Risks and limits

Not financial advice

Nothing in these docs is an offer, a recommendation, or a promise of returns. You can lose what you put in. What the team holds and earns is on Disclosures.

The curve never completes, by design

$777 trades on a Meteora DBC curve whose completion point is set at a $100B FDV. Reaching it would take about $31.6M of USDC flowing into the curve. Meteora’s curve program removes the transfer hook in the trade that completes a curve, so Pot Draw works only while $777 trades on the curve.

• If the curve ever completed, transfers would stop reaching the table. Tickets would freeze where they stood, and the pot could no longer collect new fees, because its launch build collects curve fees only. A prize drawn after that is paid only if the winning account still holds the tickets it won with. Otherwise it goes back to the pot.
• All the depth is the curve itself, and it thins at higher prices. As a rough guide, at a market cap M the curve trades like a pool holding about the square root of M x $10k in USDC: about $100k at $1M, $316k at $10M. Large trades move the price a lot.
• Nobody can add outside liquidity.
• Only trades on this curve pay into the pot and count toward rounds. Meteora’s own AMM refuses tokens with an active hook. Other venues have not been checked.

Meteora’s programs

The curve runs on Meteora’s DBC program, which Meteora can upgrade. Nothing in Pot Draw guards against a change there.

Table capacity

The table holds 1,024 token accounts. Once it is full, a newcomer gets in only by holding more than the smallest entry in its 16-slot window, so the smallest holders can be left out.

• In simulations with long-tail holdings (not a real token’s holders), the full table kept 99% of holder value at 1,000 holders, 84% at 3,000, 74% at 10,000 and 61% at 30,000.
• No one can be replaced while a draw is pending, so a newcomer who arrives then may be skipped. Calling sync later can enroll them.
• Accounts owned by programs, such as multisig vaults and lockers, never hold tickets.

Prize delivery

Prizes are sent to the winners’ USDC accounts inside the reveal transaction. There is nothing to claim, and nothing expires. A few cases still matter:

• No USDC account. The reveal creates one and takes an account fee of min($2, max($0.60, 1% of the prize)) from that prize. A prize under about $0.61 can’t cover it and stays in the pot for the next draw.
• An unusable USDC account. USDC accounts can be frozen by the token’s issuer. A prize to a USDC account that exists but can’t receive it stays in the pot for the next draw.
• A closed token account. If the winning token account can’t be read at the reveal, its prize stays in the pot for the next draw.
• The account fee and SOL. The liquidator pays the new account’s rent in SOL, and the fee repays it in USDC. If SOL rose far enough, the fee could fall short, and revealing such a draw would cost the liquidator a little.
• Program-owned wallets never hold tickets, so they never win.

Liveness

Draws move forward only when someone acts: a trader’s swap closes a round, and a liquidator reveals it. Reveals and fallback commits pay bounties from the pot, but nobody is obliged to run them. If no one does, a closed round waits, and its draw happens late.

USDC’s issuer can freeze any USDC account, the pot’s included. If it froze the pot’s account, reveals and bounties would fail and draws would stall with the money stuck. Trading would carry on.

The randomness

Each draw’s seed is the hash of one block, at the target slot. The validator producing that block could skip it, which changes the seed and gives it a choice among a few outcomes, at the cost of the blocks it skips. Whoever closes a round can time it exactly, so the target can be aimed at a chosen validator. Using this takes that validator’s collusion on that exact draw. It is an accepted risk. See Disclosures.

Smart contract risk

• The programs are new code. They pass their test suites on a local chain running Meteora’s mainnet programs and mainnet’s feature set. Nothing is formally proven, and bugs are possible.
• Both programs are deployed with no upgrade authority. That protects the rules, and it also means a bug can’t be fixed.
• Some wallets and trading apps may not build trades for a token with a transfer hook, especially one whose hook writes an account. A failed trade reverts, and you pay only the network fee.

No guarantees

• Prizes depend on trading. The pot fills only from fees. Each draw pays a share that grows with the time since the previous draw, so short rounds pay little. With little trading, the pot stays small, rounds run long, and the pot empties over a few long draws. The 12-hour close happens only when someone calls it.
• The pot starts empty, so the first draws are small.
• Most holders win nothing in a given draw. Each draw has three prize picks, plus a chance at the jackpot.
• No promise of returns, timing, price or liquidity. The token can lose value. Every trade costs 2%.
• Not financial advice. Rules on tokens and prize draws differ between countries. Check yours.