Glossary

Vocabulary you will see across DAIT docs, code, and the whitepaper.

Chain concepts

Block-STM

Software transactional memory for parallel EVM execution. Transactions are speculatively scheduled; conflicts roll back and re-execute. Opt-in per tx on DAIT to keep gas accounting predictable for legacy contracts.

cosmos/evm

The base L1 framework DAIT forks. Apache-2.0, ICF-funded, official successor to Evmos / Ethermint. Cosmos SDK v0.53.x + CometBFT v0.39.x + parallel EVM. See overview.

IAVLx

The next-generation IAVL state DB shipping Q4 2026 in cosmos-sdk. DAIT targets 369ms blocks once IAVLx lands; v1 ships at the realistic 999ms.

Quartet

Hour-1 promotion of validator-4 from the standby pool to the active set, exercising the on-chain validator-add flow on Day 1. After Hour 1 the chain has 4 validators (BFT-safe). External onboarding opens Day 2.

Trinity

The 3-validator genesis ceremony. Block 0 needs >=2/3 voting power; with N=3 trinity that means 2 of 3 must be live and connected before consensus advances.

Compute concepts

Audited attribute

A provider claim about itself (region, GPU class, etc.) signed by a whitelisted auditor. The compute-market matcher only filters on audited entries.

NRAS

NVIDIA Remote Attestation Service. Produces a JWT signed by NVIDIA that includes measurement, nonce, tcb, and an attestation pubkey. Phase 1 verifies via JWKS-pinning; Phase 2 ports the local NRAS verifier.

PoUW

Proof of Useful Work. Non-transferable, decaying credits earned by hosts when they post a valid attested inference receipt. See x/pouw.

REPORTDATA

The 64-byte field inside a TEE quote that binds a session pubkey to the quote. REPORTDATA = sha256(chain_id || host_addr || epoch_nonce || session_pubkey). Quotes whose REPORTDATA does not match are rejected.

SEV-SNP

AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging. CPU-side TEE for confidential VMs. Requires EPYC 7003 (Genoa) or newer.

SPUR-IC

The over-the-wire receipt format that travels in HTTP headers between tenant and host during state-channel inference. See SPUR-IC spec.

TCB

Trusted Computing Base. The microcode + firmware version vector inside an attestation quote. Governance maintains a per-vendor minimum below which quotes are rejected.

TDX

Intel's Trust Domain Extensions. CPU-side TEE for confidential VMs. Requires 4th-gen Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) or newer.

TEE

Trusted Execution Environment. Hardware-isolated execution context that produces an attestation quote signed by the platform. DAIT uses TDX (CPU), SEV-SNP (CPU), and NRAS (GPU).

Receipt and channel concepts

ChannelState

The off-chain state of a state-channel session: channel_id, turn_num, spent_amount, receipts_merkle_root, both signatures. Co-signed by user and host on every turn. See SPUR-IC §4.

commit-reveal window

The block delay between MsgCommitReceipt and MsgRevealReceipt in x/pouw. Default Params.commit_reveal_window. Forces validators to commit to the receipt's hash before learning its content, which is what makes the censorship-resistance argument work.

force-include

The ABCI++ rule that any commit referenced by >=2/3 voting power in vote extensions MUST be included by the next proposer. Prevents a single colluding validator from censoring a host's PoUW receipts.

Nitro / ForceMove

The state-channel turn-taking protocol DAIT adopts. Whichever side presents the highest co-signed turn_num during the challenge window wins settlement. See x/state_channel.

turn_num

Monotonic counter inside ChannelState. Bumped on every co-signed update. Higher number wins disputes.

Tier and slashing concepts

Heavy / Node / Supernode / Oracle

Tiers in x/staking_tiers. Each is a stake floor plus a set of rights. See tier table.

uDAIT

The on-chain unit. 1 DAIT = 10^6 uDAIT on the Cosmos side; the EVM seam scales to 18 decimals via the precise-bank module.