Non-Custodial Design#
Safety first. Your wallet stays yours.
The three pillars:
- Transparency — every action is visible. You see each step in the chat, every job run is listed in Ava Studio, and every on-chain action is verifiable on a block explorer.
- Security — non-custodial by design. You hold your keys. If you let Ava act on its own, it runs from a separate Ava smart wallet you fund, under an agent permission you sign, and can only use what you put in it.
- Control — you decide how Ava acts. Sign each action yourself, or turn on Auto for the jobs you choose. Pause a job, turn off its permission, or withdraw from the smart wallet anytime.
The rest of this page is the detail behind those three sentences.
Where your funds actually are#
In your wallet. Not on Ava's servers, not in an "Ava balance" held by us, not in a multi-sig vault we control. There is no Ava database row that says "user X has Y USDC."
If you use Auto mode, the separate Ava smart wallet it runs from is yours too — your main wallet owns it, and you can withdraw what's in it anytime.
What Ava is — concretely#
Ava is three things:
- A language interface in Telegram that helps you understand your positions and decide what to do.
- A transaction preparer: in Manual mode, Ava builds the transaction and you sign it in your own wallet.
- An optional operator from a wallet you fund: in Auto mode, Ava can act on its own — one-off actions you confirm, and standing jobs you set up, like health-factor protection — from your Ava smart wallet, under a permission you sign.
The safety boundary#
Manual mode: your signature. Ava prepares, you sign, your wallet sends it. Nothing moves without you.
Auto mode: two boundaries.
- The fund boundary. Auto runs from a separate Ava smart wallet that your main wallet owns. Your main wallet is never upgraded or delegated, so Auto can only use what you put in the smart wallet — and you can withdraw it anytime. This holds for every Auto action.
- The agent permission. Every Auto action runs under a permission you signed: the apps it may use, by contract address, and an expiry. The standard permission covers the main tokens, Uniswap V3 and Aave V3 for 365 days with no spending limit; narrower permissions add a total spending limit on the token you choose, which doesn't refill.
The smart wallet enforces the permission on-chain: anything outside it is refused by the chain. Ava can't create or widen a permission — only your signature can. See Permissions & Limits.
What Ava can and cannot do#
| Ava can… | Ava cannot… |
|---|
| Read public on-chain data about your wallet | Read your seed phrase or private key (it doesn't have them) |
| Read your portfolio via data providers (e.g. Zerion) | Spend from your main wallet — Auto only uses your Ava smart wallet |
| Prepare a transaction for you to sign | Use an app your permission doesn't allow, or act after it expires |
| In Auto mode, act inside a permission you signed | Create or widen its own permission — only your signature can |
| Watch and alert 24/7 | Stop you from pausing a job, turning off a permission, or withdrawing |
The "trust nothing, verify everything" path#
Every action Ava takes lands on-chain. You can verify each one:
- Ask Ava for the transaction hash, or open the wallet's recent activity. Standing-job runs are also listed in Ava Studio.
- Inspect the transaction on a block explorer (Etherscan, Basescan).
- Check
from (your wallet), to (the protocol contract — e.g. the Aave pool), and the amounts.
If a transaction ever lands that you didn't expect, stop first, ask later: turn off your Ava smart wallet's permissions, then withdraw what's free in it. See Revoking Access.
What if Ava is wrong?#
Ava can be wrong — bad recommendation, bad timing, missed risk. The non-custodial design means "wrong" is bounded:
- Wrong recommendation in Manual mode → you decline. No funds move.
- Wrong action in Auto mode → it happens inside the permission and the smart wallet: only its apps, before its expiry, within any spending limit you set, and only with what you funded.
- Bad luck (oracle anomaly, market gap, congestion) → the same bound applies. There's no path where Ava spends from your main wallet or acts outside the permission you signed.
That's the point of the design: bound what Ava can do explicitly, on-chain, so you can sleep. It bounds Ava — not the market. The standard permission has no spending limit, so fund the smart wallet with only what you're comfortable letting Auto use. Neither the fund boundary nor a spending limit caps losses on your DeFi positions.