This glossary defines the vocabulary you will meet in Animica’s specifications, code, wallets and RPC. Entries are alphabetical; each gives a short definition and, where one exists, a link to the learn article that goes deeper. Terms marked “design” describe mechanisms that exist in the specification or code but are not enforced on mainnet as of 2026-08-23; the useful-work article has the full status table.
A
Address — The identifier that receives ANM. Animica addresses are bech32m strings with human-readable part anim; the payload is a 2-byte algorithm id followed by the SHA3-256 hash of the public key. An ML-DSA-65 account address is 66 characters and starts anim1zqp. See addresses and bech32m.
Address freeze — A validation-only rule active since block 42,000 (FORK_ADDRESS_FREEZE) under which a block is rejected if it contains a non-coinbase transaction touching a known-compromised address. The frozen set contains a single entry, the 2026-07 attacker address. See security and threat model.
AICF (AI Compute Fund / AI compute framework) — Animica’s off-chain AI layer: job matching, provider registry, inference serving, credits and settlement, exposed through the aicf.* RPC namespace. An OpenAI-compatible request to https://animica.dev/v1 becomes an AICF job served by a registered worker. See AICF.
AICF credits — An accounting unit earned by workers and contributors inside AICF (block credits, job receipts, contribution plans) and claimed through animica aicf claim. Credits are not ANM until settled.
AICF worker — A process started with animica miner aicf-worker start --address … --tiers … that registers to claim and serve inference jobs. A GPU is recommended for the flagship tier.
Alpha tuner (α-tuner) — A slow fairness corrector in the PoIES policy that nudges relative scoring of under-represented proof types over rolling windows, bounded to avoid oscillation. Design; no proofs are scored on mainnet today.
Animica Pay — The hosted merchant payment service at https://pay.animica.dev: payment intents, hosted checkout, invoices, point of sale and signed webhooks, with a 2.00% fee and all amounts in integer nANM. See how to buy and accept ANM.
ANM — The native coin of Animica. It pays transaction fees and contract gas, settles AI compute, and is what the block subsidy mints. 9 decimals. See ANM tokenomics.
anim1zqp… — The prefix every ML-DSA-65 account address shares, because the bech32m encoding of algorithm id 0x1003 produces the characters zqp directly after the separator.
B
Base fee — In the fee runtime, the per-gas component of a fee that can be burned or routed rather than paid to the miner; spec/params.yaml describes a 50% burn, but the runtime’s mainnet default base fee is 0, so today the whole fee goes to the block producer. See transactions and fees.
Base units (nANM) — The integer unit all APIs use. 1 ANM = 1,000,000,000 nANM (nano-ANM). Never send floats.
bech32m — The checksummed address encoding defined in BIP-350, using the constant 0x2bc830a3. Animica requires bech32m; a plain bech32 (BIP-173) checksum is invalid.
BIP-39 — The mnemonic-phrase standard Animica wallets use as the root of HD derivation: a 12- or 24-word phrase becomes a 64-byte seed. See wallets and HD derivation.
Block — A header plus its transactions and (optionally) proofs. Mainnet blocks are limited to 2,000,000 bytes, 40,000,000 gas and 20,000 transactions.
Block subsidy — The new ANM a block mints: 300 ANM per block in the first epoch, halving every 1,350,000 blocks, with a 0.0001 ANM tail. Often called the block reward. See ANM tokenomics.
Block time — The target interval between blocks, 60 seconds on mainnet. The measured average is about 67 seconds (2026-08-23); a 60-second minimum-spacing parameter exists but is not binding on the live network.
Bounded retarget — A rule active since block 75,000 (FORK_BOUNDED_RETARGET) that clamps the emergency difficulty reduction and adds a floor escape, closing a trapdoor in which one slow block could pin Θ at its minimum permanently. See difficulty adjustment and Θ.
C
CAIP-2 chain id — The cross-chain identifier format namespace:reference. Animica mainnet is animica:1, testnet animica:2, devnet animica:1337; the animica namespace registration is an open pull request.
Canonical CBOR — The deterministic CBOR encoding (RFC 8949 §4.2.1: sorted keys, minimal integers) used for transactions, headers and signing preimages so every node hashes identical bytes.
Chain id — The integer identifying the network inside signed transactions; mainnet is 1. A mismatch is rejected with RPC error -32011.
Checkpoint (pinned) — A block hash that nodes refuse to reorg past, pinned in code after specific past incidents. An operational safety net, not a finality mechanism.
