Is Arcus safe to connect to an AI agent?
Can trade unattended. Safety 68%
What an AI agent can do
- Live vs paper: live; public testnet (the app credits about $1,000 of test collateral) source
- Order approval: Official MCP server for the docs only (it can't trade). Keys made through the public API are trade-only and expire; a withdrawal needs the wallet's own signature and only pays your own address source
- Markets: perpetuals on stocks, indexes, commodities and crypto, tokenized stocks (spot)
- Pricing: no API fee; fees are tiered by volume and set per market, with no rates in the docs (the API returns them)
Safeguards that exist
- Guardrails outside the agent: No per-order approval; a scheduled cancel-all (dead-man's switch) limits what is left open if the bot stops (official docs) source
- Test before real money: Public testnet on Robinhood Chain testnet; the app credits about $1,000 of test collateral (official docs) source
- Sending funds out: Keys made through the public API are trade-only; a withdrawal needs the wallet's own signature and only pays the owner's own address (official docs) source
- Who holds the keys: Revocable keys with an expiry date, each one bound to one of ten subaccounts (official docs) source
- Open source or audited: Trail of Bits and OpenZeppelin reviewed the on-chain contracts; the matching engine is run by Arcus and is not open source (official docs) source
- Incident record (last 12 months): No incident naming this tool in our incident tracker in the last 12 months source
Safeguards that are missing
- Human approval: API orders execute with no per-order approval step source
Safety score
| Input | From official docs or our listing | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Human approval | API orders execute with no per-order approval step source | 0 / 25 |
| Guardrails outside the agent | No per-order approval; a scheduled cancel-all (dead-man's switch) limits what is left open if the bot stops (official docs) source | 8 / 15 |
| Test before real money | Public testnet on Robinhood Chain testnet; the app credits about $1,000 of test collateral (official docs) source | 15 / 15 |
| Sending funds out | Keys made through the public API are trade-only; a withdrawal needs the wallet's own signature and only pays the owner's own address (official docs) source | 15 / 15 |
| Who holds the keys | Revocable keys with an expiry date, each one bound to one of ten subaccounts (official docs) source | 10 / 10 |
| Open source or audited | Trail of Bits and OpenZeppelin reviewed the on-chain contracts; the matching engine is run by Arcus and is not open source (official docs) source | 10 / 10 |
| Incident record (last 12 months) | No incident naming this tool in our incident tracker in the last 12 months (incident tracker) | 10 / 10 |
| Total | 68% of the points we could check | 68 / 100 |
Sources
- https://docs.arcus.xyz/api-reference/authentication
- https://docs.arcus.xyz/api-reference/rate-limits
- https://docs.arcus.xyz/guides/fund-testnet-account
- https://docs.arcus.xyz/api-reference/exchange/submit-withdrawal
- https://docs.arcus.xyz/concepts/subaccounts
- https://docs.arcus.xyz/concepts/exchange-architecture
Full listing: Arcus · How the score works: Safety score method