Legal · terms
Terms of use
Wintergate is a set of open-source smart contracts on Ethereum. Nobody owns them, runs them or can change them. This website is only one way to read about them and, once the app opens, to use them. By using this website you accept these terms.
1. What Wintergate is
- Immutable contracts. Once deployed, the Wintergate contracts have no owner, no admin key, no pause and no upgrade. Nobody can reverse a transaction, freeze a vault, change a fee or change a rule.
- One setting at launch. The fee token is set once, when WINTER launches, and is then locked forever. That setting can never move or block funds.
- An interface, not a service. This website and the app are an interface to public contracts. There is no operator behind them that holds your funds, keeps an account for you or acts on your behalf. The contracts work without this website.
2. No custody, no accounts
Nobody but you ever holds your keys or your funds. There is no account, no sign-up and no password to reset. Your vault is a contract that only your own keys can move. If you lose your keys, your master seed and your recovery key, nobody can restore access.
3. What you are responsible for
- Your keys, seeds, recovery kit and recovery key, and keeping them safe and private.
- Checking every action before you approve it, and paying Ethereum gas.
- Making sure that using Wintergate is legal where you are, including tax and reporting rules.
- Not using this website from a restricted region, or if you are a person named on a sanctions list.
4. Fees
The fees are fixed in WINTER and enforced by the contracts themselves: 1,000 WINTER to create a vault and 50 WINTER per protected action. Half of every fee is burned and half goes to the public canary bounty. Exits and recovery never carry a WINTER fee. Until WINTER launches, creating a vault and protected actions cost only gas.
If you choose to pay with ETH in the app, the app buys the WINTER for you and adds a 20% convenience premium: 20% more WINTER is bought, and it is split like a fee, half burned and half to the canary bounty. The premium is shown before you approve. Paying in WINTER directly never carries it.
5. No warranties
The contracts, this website and the app are provided as they are and as available, with no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a purpose, security, availability or freedom from errors. Reviews and audits reduce risk; they do not remove it. Read the risk disclosures before you use Wintergate.
6. No liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, nobody who wrote, reviewed, deployed or hosts the Wintergate contracts, this website or the app is liable for any loss arising from their use, including lost funds, lost keys, failed or delayed transactions, gas costs, bugs, or changes in the value of any token.
7. WINTER is not an investment
WINTER is the fee the vault contracts accept for protected actions. It gives no claim on anyone, no share of anything and no promise of value. Nothing on this website is financial, investment, legal or tax advice.
8. The interface can change or go away
This website may change or stop at any time. That never affects your vault: the contracts keep working, and the app ships with an exit page that talks to Ethereum directly and needs no server.
9. Changes to these terms
These terms may be updated on this page. The contracts cannot be.
Last updated 8 October 2026.