Circulating supply — The explorer endpoint /api/circulating-supply returns the node’s state.getTotalSupply in whole ANM (about 110.79 M as of 2026-08-23). It is the ledger total, not adjusted for vesting.
Coinbase — The address credited with the block subsidy and fees; also the name of the special transaction that pays it. Since block 75,000 the coinbase output is split between the miner, the foundation treasury and the service carve.
Confirmations — The number of blocks built on top of the block containing a transaction. Because there is no finality gadget, confirmations are how settlement risk is measured; tx.getStatus reports them.
Contract address — An address whose algorithm id is 0x0000, assigned to a deployed Python-VM contract. See Python-VM smart contracts.
CDDL — The schema language (Concise Data Definition Language) used for Animica’s CBOR wire formats such as spec/tx_format.cddl and spec/header_format.cddl.
D
Data availability (DA) — The subsystem that stores blobs as erasure-coded, namespaced leaves committed to by a DA root in the header, so light clients can sample for availability. Design-level on L1; the L2 has its own DA encoding.
DAS (Data availability sampling) — Probabilistic sampling of DA shares with Merkle proofs to assert that a blob is available without downloading it.
Devnet / testnet — Networks animica:1337 and animica:2 used for development. They have faucets and lower premines; mainnet has no faucet.
Difficulty — On Animica, the threshold Θ. The Bitcoin-compatible RPC reports a synthetic difficulty exp(thetaMicro / 10^6) for tools that expect one.
Dilithium3 — The lineage name of ML-DSA-65 used in older documents. It refers to the same current scheme.
Domain separation — Prefixing signed or hashed data with a fixed tag (for example animica.tx.v1, animica.l2.tx.v1, animica.ai.proof-of-inference.v1) so a signature valid in one context cannot be replayed in another.
E
Emission epoch — A run of 1,350,000 blocks during which the subsidy is constant. Epoch 0 is heights 1 to 1,350,000; each later epoch halves the subsidy.
ENA — The open training and data layer: CPU useful-work jobs (scrape, extract, embed, index, eval and others) and GPU fine-tuning, coordinated off-chain with local receipts and credits.
Escort rules — PoIES policy requirements that a block include a mix of proof types to reach the top credit tier, preventing any single lane from dominating. Design.
Explorer — https://explorer.animica.org, with pages /tx/…, /address/…, /block/… and a REST API under /api/. See block explorer guide.
F
Fee — gasLimit × gasPrice, paid in nANM. A transfer is 21,000 gas at 1 nANM per gas, i.e. 21,000 nANM. Admission requires the sender’s balance to cover amount plus fee.
Finality depth — Since block 75,000 (FORK_FINALITY_DEPTH) the maximum reorg depth a node accepts is clamped into a code-committed range, so a block deep enough is irreversible on every node regardless of local configuration. It does not reject blocks and does not prevent one-block forks.
Fork (consensus fork) — A rule change that activates at a fixed block height and applies only from that height onward (forward-only, grandfathered). Mainnet heights: 40,000 (PQ hardening, root commitment), 42,000 (address freeze), 42,001 (foundation split), 44,444 (inclusion implies execution), 50,000 (IOU settlement), 75,000 (treasury 25%, service carve, bounded retarget, value-carrying CALL, finality depth, quantum beacon, VM execution, useful-work verify).
Fork choice — The rule that picks the canonical chain among competing tips: weight-based with deterministic tie-breakers and a maximum reorg depth.
forkId — A 32-bit identifier (3511060514 on mainnet) included in the transaction signing wrapper alongside the chain id, so signatures bind to a specific rule set.
Foundation treasury — The address anim1zqpsmegc0qcvzjfukm89xs0zeu3eqyyyel7kelehuszvwfarqypky2gr946ga, hard-coded in consensus/rewards.py, that has received 15% of each subsidy since block 42,001 and 25% (plus unclaimed service carve) since block 75,000.
G
Gamma cap (Γ) — The ceiling on total useful-work credit Σψ in one block: 12,000,000 µ-nats on mainnet, with per-type and per-entity sub-caps. Design.
Gas — The unit of execution cost. A transfer costs 21,000 gas; contract calls are metered against vm_py/gas_table.json; blocks hold up to 40,000,000 gas.
Gas price — The nANM paid per gas unit. eth_gasPrice returns 0x1: 1 nANM per gas on mainnet today.
Gas table — vm_py/gas_table.json, the per-operation cost schedule for the Python VM.
