SUBFROST: A decentralized custodian for Bitcoin. It moves BTC into a programmable on-chain form and back, without a single company holding the coins.
Alkanes: A smart-contract metaprotocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain. SUBFROST is built on it.
Metaprotocol: A protocol built on top of another protocol. Alkanes is a metaprotocol on Bitcoin.
Protorunes: The standard Alkanes is compatible with. Alkanes is a protorunes-compatible protocol, not a fork of Runes.
Protostone: The unit of Alkanes execution encoded in a Bitcoin transaction. A transaction can carry several protostones (for example transfer, then mint, then call).
Cellpack: The message an Alkanes call carries, a list beginning with the target contract and an opcode, followed by inputs.
Alkane ID: A contract's address, a [block, tx] pair identifying where it was deployed.
View function: A read-only call that runs against indexer state and costs nothing, used to query balances, simulate calls, or read a contract's ABI.
Opcode: A numbered method on a contract. A call names the target Alkane ID and an opcode.
Runestone: A message embedded in an OP_RETURN output of a Bitcoin transaction.
OP_RETURN: A Bitcoin script opcode that embeds a small amount of data in a transaction.
BRC2.0: An EVM-compatible smart-contract layer on Bitcoin (also called brc20-prog) that runs Solidity contracts whose state is derived from Bitcoin transactions.
frBTC: Bitcoin-backed value inside Alkanes, pegged 1:1 to BTC and usable across Bitcoin DeFi.
DIESEL: The protocol's fair-launch native token. Every Bitcoin block emits the same amount of DIESEL as it emits new bitcoin, halving alongside Bitcoin.
FIRE: The token behind the FIRE vault, tied to bond mechanics priced against the protocol treasury through the oracle.
dxBTC: A yield-bearing synthetic Bitcoin asset (planned).
FUEL: A protocol token.
AMM: Automated Market Maker. A decentralized exchange that prices assets with a formula rather than an order book.
Wrap / Unwrap: Wrapping locks BTC and mints frBTC 1:1; unwrapping burns frBTC and releases the underlying BTC through the signer group.
Oracle: A decentralized group that brings outside data (mainly prices) on-chain by agreement, so no single party dictates the value.
Signer set: The group of participants that collectively custodies the BTC backing frBTC through threshold signing.
PSBT: Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction. The format a wallet signs when authorizing a transaction.
Schnorr signature: The signature scheme Bitcoin adopted in Taproot (BIP-340), over the secp256k1 curve. Its linearity lets partial signatures combine into one.
FROST: Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold. A threshold scheme letting a dynamic set of signers produce one Schnorr signature without any signer holding the full private key.
ROAST: Robust Asynchronous Schnorr Threshold. A robust, asynchronous optimization of FROST that keeps signing moving when some participants are slow or offline.
DKG: Distributed Key Generation. A ceremony where participants jointly produce one group public key while each holds only a secret share of the private key.
Keystore: An encrypted file (or hardware-backed store) that holds a user's sensitive cryptographic material.
AES-256-GCM: A modern authenticated encryption cipher providing both confidentiality and integrity.
PBKDF2: A key-derivation function that stretches a passphrase so guessing it offline is expensive.
ASCII armoring: Encoding binary data as human-readable text so it is easy to store and move.
metashrew: The base indexer that runs the Alkanes WASM against Bitcoin block data and answers view functions. It is the source of truth for on-chain state.
subshrew: The v10 indexer that runs the metashrew runtime against TiKV, decoupling the view layer from indexing.
rockshrew-mono: A single-binary way to run the metashrew runtime with a local database.
TiKV: A distributed key-value store used as the shared state backend for the v10 indexer.
ESPO: A secondary data indexer for bulk history and aggregates (trade counts, holder lists) that the base indexer does not compute.
WASM: WebAssembly. A binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine, used for both contracts and the indexer.
wasip2: A standardized interface for running WebAssembly modules across systems.