Risks and trade-offs

Trading volume can fall

Volume is usually highest at launch and declines after. Because the pool is funded by yesterday’s fees, a drop shows up as a smaller discount the next day. The discount is dynamic by design, and the live pool is always visible before you send a request.

Third-party sellers

Requests are served by sellers on the Surplus marketplace, many reselling prepaid or promotional provider credits, which is why some prices are far below list. Mercato routes to trusted sellers only and falls back to OpenRouter. Your prompt is processed by the seller’s upstream provider: don’t send anything you wouldn’t send to a third-party API.

Arbitrage and reselling

One discounted key per wallet, a daily subsidy cap per wallet, and per-key rate limits. Extra keys bill at market price. See Limits.

Custody

There is no deposit contract. Top-ups are plain transfers to the treasury wallet, which also pays upstreams. You are trusting Mercato with prepaid credit until it is spent. Every deposit is on the explorer; keep only the credit you plan to use soon.

Token risk

$MERCATO is a utility token. Its price can go to zero. It gives access to discount tiers and nothing else: no equity, no revenue share, no yield.

Not investment advice. Only buy $MERCATO for the discount it unlocks, and only with money you can afford to lose.