Genesis — Block 0, 2026-04-06T00:00:00Z, hash 0xa0892158cf997c56e91d0aa12e60c36037dae34800a2b54111a8fa17ec88b7de. It credits the 81 M ANM premine and pays no subsidy.
H
H(u) — The hash-work term of the PoIES score, −ln(u), where u is the header hash treated as a uniform draw. Rarer hashes give larger H(u). On mainnet today acceptance is equivalent to H(u) ≥ Θ.
Halving — The 50% reduction of the block subsidy at each emission-epoch boundary (every 1,350,000 blocks). The first is expected around late 2028 to early 2029.
HashShare — The proof type that represents ordinary hash work within PoIES; the only lane that contributes on mainnet, where it is evaluated directly as the header-hash target check.
HD derivation — Deriving many keys from one seed. Animica uses BIP-39 → SLIP-0010 hardened derivation along m/44'/4279885'/account'/0'/index' to a 32-byte ML-DSA-65 seed; coin type 4279885 is ASCII “ANM”. See wallets and HD derivation.
Head — The current best block. chain.getHead returns its height, hash, chain id and thetaMicro. There is no chain.getHeight.
Header — The block header: parent hash, roots, height, timestamp, Θ, nonce and related fields, encoded as canonical CBOR. The header hash is SHA3-256 of that encoding.
HRP — The human-readable part of a bech32m string; anim for Animica.
I
Inclusion implies execution — The rule active since block 44,444 (FORK_STATE_COMMITMENT): a block that commits a non-zero state root must commit the true post-execution root, so inclusion cannot be used to fake a payment that never ran. It self-gates on zero roots, which mainnet headers still carry, so it is armed rather than exercised; services such as Animica Pay wait for a receipt.
Intrinsic gas — The up-front gas charged for a transaction’s kind, size and signature before any execution. A plain transfer’s intrinsic gas is its whole cost.
IOU settlement — The mechanism (fork at 50,000, realised in release 9.0.0) by which authority-signed settlement-anchor transactions distribute carved rewards, originally designed for dVPN relays and now used for service claims.
J
JSON-RPC — The node API: POST https://rpc.animica.org/rpc, JSON-RPC 2.0, namespaces chain.*, state.*, tx.*, mempool.*, net.*, aicf.* and flat l2_*. Described by https://rpc.animica.org/openrpc.json. See JSON-RPC API guide.
K
Keccak vs SHA3 — Animica’s SHA3-256 is the NIST FIPS 202 function, which differs in padding from the pre-standard Keccak-256 that Ethereum uses. Using the wrong one produces wrong addresses and hashes.
Kyber-768 / ML-KEM — The post-quantum key-encapsulation mechanism used in the P2P handshake, with HKDF-SHA3-256 for session keys. See P2P networking and sync.
L
L2 (ANM-native rollup) — The payment rollup in l2/ (release 10.x): ANM is the only asset, every transaction is ML-DSA-65 signed, batches settle to L1 with a designated sequencer. RPC methods are l2_status, l2_getBalance and related. See the Animica L2 rollup.
Light client — A client that verifies headers and inclusion proofs rather than executing every block. Animica’s SDKs expose light_client/verify helpers; watch-only address books use them.
M
Mempool — The node’s pool of admitted, unconfirmed transactions. mempool.simulateAdmission dry-runs the admission checks.
Merkle root — A hash committing to a set (transactions, receipts, proofs, state) so membership can be proven with a short path. Headers carry several.
Miner — A node or process searching nonces so the header hash falls under the target. animica up runs the reference miner; a GPU miner and a Qt GUI exist. See mining guide.
Mining pool — stratum+tcp://pool.animica.org:3333 (PPS) and :3334 (solo, 95/5). Stats at https://pool.animica.org/api/pool/summary.
ML-DSA-65 — The lattice-based digital signature scheme standardised in FIPS 204 and the only signature scheme mainnet accepts: scheme id 0x1003, public key 1,952 bytes, secret key 4,032 bytes, signature 3,309 bytes. See post-quantum signatures.
Minimum block spacing — A spec/params.yaml parameter (60,000 ms on mainnet) intended to stop bursts of fast blocks. Intervals as short as 8 seconds are observed on the live chain, so it is not an enforced rule today.
N
Nats / µ-nats — The unit of PoIES scores and of Θ: natural-log units, stored as integers of micro-nats (1 nat = 1,000,000 µ-nats). thetaMicro is Θ in µ-nats.
NMT (Namespaced Merkle Tree) — A Merkle tree whose leaves carry namespace ranges, used by the DA layer so a client can prove all leaves of one namespace. Design-level on L1.
