The risks

Memecoins are a game where most players lose money. Read this before you put anything in.

Draft, pending legal review. This page describes ARENA as it is built today.

Prices

• Most memecoins go to zero. A coin’s price can fall 90% or more in minutes, and many never recover.
• Winning a season is not a price promise. The pot buys the winner and burns it. That removes coins from circulation, but the price can still fall, even right after the buyback.
• Slippage. The price can move between your quote and your trade. Your “max price move” setting cancels the trade if it moves further, and the network fee is still spent.

Other people

• Creators and early buyers can sell. Liquidity is locked and coins can’t be minted again after launch, but anyone holding a large amount, the creator included, can sell it at any time.
• The holder count can be gamed. One person can control many wallets. ARENA counts only wallets that hold the minimum without a break, and catches sells and rebuys between checks, but it cannot prove who owns a wallet.
• Front-running. The season buyback happens at a known time, so traders may buy the likely winner just before it and sell into the buyback.

Technology

• ARENA’s own code is not audited yet. It has automated tests, but no independent security audit. An audit is planned before ARENA uses real money.
• The pot is held in a wallet ARENA controls. Today the season pot is a normal wallet whose key ARENA keeps, not a smart contract. We plan to move it to a multisig, so that no single person can move it; until then, you are trusting ARENA with it.
• Meteora and Solana. Trading runs on Meteora’s programs on Solana. Bugs, outages or attacks on either are outside ARENA’s control.
• Your wallet. If you lose your seed phrase, or approve a malicious transaction, your funds are gone. ARENA can’t recover them.

Rules and law

• Season rules can change for future seasons (announced before the season starts).
• Laws on crypto, and on prize-like mechanics such as the season pot, differ per country and are changing. ARENA might have to limit or stop service in some places.
• Selling a coin at a profit can be taxable. Check the rules where you live.

Mainnet is real money

When the site’s tags say Mainnet, every trade, launch and fee uses real SOL. Only use money you can afford to lose completely. When they say Devnet, everything is free test SOL with no value.