Terminology
Glossary of Autonomys Network key terms
$AI3
The Autonomys Network's native utility token needed to interact with our AI3.0 Ecosystem. $AI3—formerly tSSC (Testnet Subspace Credits) / ATC (Auto Coin)—incentivizes the healthy operation of the network via farmer rewards and operator transaction fees. $AI3 is divisible up to 18 decimal places to allow for microtransactions.
Shannon
The smallest unit of $AI3, equal to $AI3 (0.000000000000000001 $AI3). Named after Claude Shannon, a mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as the "father of information theory". Shannon's work was central to the rise of digital computing and laid the foundations for the information age.
Decentralized, human-centric, agentic artificial intelligence.
Hyper-scalable decentralized AI (deAI) infrastructure stack encompassing high-throughput permanent distributed storage, data availability and access, and modular execution—all the essential components to build and deploy secure super dApps (AI-powered dApps) and advanced on-chain agents.
Autonomys' product suite, including the Auto SDK and Auto ID for developers, and Space Acres and the Autonomys CLI for farmers and operators.
Blockchain
History
An ordered, SCALE-encoded record of Autonomys Network blockchain blocks.
State
The current live status of all data stored on the Autonomys Network blockchain (including wallet balances, smart contract code, etc.); the result of operators executing transactions.
Client
A user interacting with the Autonomys Network through a light client such as Substrate Connect or another front-end application. Clients can submit transactions and query the state, but don't run a node.
The Autonomys Network's Subspace (PoAS) blockchain for consensus between farmers. Consensus is decoupled from more computationally-intensive transaction execution, meaning farming is lightweight and accessible, and the consensus chain is quick-to-sync.
Decoupled execution separates consensus (handled by farmers) from computation (handled by operators), allowing for independent scaling of transaction throughput and storage. DecEx is implemented through domains.
Modular DecEx environments or appchains with shared security and data availability via Autonomys' consensus layer and DSN. Domains support any form of computation or state transition framework, including EVM and WASM. Each domain has its own configurable runtime and gossip network (domain subnet). Operators are incentivized to maintain domains with transaction/execution fees. Domains are conceptually similar to Ethereum rollups, but are integrated into the core Autonomys Network protocol for horizontal scalability.
Appchain
An application-specific blockchain leveraging the Autonomys Network for consensus and storage. Appchains, or domain chains, are customized to the needs of a specific application or use-case.
Epoch
A block interval between each stake allocation readjustment on a domain chain. Operator stakes are fixed for the duration of the domain epoch at its start. The stake distribution is adjusted at the end of each epoch based on new stake deposits, withdrawal requests, and slashing events.
Distributed storage network composed of farmers that have plotted pieces of archived history and serve them to clients. The DSN handles data storage, retrieval and replication across the network.
A participant in Autonomys' peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The main node-running roles are farmer, operator and timekeeper. Nodes connects to other nodes via the P2P networking layer.
A node-running role responsible for maintaining the history and security of the Autonomys Network consensus chain and providing storage to the DSN. Farmers earn $AI3 by pledging disk space to the network, plotting pieces of archived history to disk, farming the created plot for block and vote rewards by producing blocks for consensus, and joining the DSN as nodes for data retrieval.
Command Line Interface application for running farmer and operator nodes within a terminal instance.
Archiving
The process of converting the consensus blockchain history into archived history.
Raw Record
A fragment of consensus blockchain history—the 'useful data' for PoAS consensus—before being archived.
Record
A raw record that has been prepared for archiving.
Archived History
The immutable ledger of archived, ordered consensus chain blocks permanently stored across the DSN in a redundant, verifiable and retrievable way.
Segment
A fixed-size section of (potentially partial) consensus chain history blocks. There are two types of segment:
1. Recorded History Segment
A segment of raw records in a buffer before archiving.
2. Archived History Segment
A segment of pieces of archived history converted from a recorded history segment by archiving.
Commitment
A binding, cryptographic commitment to the value and integrity of a specific piece of data that allows the committer (nodes) to conceal the committed value and reveal it later. Others can then verify that the committed value matches the original commitment.
The Autonomys Network uses two types of commitment:
Record Commitment: a KZG polynomial commitment to the blockchain data in a raw record.
Segment Commitment: a KZG polynomial commitment to hashes of all record commitments in an archived history segment.
Segment Header
A compact header in an archived history segment containing the segment index, segment commitment, a pointer to the previous segment header, and information about the progress of block archiving.
Witness
A cryptographic proof of the existence of a specific piece of data within a larger dataset, such as a Merkle tree or polynomial commitment. Witnesses are used in the Subspace Protocol to efficiently verify the inclusion of data in a plot or blockchain history without requiring access to the entire dataset, enabling farmers and operators to validate data integrity while minimizing bandwidth and computational overhead.
(Re)Plotting
The process of farmers creating (and maintaining) plots of archived history on their disk, allowing for efficient PoAS consensus and retrievability of archived history.
Piece
A unit of archived history from which archived history segments are composed. Each piece is composed of a record, a commitment, and a witness.
Sector
A set of encoded pieces written to disk during plotting. A sector contains encoded the record data from the pieces, the original piece commitments, witnesses, and other metadata about stored pieces.
Plot
A collection of sectors that can be used for farming.
Farming
The process of farmers participating in Subspace consensus by competing to solve a puzzle using their plots. Farmers farm a block and earn $AI3 rewards when they are the first to solve the puzzle and submit a valid proof.
Reconstruction
The process of reconverting archived history segments to recorded history segments for seeding new nodes.
A node-running role responsible for running computation on domains on the Autonomys Network. Staked operators earn $AI3 by providing compute to the network, running state transitions, maintaining state by bundling transactions, validating state commitments, and deterministically executing transaction bundles on domain chains in the order defined by the farmers' consensus chain in exchange for transaction/compute fees from clients.
Leader Operator
Selected through an $AI3 stake-weighted VRF (Verifiable Random Function) election process to produce bundles for a domain in a specific time slot.
The process of nominators pledging $AI3 towards operators on domains in exchange for rewards, locking it up as collateral to support the operation and security of the Autonomys Network.
A node-running role responsible for running the Proof-of-Time chain and maintaining the randomness beacon for the Autonomys Network consensus chain.
$AI3 holders that nominate tokens towards operators and earn a share of the fees as staking rewards.
Proof-of-Archival-Storage, the Autonomys Network's custom proof-of-capacity consensus mechanism.
The Autonomys Network's unique Proof-of-Archival-Storage (PoAS) consensus mechanism.
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