Nonce (header) — The field a miner varies to search for a valid header hash.
Nonce-less transaction (v2) — The current transaction body, which has no account nonce; replay protection comes from a validAfter/validUntil height window, a random salt and transaction-id uniqueness. Legacy v1 nonce transactions are still accepted.
Nullifier — A domain-separated digest attached to a proof so the same proof body cannot be credited twice within a TTL window (65,536 blocks on mainnet).
O
OpenRPC — The machine-readable description of the JSON-RPC surface, in spec/openrpc.json and served live at https://rpc.animica.org/openrpc.json; rpc.discover returns it.
P
P2P — The gossip network over which blocks, transactions and headers propagate; TCP port 30333 and QUIC on UDP 443 on mainnet.
PoIES — Proof-of-Integrated-External-Services, the consensus rule S = H(u) + Σψ ≥ Θ. On mainnet Σψ is zero for every block, so acceptance reduces to hash work. See PoIES consensus explained.
Policy root — A Merkle hash of spec/poies_policy.yaml committed in headers, so all nodes score under the same policy.
Post-quantum (PQ) — Cryptography believed secure against quantum computers. Animica signs with ML-DSA-65 and negotiates P2P sessions with ML-KEM; SPHINCS+ is legacy.
PPS — Pay-per-share, the pool’s payout mode: miners are credited per valid share at its expected value. Sub-block shares were built in pool 9.1.0, but the live pool currently hands every worker the block target, so shares and blocks coincide in practice (2026-08-23).
Premine — The 81,000,000 ANM created at genesis, credited to one foundation-managed address and described in spec/params.yaml as foundation, treasury, AICF and founder buckets.
Proof envelope — The uniform container for a useful-work proof: a type id, a body and a nullifier, plus typed metrics. Design on mainnet.
Proof-of-inference receipt — A non-consensus receipt introduced in release 7.1.1 (the VIE): the model id, prompt hash, output hash and sampling seed of an AI response, signed with ML-DSA-65 under animica.ai.proof-of-inference.v1, verifiable offline with animica ai verify.
Provider — In AICF, a registered entity that serves AI or quantum jobs, subject to SLA metrics and, by design, slashing.
ψ (psi) — The capped, policy-mapped credit of one useful-work proof in the PoIES score. Σψ is the sum over a block’s proofs. Zero on mainnet today.
Python-VM (vm_py) — Animica’s deterministic, gas-metered contract runtime that executes a restricted subset of Python. Storage values are bytes; from stdlib import hash provides SHA3. Live on mainnet since block 75,000. See Python-VM smart contracts and the Hello Counter tutorial.
Q
QRNG — A quantum random number generator. Animica’s QUW lane accepts hardware-attested QRNG entropy into the randomness beacon; software fallbacks are flagged non-attested.
Quantum beacon — A randomness beacon value built from accepted attested entropy. FORK_QUANTUM_BEACON (block 75,000) lets the chain commit to one, but commitments are optional and none are produced; the rule is dormant by design.
Quantum proof / trap circuits — A QuantumProof v1 envelope with provider attestation, benchmark parameters and trap-circuit statistics (Clifford stabilizer, randomized benchmarking, heavy-output and IQP traps) that make cheating statistically detectable. Design; no mainnet proofs.
R
Receipt — The record of a transaction’s execution: status, gas used, logs. Merchants should treat a payment as made only when its receipt proves that specific transaction executed.
Reorg — Replacement of the chain tip by a competing branch. Possible on any proof-of-work chain; bounded in depth since block 75,000; the reason confirmations matter.
Retarget — The per-block adjustment of Θ toward the 60-second target using a bounded exponential moving average. See difficulty adjustment and Θ.
RPC error codes — Animica’s structured rejections: -32010 invalid transaction, -32011 chain-id mismatch, -32012 bad signature, -32013 insufficient funds, -32016 gas too low, -32017 fee too low, -32018 transaction too large, -32020 duplicate.
S
Salt — The random field in a v2 transaction that makes two otherwise identical transactions produce different ids.
Scheme id — The 16-bit algorithm identifier at the front of an address payload and in the signature envelope: 0x1003 (4099) for ML-DSA-65, 0x1002 for legacy SPHINCS+, 0x0000 for contracts.
Service carve — Since block 75,000, 25% of every subsidy (75 ANM) withheld from the miner and paid either entirely to providers named in a settlement anchor (pro-rata) or, if none, to the foundation treasury. Emission-conserving. See ANM tokenomics.
