Glossary

Brief meanings for the vocabulary these docs use, grouped by topic.

On this page

Notes and proofs
Keys and addresses
Vault, market and operations

Notes and proofs

Note: A private balance entry: asset, value, owner key and blinding. Only its hash, the commitment, is on chain.
Commitment: Poseidon3(asset, value, Poseidon2(pk, blinding)). A leaf of the note tree that hides what it commits to.
Blinding: A random field element in each note that hides its owner and makes every commitment unique.
Nullifier: A value revealed at spend time, computed from commitment, leaf index and spending key. It stops a second spend without saying which note it was.
Filler note: An empty input or output, worth zero, that keeps every spend at two in and two out.
Note tree: The Merkle tree of commitments kept by the pool: Poseidon hashing, append-only, depth 24.
Root: The tree’s top hash. Each proof is built on one of the 100 most recent roots.
Zero-knowledge proof: A proof that a statement holds, here “I own these notes and the values add up”, without revealing which notes or what values.
Circuit: The program, written in Noir, that defines what a spend proof must show.
UltraHonk: The proof system Barretenberg uses for the circuit. It needs no setup ceremony specific to this project.
SRS: Structured reference string: public parameters from the Aztec Ignition ceremony that the prover and verifier use.
Ext data: Recipient, relayer, relayer fee and the two ciphertexts. A proof binds them by taking their hash as a public input.

Keys and addresses

Spending key: The secret field element sk that proves ownership of notes. Derived from your activation signature; never leaves the page.
Viewing key: An x25519 key pair. The public half encrypts notes to you; the private half lets your app find and read them.
Note public key: pk = Poseidon1(sk), the owner key inside a note.
Activation signature: The single Sign-In with Ethereum signature that your note keys come from. A given wallet yields identical keys each time.
Private address: ordeo: followed by your note public key and viewing key in hex. Safe to share.
Key registry: The contract that maps a 0x address to the note keys it published, so others can pay that address privately.
Payment link: A link carrying a one-time key for one note. Whoever opens it can claim the note, like cash.

Vault, market and operations

Shield / unshield: Move public tokens or ETH into a new note / spend notes to a public address.
Vault share: The unit of a token note. Each share is a claim on part of the vault’s backing.
Backing: The tokens that stand behind all vault shares.
Holder yield: The growth in what each share is worth, from fees and donations added to the backing without new shares.
Donation: Tokens added to the vault backing with donate, raising every share’s value.
Creator fee: The part of each Pons trading fee paid to the launch’s creator fee recipient: here, the splitter.
Fee splitter: The contract that splits incoming ETH fees 50/50 between the team and the harvester.
Harvester: The operated service that spends the holders’ half of the fees on tokens for the vault as donations, and tops up bundler gas.
Bundler: A service that submits your spend from its own wallet, charging a flat fee taken from your notes; your address stays off the transaction.
Reference price: A median of quotes over the last 6 hours, used by bundlers and the harvester instead of the price of the moment.
Bonding curve: The Pons contract the token trades on first; its price rises as tokens are bought.
Graduation: When the bonding curve fills, the token moves on to a Pons Uniswap v4 pool.
Meme hook: The Pons Uniswap v4 hook on the graduated pool, through which the Pons fee is charged.
Privacy set: The notes a spend could be hiding among: every note in the tree. Small at launch.
Practice mode: How the app runs before deployment: signed actions with practice balances, no transactions and no real funds.