Archipelago FAQ

What is Archipelago?

Archipelago is a trading terminal for Arc. It reads trades on Arc's Uniswap pools as they happen, shows which tokens are moving against USDC, and lets you buy and sell them through on-chain liquidity from a wallet that stays in your own browser. It never holds your funds.

What is Arc?

Arc is a Layer 1 blockchain built by Circle, the company behind USDC. USDC is its native gas token, so network fees on Arc are paid in dollars, and most tokens on Arc trade against USDC.

What is a trading wallet?

It is a wallet Archipelago creates in your browser for trading. It signs each trade on the spot, with no popup to approve, and its key never leaves your device.

You don't have to use one. You can connect the wallet you already use, such as MetaMask or Rabby, and it asks you to confirm each trade instead.

Treat a trading wallet as a hot wallet: keep in it only what you are trading with.

Where is my key?

A trading wallet's key is created on your device and stored only in this browser, encrypted with your passcode (AES-256-GCM, with the key derived by 600,000 rounds of PBKDF2-SHA256). Archipelago's servers never receive the key or the passcode.

That means nobody can recover it for you. Back the key up when the wallet asks, and you can export it any time from the wallet window. If you clear this site's data or lose the device without a backup, the wallet and anything in it are lost for good.

The wallet locks after 30 minutes without input, and pressing Lock in one tab locks every tab.

If you connect your own wallet instead, its key stays in that wallet. Archipelago only asks it to sign.

How do I fund it from an exchange?

You need USDC on Arc. If your exchange lets you withdraw USDC on the Arc network, send it straight to your Arc address, shown in the wallet window. If it doesn't, go through a wallet you control:

1. Withdraw USDC from the exchange to your own wallet on Base, Arbitrum, OP Mainnet or Ethereum (MetaMask, Rabby and similar), or to a Solana wallet.
2. From Base, Arbitrum, OP Mainnet or Ethereum, open the wallet window in Archipelago, pick that wallet as the funding wallet and bridge at least 1 USDC. Circle's CCTP moves it to Arc, usually in under a minute. Circle takes a small fee, shown before you confirm, and you pay a little ETH for gas on the chain you send from (on Ethereum that can be a few dollars).
3. From Solana or another chain, use the Relay button in the wallet window. Relay is a separate service with its own fees, and it can swap other tokens into USDC on the way.

You don't need any USDC on Arc beforehand: Circle delivers the bridged USDC to your Arc address itself. If you already hold USDC on Arc in another wallet, Deposit in the wallet window sends it to your trading wallet.

What are the fees?

• Archipelago's fee. Archipelago charges 0.5% of each trade, always in USDC: from the USDC you pay in on a buy, and from the USDC you receive on a sale. On a sale the fee is at most $25 on a sell up to $250,000 and 0.01% above that. It is shown before you sign and goes straight to Archipelago's public treasury, a Safe multisig at 0xDcf7a2683aCaaC06E85a50c15BAf59c8E8b1e681, with every receipt on the Treasury page.
• The pool's fee. Every pool charges its own trading fee, paid to its liquidity providers or launchpad, and the price you are quoted already includes it. It varies by pool: ISLE's pool on Argus Pad charges 2%.
• Arc's network fee. Each transaction pays a small gas fee in USDC.
• Bridging. Archipelago charges nothing to bridge. Circle's or Relay's own fees apply, plus gas on the chain you send from.

Before a buy, the terminal also shows what selling straight back would return, after every fee both ways.

How do I buy and sell?

Pick a token on the radar, choose an amount and press Buy. Before you sign you see the price impact, the fee, the minimum you will receive, and what selling straight back would return. The slippage limit is 1.5%, and a trade that would fill more than 3% worse than the price shown asks you to confirm again. To sell, open Portfolio and sell 25, 50 or 100%.

What do the warnings and checks mean?

• Copies. Tokens using USDC's ticker at another address are hidden. A token that takes the name or ticker of USDC, EURC, USYC, cirBTC, bridged WETH or ISLE, including look-alike letters, is flagged as a copy.
• Contract checks. Before a buy, the terminal reads the token's contract and says whether it is an upgradeable proxy, has an owner, or has mint or pause functions. These are facts, not a score or an endorsement, and they cannot detect a transfer tax or a block on selling.
• Price confidence. How much a buy takes to move the price 2%: high from $5,000, medium from $500, low under $500. A low reading means a small trade can push the price a lot.
• Liquidity pulled. When one removal cuts a token's liquidity by half or more (from at least $500), the token is marked for 24 hours.
• CoinGecko mark. Shown only when CoinGecko lists the token at that exact contract address on Arc.

Most new tokens lose most of their value. The checks catch common traps, not all of them. Trade only what you can afford to lose.

How do I withdraw?

From the wallet window, Withdraw sends USDC on Arc to any address you control, leaving a little behind for the network fee. You can also export the key and import it into another wallet. To move USDC off Arc, send it to an exchange that accepts USDC on Arc, or bridge it out with a service that supports Arc, such as Relay.

Does Archipelago hold my funds?

No. Your USDC and tokens stay in your own wallet. Each trade is built in your browser and sent through Uniswap's Universal Router and Permit2 contracts, and what you buy, or the USDC from a sale, goes to your own address. Archipelago's only cut is the fee above, paid inside the same transaction.

Will Archipelago ever ask for my key?

No. We never ask for your key or passcode, in a DM or anywhere else. Anyone who does is not us. Archipelago's account on X is @archipelagodex.

What is $ISLE?

$ISLE is Archipelago's token, at 0x3945DF1f8dD8F753FB62e428f3AaEB2c185a6E26 on Arc. It launched on Argus Pad on October 1, 2026 with a fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 and its liquidity locked for good. The treasury's policy is to use half of the terminal's fees to buy and burn ISLE as the treasury grows. Holding ISLE gives no share of revenue, no dividends and no vote. Any other token using the name is not ours.