Plain language, no lawyer-speak, per PRD §7.9. If anything here stops being true, that's a bug — file it loudly.

When you run /start, Fade creates a wallet that belongs to you on the Polygon blockchain. Your deposits (converted to pUSD, Polymarket's dollar token) and your market positions sit in that wallet — not in some shared company account, and never mixed with anyone else's funds, including the operator's.

• Place and cancel orders for you. That's the product. When you tap Buy or Fade, our server signs an order from your wallet and submits it to Polymarket. Every order carries a worst-price guard so it can't fill at a price meaningfully worse than you saw.
• Send withdrawals you asked for. The /withdraw flow moves funds only after you type the amount, paste the destination, and tap Confirm in a DM. First-time addresses get an extra warning step.
• See your balance and positions. Needed to show you /wallet and /positions.

• Move your funds anywhere you didn't explicitly confirm.
• Show your balance, wallet address, or deposit info in a group chat. Group cards show your trades (side, market, and — unless you turn on /privacy — size), never your wallet.
• Write your keys to logs or the main database. Signing keys live in a separate store, encrypted with a key that exists only in the server's environment.

Fade holds an encrypted signing key for your wallet — that's what lets a Telegram tap become a real trade without you managing a wallet app. If an attacker fully compromised the server AND the encryption key, they could use your key the same ways we can: place bad trades with your money, or move funds. That is the standing risk of every bot-custody model, and we'd rather say it plainly than pretend otherwise. What limits it:

• Keys are encrypted at rest; the encryption key is not stored beside them.
• The signing code is one small, isolated module — the only code that ever touches keys — which keeps the attack surface auditable.
• A kill switch (/pause) stops all trading instantly. It can never stop withdrawals — by design, you can always leave.
• Small stakes make small targets: don't deposit more than you'd bet with friends.

/export hands you the private key to your own wallet after a warning screen. With it, you control your funds directly from any wallet app — with or without Fade, forever. You are never trapped.

One person (the builder), honestly. Target uptime is 99.5%, not five nines. Fade earns a 1% builder fee on executed trades, paid by Polymarket — there are no other fees, and no custom fee code exists in this bot.

Fade has two wallet custody modes; both can coexist.

Server custody (the classic mode, and today's default). Everything above describes it: Fade holds an encrypted signing key in a separate store, can place orders with it, and /export hands it to you whenever you want out. The residual risk is stated honestly above — a full server compromise including the encryption key could misuse signing keys.

Client custody (Mini App, flag-gated rollout). New wallets are created in a Telegram Mini App: the key is generated in your device's browser and only the public address is sent to Fade. The server never sees, stores, or can recover the key — /export for these wallets tells you exactly that. The trade-off in the current build: server-signed trading and withdrawals are not yet supported for client-custody wallets (Fade can't sign with a key it doesn't have); that support arrives with the in-app signing round-trip. Until then this mode is off by default (FADE_MINIAPP_CUSTODY), and the classic mode keeps working unchanged.