Glossary

Account

An account on the blockchain, represented by a public key. Accounts may hold a token balance, transfer tokens, and pay transaction fees. Not to be confused with Message Source Accounts, which are unique to Frequency and ensure that user-generated data has verifiable authorship. See Identity Management.

Autonomous User

An end user who spends tokens to perform transactions directly on Frequency, in contrast to a coinless user, who delegates to Providers in order to pay transaction fees. See Autonomous Users.

Batch

See Message Batch.

Capacity

An alternate payment mechanism for certain classes of transactions that allows Messages to be sent and on-chain work to occur over time. Capacity allows Providers a rate-limited continuous stream of transactions and provides an alternative to using tokens to perform individual transactions. Capacity is generated via Capacity Staking and Provider Boosting. See Capacity Model.

Capacity Allocation

The amount of Capacity generated for a Provider per Capacity Epoch. See Capacity Renewal.

Capacity Epoch

The number of blocks before Capacity refills. In other words, it is the number of blocks before a Provider may reuse their Capacity Allocation. See Capacity Renewal.

Capacity Staking

A form of staking that allows Providers to use FRQCY as efficiently as possible, optimizing their generated Capacity for serving end users. Capacity Staking generates more Capacity per token staked than Provider Boosting. See Capacity Staking.

Capacity Staking Ratio

The ratio of the number of FRQCY that must be staked per unit of Capacity generated each Capacity Epoch. See Capacity Staking.

Coinless User

An end user who doesn’t use tokens to interact with Frequency. While coinless users maintain Control Keys that enable them to directly control their authentication and authorization data on chain, they delegate transaction handling to a Provider who will in turn manage data transactions (such as sending Messages) on their behalf. See Benefits of Delegation.

Collator

A Frequency Node that generates blocks and submits them to the Relay Chain. Frequency currently operates using Invulnerable Collators, but intends to transition to Public Collators in the future. See Collator.

Collator Nodes

Servers that participate in the Frequency Network and are configured to form blocks. See Operational Model.

Collator Rewards

FRQCY awarded to Frequency-specific Public Collators for staking to the Frequency Network and participating in block formation activities. See Collator Incentives.

Content Identifier (CID)

A unique identifier used with IPFS derived from the content of a file. See Schema Payload Location.

Control Key

The public key used to control an MSA. See Identity Management.

Delegation Model

The mechanism whereby end users can grant permission to perform tasks that require significant blockchain knowledge or token ownership to Providers, reducing friction and enabling Message Batching to improve scalability. Also includes the concept of Revocation, where a user can revoke permission to perform those tasks from a Provider. Revocation does not have any on-chain transaction fees associated with the transaction, ensuring that Coinless Users can invoke it without Provider permission. See Delegation Model.

End User

A user who owns an MSA but is not acting as a Provider. An end user may choose to own tokens to participate in Provider Boosting to support services and participate in on-chain governance with Capacity. See Delegation Model However, end users typically delegate other tasks to Providers who perform actions on the user's behalf. See Coinless Users and Delegation.

Existential Deposit

The minimum token amount an Account that is not associated with an MSA may have and still be considered alive. See Message Source Accounts.

Frequency Council

The set of Frequency accounts that are responsible for certain governance actions, including Provider approval. See Governance.

Frequency Node

A server that participates in the Frequency network. See Interaction Model.

FRQCY

The native coin on Frequency Mainnet, which can be used to pay any Frequency transaction fees, or staked for Capacity. Sometimes referred to as "FRQCY Token" or simply "tokens". Holders of FRQCY are often referred to as token holders. See Tokenomics.

Handle

See User Handle.

Handle Base

The user-selected portion of the Handle Display. See Handle Creation.

Handle Display

A user’s entire User Handle as displayed by the system including the user-selected Handle Base and the system-selected Handle Suffix, separated by a “.” character. See Handle Creation.

Handle Suffix

The system-selected numeric portion of the Handle Display. See Handle Creation.

InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)

A decentralized content-addressed file system protocol. See https://docs.ipfs.tech/ for more detail.

Invulnerable Collator

A collator that cannot be removed without governance action.

Key pair

A matching public key and private key. The private key can be used to generate cryptographic signatures which third parties may verify with the public key. See Identity Management.

Message

A protocol related data item that is indexed by its Schema Id and block number. See Messages.

Message Batch

A collection of Messages, possibly from many different Message Source Accounts (MSAs), that allows Providers to publish a single on-chain transaction that references large quantities of data off chain, thereby reducing the transaction fee. See Batching.

Message Source Account (MSA)

Message Source Accounts (MSAs) are distinct from Token Accounts and unique to Frequency. They ensure protocol related data items have verifiable authorship. End users with MSAs are not required to have FRQCY or Capacity to interact with Frequency, but may instead choose to delegate tasks that require Capacity to Providers. See Message Source Accounts.

MSA Id

The unique 64-bit unsigned integer identifier associated with an MSA. See Message Source Accounts.

On-Chain Message

A Message that has its payload stored on the Frequency blockchain. See Payload Location.

Off-Chain Message

A Message that has its payload stored on IPFS. See Payload Location.

Payload

The data within a protocol related data item. The format of the payload is defined by the corresponding Schema Model. See Schemas.

Payload Location

The attribute of a Frequency Schema that specifies how and where data will be stored. See Schema Models.

Provider

The holder of an MSA that can allow others to delegate to it such as applications and services that use the Capacity economic system. Providers utilize Capacity to serve the end users that delegate to them. See Providers.

Provider Boosting

Provider Boosting allows users to stake FRQCY they hold to support specific Providers. Providers who are "boosted" by end users receive additional Capacity, while Users who "boost" Providers receive a reward (in the form of additional FRQCY).

See Boosting.

Public Collator

A Collator who bonds FRQCY in order to participate in block formation, and receives rewards for participation. Public Collators who behave improperly risk losing their position and their bond. See Collator Incentives.

Reward Epoch

The number of blocks between distributions of Provider Boosting rewards. See Boosting.

Revocation

See Delegation Model.

Schema

Registered data structures for Messages and Stateful Storage items. Frequency Schemas define where Payloads are stored and how end users can parse the data within. See also On-Chain Message and Off-Chain Message. See Schemas.

Schema Id

The unique identifier of a Schema on Frequency. See Schemas.

Schema Model

Metadata about a Frequency Schema that defines the format and structure of the Schema itself, from which applications can determine how to serialize and deserialize data using the Schema. Frequency supports two model types for data: Parquet and Avro. See Schema Models.