Generative model that learns a latent distribution by optimizing a variational lower bound, useful for synthesis and representation learning.

Participant in a proof of stake or similar consensus that proposes and attests to blocks, earning rewards and facing slashing for misbehavior.

Requirement that validators stay online and sign duties on time, missing duties can reduce rewards or trigger inactivity leaks.

The active group of validators eligible to produce blocks in a given epoch, often rotated by stake weight or elections.

Penalty that burns or seizes a validator’s stake for double signing, equivocation, or liveness failures, designed to secure the network by economic deterrence.

Cryptographic proof that a state transition is correct without re executing it, used in zk rollups and validium systems to ensure safety with minimal on chain work.

L2 design that uses validity proofs for state transitions while storing data off chain, improving throughput at the cost of data availability trust assumptions.

Growth tactic where a new protocol lures liquidity or users from an incumbent with rewards or fee cuts, often via incentives and airdrops.

Blockchain address with user chosen prefix or pattern generated by trial and error, may weaken security if created with untrusted tools.

Smart contract that aggregates user deposits and auto compounds yield strategies, often with risk controls and performance fees.

W3C data model for cryptographically signed claims that can be privately presented and verified without contacting the issuer, often used with DIDs.

Elliptic curves or groups chosen to make verifiable delay functions efficient and secure, balancing hardware resistance and verification speed.

Function that takes a set minimum time to compute even with parallelism, yet is fast to verify, used for leader election and randomness beacons.

Cryptographic commitment to a sequence of values that supports short proofs for element openings, examples include KZG commitments used in rollups and data availability.

Database optimized for storing and searching embeddings with approximate nearest neighbor indexes, used for RAG and semantic search.

Numeric representation of text, image, or other data in a high dimensional space where semantic similarity corresponds to vector distance.

Package of one or more verifiable credentials shown to a verifier, may use selective disclosure or zero knowledge to reveal only required attributes.

Public parameter used by a verifier to check cryptographic proofs, usually generated alongside a proving key in trusted setups or universal schemes.

Smart contract or program that checks a zero knowledge or validity proof using a verification key, returning true if the proof is correct.

Commitment tree using vector commitments to reduce proof size and speed state proofs compared to Merkle Patricia tries, proposed for Ethereum state.

Process by which token allocations become unlocked over time according to a schedule, aligned with cliffs and linear release to reduce immediate sell pressure.

Initial period during which no tokens unlock, followed by the first large release, common in team and investor allocations to align incentives.

Smart contract function that reads state without modifying it, callable off chain without gas, marked as view or pure in EVM languages.

Image model that applies transformer architectures to patch tokens, scaling well with data and compute, often used in multimodal and perception stacks.

Hybrid L2 approach letting users choose between on chain data availability like a rollup or off chain like a validium on a per transaction basis.

Cryptographic primitive that produces a random output and proof verifiable by anyone, used for lotteries, leader election, and fair on chain randomness.

Average price of an asset weighted by traded volume over a period, target for execution algorithms to minimize market impact in centralized and on chain venues.

Python like smart contract language for the EVM focused on simplicity and auditability, with restricted features to reduce attack surface compared to Solidity.