Glossary

A

Account. A persistent state record on chain, addressed by a 20-byte hex string. Carries balance, nonce, code hash, and storage root. Accounts come in two shapes: EOAs (controlled by a private key) and contracts (controlled by code).

Address. The 20-byte identifier of an account. Derived as BLAKE3(pubkey)[0:20] for EOAs and BLAKE3(deployer || nonce)[12:32] for contracts. Rendered as a hex string with an EIP-55-style mixed-case checksum.

Approved Library. An npm package that smart contracts on Valdium are allowed to import. The list is governance-curated; anything outside it fails to compile. See Approved Libraries.

B

Base fee. The minimum gas price the network is willing to include a transaction at, set algorithmically per block. a base-fee + priority-tip-style: adjusts up when blocks are full, down when they're empty. Half-burned.

BLAKE3. The cryptographic hash function Valdium uses everywhere — block hashes, address derivation, Merkle leaves, function selectors. Faster than SHA-256, simpler than blake3.

Block. A signed batch of transactions and the state changes they produced, plus a header pointing at its parent. Valdium blocks land every 2 seconds.

Bond. The VLD a validator locks to participate. Required to be in the active set; subject to slashing for misbehaviour.

C

Calldata. The data field of a transaction sent to a contract. First 4 bytes are the function selector; the rest is ABI-encoded arguments.

Chain ID. A network-unique identifier baked into every signature to prevent replay across chains. Valdium testnet is 0x539 (1337); mainnet will be a different value, published at launch.

Compartment. An isolated JavaScript execution context in SES. Each Valdium contract runs in its own compartment with no access to other contracts' state or to host capabilities.

Consensus. The rules by which a network of validators agrees on the next block. Valdium uses a BFT-style protocol with 2-second slots and per-slot proposer rotation. See Consensus.

Contract. A JavaScript class deployed to an address. Public methods become callable from transactions; private fields (#-prefixed) become persistent state.

D

Delegation. Locking VLD to a validator's bond without operating a node. The delegator earns a share of the validator's rewards and shares in the slashing risk. See Staking.

Dilithium3. The post-quantum signature scheme Valdium uses for every signature on chain. Standardised by NIST as ML-DSA-65 in FIPS 204. See Post-Quantum Cryptography.

E

EOA. Externally-Owned Account — an account controlled by a Dilithium3 keypair, as opposed to one controlled by contract code.

Epoch. A fixed window of slots (currently 1,800 = 1 hour) at the end of which validator set updates, reward distributions, and unbonding flags take effect.

Event. A structured log entry emitted from contract code via emit('Name', args). Cheaper than state writes; indexable by topic; the right channel for "something happened" signals.

F

Fair launch. Valdium's launch mechanism: 100% of the 1B VLD supply enters the market on Ethereum at a pre-announced block — 90% as public float on a Uniswap V3 pool, 10% as locked liquidity (LP burned), with no mint function, ownership renounced. No presale, no allocations, no allowlist. See Fair Launch.

Faucet. A free testnet-VLD dispenser at testnet.valdium.xyz. Drips 100 VLD per request to any address; rate-limited per IP.

Finality. The point at which a block is committed and cannot be reverted. Valdium blocks finalize one block after inclusion (~4 seconds total).

G

Gas. The unit of computational work a transaction consumes. Each operation has a fixed gas cost; the transaction pays gasUsed × gasPrice. Out-of-gas reverts the call and keeps the gas as a fee.

Genesis. Block 0 — the first block of the chain, which defines the initial state and the chain's identity.

Governance. The on-chain process for changing protocol parameters, approving libraries, and spending the treasury. Stake-weighted voting with a 14-day window. See Governance.

H

Hardened JavaScript. The flavour of JavaScript that Valdium contracts run in: SES lockdown applied, dangerous globals removed, deterministic by construction. See Hardened JavaScript.

J

Jail. A temporary suspension from the validator active set, triggered by missing too many slots. The validator earns no rewards while jailed and must explicitly unjail after the lockout. See Slashing.

L

Log. Synonym for event — an indexable record emitted by contract code.

M

Mempool. The set of valid pending transactions a node holds before they're included in a block. Each node has its own mempool; they share via the P2P gossip protocol.

MetaMask. The standard EVM wallet. During the pre-mainnet ERC-20 phase, MetaMask holds your VLD, trades it on Uniswap, and proves ownership to the Operator app via signed memo transactions. See MetaMask Snap.

N

Nonce. A monotonically increasing per-account counter, incremented on every transaction. Stops replay attacks; enforces tx ordering.

P

Post-quantum. Cryptography designed to resist attacks by future quantum computers. Valdium ships Dilithium3 from genesis, before anyone is sure when that future arrives.

Proposer. The validator chosen by the protocol to assemble the next block. Rotates per slot; chosen pseudo-randomly weighted by stake.

R

Receipt. The record produced after a transaction is included. Contains status (1 = success, 0 = revert), gasUsed, logs, and an optional revertReason.

Recovery phrase. A 24-word BIP-39 seed that deterministically generates a wallet's Dilithium3 keypair. The wallet is the phrase; lose the phrase, lose the wallet. See Recovery Phrases.

RPC. Remote Procedure Call. The JSON-RPC 2.0 API every Valdium node exposes. See JSON-RPC API.

S

SES. Secure ECMAScript — the runtime sandbox Valdium contracts execute in. Locks down JavaScript globals, prevents prototype pollution, makes the host machine invisible.

Slashing. Burning a slice of a validator's bond as punishment for misbehaviour. Double-signing slashes 5%; downtime slashes 0.01%. See Slashing.

Slot. A 2-second window in which a single validator is the designated block proposer.

State root. A hash committing to the entire chain state at the end of a block. Stored in each block header; lets light clients prove state without holding the chain.

T

Testnet. A live Valdium network with free tokens, no economic value, for development and testing. Lives at testnet.valdium.xyz.

Tombstoned. A validator permanently removed from the active set after a double-sign. The bond is partially slashed and never returns.

Treasury. The 100M-VLD pool held in a governance-controlled account from genesis. Funds ecosystem grants, audits, and infrastructure.

U

Unbonding. The 14-day cooldown after undelegate before VLD returns to the spending balance. Earns no rewards; remains slashable.

V

Validator. A node operator that has posted a bond and is in the active set. Proposes blocks when it's their slot, votes on others' blocks, earns rewards or gets slashed.

Verification. The process of publishing a contract's source code so the explorer can prove the source compiles to the deployed bytecode. See Verifying Contracts.

VLD. The native token of the Valdium chain. Used for gas, staking, and governance voting.

VM. Virtual Machine. The execution engine that runs contract code. Valdium's VM runs Hardened JavaScript in an SES compartment per call.

W

Base unit. The smallest unit of VLD. 1 VLD = 1,000,000 wei. Internal balances are stored in wei; UIs convert at the edge.