Glossary
Glossary
ROKO Technical Terms
A-D
Atomic Clock: Ultra-precise timekeeping device using atomic transitions, achieving nanosecond accuracy.
BABE (Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension): Substrate's block production mechanism that ROKO extends with temporal proofs.
Beacon Proof: A K-of-N selection of time beacons included in a block or transaction to cryptographically prove its timestamp via median calculation.
Beacons Pallet: Substrate pallet responsible for teaching validators how to produce and broadcast time beacons.
Drift: Time deviation between validator clocks. Launch tolerance is 2 seconds, targeting 500ms as network matures.
Drift Tolerance / Tolerance Window: Configurable maximum time variance allowed between beacons for valid block/transaction proofs.
E-H
Epoch: Fixed time period in ROKO consensus, inherited from BABE/GRANDPA.
Epoch Randomness: Random value included in time beacons for verification, derived from the current epoch.
Frontier Pallet: Forked Substrate pallet providing EVM compatibility with temporal ordering support.
GRANDPA (GHOST-based Recursive ANcestor Deriving Prefix Agreement): Substrate's finality gadget used alongside BABE in ROKO.
Hardware Timestamping: Network card feature for precise packet timing, required for validator time cards.
I-N
IEEE 1588: Precision Time Protocol (PTP) standard for network synchronization.
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value): Profit extracted by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions. ROKO's temporal ordering prevents MEV at the protocol level.
NanoMoment: ROKO's high-precision timestamp format combining seconds, nanoseconds, and hardware attestation.
O-R
OCP-TAP: Open Compute Project Time Appliance Project specification for datacenter-grade timing hardware.
PTP (Precision Time Protocol): Network protocol for sub-microsecond clock synchronization (IEEE 1588).
S-T
Selfient: Self-executing smart contracts triggered by time conditions.
Spread: The difference between maximum and minimum beacon timestamps in a beacon proof, indicating time consensus quality.
Temporal Consensus: ROKO's time-based agreement mechanism built on top of BABE/GRANDPA using time beacons.
Temporal Ordering: Transaction execution order determined by proven signing time rather than block inclusion order or validator preference.
Temporal Transaction (Type 3): Transaction type with embedded time beacon proof establishing cryptographically-verified signing time.
Time Beacon: Signed timestamp broadcast by validators at regular intervals (150ms target at launch) containing validatorId, timestamp, sequence number, signature, and epoch randomness.
Time Blocks Pallet: Substrate pallet that wraps BABE to introduce beacon proof requirements and timestamp verification for blocks.
Time Card: OCP-TAP compliant hardware providing GPS-synchronized, cryptographically-attested timestamps.
TimeRPC: ROKO's specialized RPC interface for temporal operations and beacon queries.
Temporal Transactions Pallet: Substrate pallet introducing Type 3 transactions with temporal ordering enforcement.
U-Z
UTC: Coordinated Universal Time, the global time standard that ROKO validators synchronize to.
Note: Some terms like NanoMoment and TimeRPC represent higher-level abstractions. The underlying implementation uses Time Beacons and Substrate pallets as described in the technical architecture.