles (Pyth), wallets (including Base Account by Coinbase), and our hosting and data providers. Your use of them is governed by their own terms. We are not responsible for their availability, their decisions (such as liquidations, delistings or account restrictions), or losses they cause.

9. Smart contracts and software

Locke's vault contracts on Base are tested extensively but have not yet been audited by an outside firm, and vaults launch with deposit limits. Software, including ours and the venues', can contain bugs. Blockchain transactions are final: we cannot reverse them.

10. Your responsibilities

• Keep your wallet, devices and recovery phrase secure. Anyone with access to your wallet can act as you.
• Check what your wallet asks you to sign before you sign it.
• Keep records and pay any taxes that apply to your hedges and your business.

11. Availability and changes

We may change, pause or stop any part of Locke, including pausing new plans, deposits or hedges to protect users. A pause never stops you from withdrawing or closing: both work from your own wallet. We may update these terms; the date at the top shows the current version, and we will flag material changes in the app. Continuing to use Locke after a change means you accept it.

12. Liability

Locke is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, lost profits, trading losses, liquidations, or losses caused by third-party services, networks or events outside our control. Where the law does not allow us to exclude liability, our total liability to you is limited to the fees you paid Locke in the three months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

13. Ending use

You can stop using Locke at any time: close your hedges and withdraw. We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms or the law. Your funds remain yours and reachable as described in section 2.

14. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales hear any dispute, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim there. Before going to court, please write to us at alemzdelight@gmail.com so we can try to resolve it.

15. Contact

Alem Denis (Lino) · alemzdelight@gmail.com · Telegram @martins_0x