Legal · risks

The risks, plainly

Wintergate is built to reduce one risk: a future quantum computer forging the key that protects your wallet. It cannot remove every risk, and it adds some of its own. Read this before you use it.

Smart contract risk

The contracts have been reviewed repeatedly, but code can still have bugs. Nobody can patch a deployed vault. If a problem is ever found, it is posted on the security notices page with what to do, and a fixed version would be a new deployment you choose to move to.

Irreversibility

Ethereum transactions are final. Nobody can reverse a transfer, refund a fee or undo a mistake, including a payment to the wrong address.

Key and seed loss

Only your keys can move your vault. If you lose your device, your recovery kit, your master seed and your recovery key, the funds are gone for good. If someone else gets them, they can act as you; a recovery they start can be cancelled with your keys within 30 days.

Quantum timing is uncertain

Nobody knows when, or whether, a quantum computer will break today's wallet keys. Published estimates keep falling, but they are estimates. Wintergate rests on one hard assumption: that the hash function it uses cannot be reversed. Quantum computers are only known to weaken that, not break it.

The canary is a detector with limits

The canary bounty pays whoever first proves they can break the kind of key that protects ordinary wallets. Someone with that ability might never claim it, or might claim it after attacking other wallets first. It is a public signal, not a guarantee.

Token price

Fees are fixed amounts of WINTER. What that costs in ETH or dollars moves with the WINTER market price, up or down, and can change quickly. WINTER is a fee, not an investment.

Gas costs

Every protected action is two Ethereum transactions, and you pay the gas. On busy days gas can cost more than the fee.

Interface availability

This website or the app could be down, blocked or gone. The contracts do not need them. The app ships with an exit page that talks to Ethereum directly, can be saved and run from your own computer, and needs no server.

No guarantees

Nothing here is a promise that your funds are safe, that Wintergate will work for any purpose, or that any token keeps any value. Use it only with what you understand and can afford to risk.

Last updated 8 October 2026.