Risk disclosure
This page lists what can go wrong. It is deliberately blunt. It is not a complete list, and no part of it is a reason to expect anything good.
In this document "I", "me" and "the maker" mean the same single individual who builds and publishes Cognis Protocol. There is no company behind it.
The short version
CGOX may become worthless. The network it is meant to serve does not work yet and may never work. The contracts have not been audited. I build it alone and can stop at any time. Do not acquire CGOX expecting profit.
1. The product does not exist yet in the form described
The agent network is under development and is not operational. CGOX has no working use today. Features described anywhere on this site as planned may never be built, may be built differently, or may be removed.
2. No audit
No external firm has reviewed the contracts. There is no formal verification and no bug bounty. A clean static-analysis run and a passing test suite are not an audit. A defect in a deployed contract can be permanent and can make funds unrecoverable.
3. Known limits of the escrow and tribunal
These are documented in the public repository and are not hypothetical:
- Judges are appointed by the owner, not elected or staked. A colluding majority can decide a dispute wrongly.
- Opening a dispute costs nothing beyond gas, so escalation can be used to grief the other side.
- A dispute that no judge votes on settles as a neutral split rather than on the merits.
- The owner of the tribunal decides who judges and where fees land. An owner that is itself a party to a job can, in the worst case, direct almost all of a disputed budget to itself. Nothing on chain prevents it; every step is at least publicly visible.
- There is no appeal.
- On-chain signatures are ECDSA. They are classical cryptography, not post-quantum. My post-quantum work applies to data at rest in the local software and does not extend to anything on chain.
4. Market risk
If CGOX trades at all, it trades on public protocols I do not operate and do not control. Liquidity may be thin or absent. A single transaction can move the price a long way. You may be unable to dispose of the token at any price, at any time. There is no market maker, no buyer of last resort, and no commitment from anyone to provide liquidity or to keep providing it.
5. Concentration and conflict of interest
Most of the supply sits in two multi-signature accounts and one vesting contract. The addresses and the vesting schedule are public and can be checked on chain. Concentrated holdings can move the market if they are ever moved.
I hold the liquidity position that CGOX can be traded against. Whatever is paid into that position accumulates in it, and I can collect it. I am therefore on the other side of purchases made against that position. That is a conflict of interest; I state it here rather than leave it for you to discover.
6. Key person
I build and maintain the project alone. Illness, loss of interest, loss of keys, or a decision to stop would end development. There is no team to continue it, no company behind it, and no obligation on anyone to continue.
7. Regulatory risk
Rules for crypto-assets are changing in most jurisdictions. A rule change, or a regulator's view of this token, could make it unlawful for you to hold or dispose of CGOX, could make it unlawful for me to continue, or could force changes that reduce or remove whatever function the token has. It is your responsibility to know your own law.
8. Tax
A disposal of a crypto-asset is a taxable event in many jurisdictions, including in circumstances that may not feel like a sale to you. Reporting and paying is yours to do. I give no tax advice.
9. Irreversibility and keys
Transactions on a public network cannot be reversed. If you lose your keys, your tokens are gone and nobody can restore them. There is no password reset and no support line that can help.
10. Impersonation and scams
Projects at this stage attract impersonators. There is no presale, no allocation, no airdrop, and no giveaway. I will never contact you first, ask for your seed phrase or private key, or ask you to connect a wallet to receive anything. Check the anti-impersonation notice for the only channels that are real.
11. Software risk
The software runs on your own computer. It can contain defects, can consume significant resources, and can produce wrong output. It performs actions on your machine when you ask it to. Review what it proposes before you approve it. Keep backups.