Settlement anchor — An authority-signed in-block transfer that distributes carved rewards to providers; the mechanism by which AI work is actually paid.
SHA3-256 / SHA3-512 — NIST SHA-3 hash functions. SHA3-256 hashes public keys into addresses and headers into block hashes; SHA3-512 hashes transaction signing preimages.
Signature envelope — The signed transaction wrapper {tx, sigs: [{alg: 4099, pubkey, sig}]}, CBOR-encoded and submitted as hex via tx.sendRawTransaction.
SLIP-0010 — The hardened key-derivation scheme (HMAC-SHA512 chaining) Animica uses beneath BIP-39 to reach ML-DSA-65 seeds.
Solo mining — Mining against your own node, or via the pool’s :3334 port with a 95/5 split.
SPHINCS+ — A hash-based post-quantum signature scheme (scheme id 0x1002) present in the code and early wallets but consensus-stranded: it cannot sign on mainnet. Do not send funds to a SPHINCS+ address.
State root — The Merkle commitment to all account balances and contract storage after a block executes. Enforced for non-zero roots from block 44,444; mainnet headers currently commit a zero root.
Stratum — The mining wire protocol the pool speaks (stratum+tcp://). ASIC and GPU miners connect with it.
T
Tail emission — The 0.0001 ANM per-block floor below which the subsidy never falls; it applies from roughly epoch 22 onward and adds about 52.6 ANM per year.
Θ (theta) — The PoIES acceptance threshold, the chain’s difficulty, expressed in µ-nats. Returned as thetaMicro by chain.getHead (about 26.4 million as of 2026-08-23).
Tip (priority fee) — The per-gas component of a fee paid to the block producer. spec/params.yaml describes a 90/10 split with the AICF pool, but the runtime default is 0 bps, so the whole tip goes to the producer today.
Transaction kinds — transfer (move ANM), deploy (create a contract) and call (invoke one). A call may carry ANM value since block 75,000.
Treasury 25 — The fork at 75,000 (FORK_TREASURY_25) that raised the foundation treasury’s share of the subsidy from 15% to 25%.
Trap circuits — See quantum proof. Circuits with known outputs mixed unpredictably into a quantum job so that a provider cannot skip or spoof verification.
TEE — Trusted execution environment (SGX, SEV-SNP, Arm CCA). The PoIES AI lane requires a TEE quote for proofs on mainnet; devnets may allow software attestation. Design.
txid — The transaction hash, a SHA3 digest of the canonical body; uniqueness within the validity window is the v2 replay protection.
U
Useful work — External computation (AI, quantum, storage, delay functions) that PoIES can credit toward block acceptance. Designed and partly implemented; not credited on mainnet. See useful work: AI and quantum.
Useful-work verify — The fork at 75,000 (FORK_USEFUL_WORK_VERIFY) that verifies any proofs a block carries. It never requires a proof, never grants ψ, and runs in observe-only mode on mainnet by default.
UWP (Useful Work Proof policy) — spec/uwp_policy.yaml: a pool-level scheme letting stratum shares carry small proofs for bonus credits from an AICF budget. require_proofs is false everywhere.
V
validAfter / validUntil — The block-height window inside which a v2 transaction may be included. Outside it the transaction is simply invalid, which is how an unconfirmed transaction expires.
Value-carrying CALL — Since block 75,000 (FORK_VALUE_CALL) a contract call may transfer ANM to the callee, debited before execution and returned on revert.
VDF — Verifiable delay function (Wesolowski construction) used in the randomness beacon and defined as a PoIES proof lane.
VIE (Verifiable Inference Engine) — The release 7.1.1 component that produces proof-of-inference receipts and the animica ai verify | receipt | replay tooling.
W
Wallet — Software holding ML-DSA-65 keys and signing transactions: the browser extension, Qt desktop, Flutter mobile and the CLI (the web wallet at wallet.animica.org was discontinued in July 2026). Downloads at https://animica.org/downloads.
Watch-only — An address-book entry with no private key; it can show balances and detect payments but cannot sign.
X
x402 — An HTTP-level payment protocol (status 402) that Animica runs a paywall and facilitator for at https://x402.animica.dev, with an ANM-native lane identified as animica:1. See x402 agent payments.
Sources
docs/GLOSSARY.mddocs/ANIMICA_2026_STATE.mdAGENTS.mdspec/params.yaml,spec/poies_policy.yaml,spec/uwp_policy.yamldocs/wallet/HD_DERIVATION.mdcore/network_params.py,consensus/rewards.py,consensus/service_carve.py