Glossary

Canonical Protocol Terms

The public vocabulary for ZK-AI — each term has its own page. When a definition says “not X”, that exclusion is normative. Also linked from Legal and Trademarks.

3DVC: Independent certification program for operators who pass conformance testing. Shown only when certified — not automatic, not required to use receipts or Sigils. The mark attests that an operator met published protocol tests; it does not replace offline receipt validity for every deployment.
dePoD: Proof of demand produced near execution — useful, receipt-backed machine work, not clicks or idle presence. dePoD ties economic demand signals to accountable activity that can be inspected through receipts and anchors rather than vanity metrics.
DoT: Depth of Trust — how deep a proof goes, from structured claim through offline validity to on-log recognition and hybrid crypto. DoT profiles are additive: a verifier reports which conditions passed instead of collapsing everything into one badge.
DoT-0: Structured claim — a canonical receipt envelope exists and can carry a machine-action claim. At the public verifier v0.1 layer, DoT-0 passes when crypto_ok is true (declaration-only).
DoT-1: Schema-valid — the committed claim validates against an immutable schema root. At the public verifier v0.1 layer, DoT-1 passes when crypto_ok is true (declaration-only).
DoT-2: Constrained — bounded egress or equivalent constraints are declared and verified. At the public verifier v0.1 layer, DoT-2 passes when crypto_ok is true (declaration-only).
DoT-3: Policy-bound — policy, routing, or lane constraints are bound into the receipt. At the public verifier v0.1 layer, DoT-3 passes when crypto_ok is true (declaration-only).
DoT-4: Offline-valid receipt state. Mathematics and declared profiles check out without a network call. Sigil S4 (Proven) reflects this state — it does not imply chain witness or Verified on-log language.
DoT-5: Recognized on-log state. Governed chain evidence records when a receipt batch was witnessed through inclusion proof material. Sigil S5 (Recorded) requires this evidence — it cannot be awarded from UI copy alone.
EG: Evidence Graph — discovery and forensics for proof trails. It finds receipts, anchors, and related facts; it does not decide validity. Every discovery hit still must pass independent signature verification.
Receipt: Signed ZK-SNAP record of a verifiable machine activity — portable proof that survives outside the original platform. A receipt is canonical JSON with provenance, inputs_root, timestamp, signature, profiles, and optional ext_* commitments.
Sigil: Deterministic trust mark (S0–S6) computed by verification — never awarded manually. S4 = proven offline; S5 = recorded on-log. The same receipt bytes always produce the same Sigil state for a given verifier implementation.
TCK: Conformance testing against shared goldens. Baseline interop is open; the 3DVC program suite is certification-gated. Passing baseline TCK means implementations can interoperate on receipt bytes — not that an operator earned the certification mark.
VMA: Verifiable Machine Activity — the accountable action a receipt represents. VMA is the production-time event (create, transform, approve, command, settle) bound into signed material, not a summary line in a vendor log.
ZK-SNAP: The canonical receipt primitive for verifiable machine activity — signed, portable, verifiable from bytes alone. ZK-SNAP is the open interchange kernel; ZK-AI Chain, Evidence Graph, and program marks are governed layers on top.
ZK-AI Chain: Governed witness layer for on-log recognition — ordering and inclusion, not a receipt database or file store. Operators anchor batch roots; verifiers use inclusion proofs to connect receipt_id to witness material without publishing private payloads on-chain.
GAS: Protocol resource metering unit. GAS measures accountable machine work under protocol rules — not clicks, idle presence, or vanity engagement metrics.
ZKAI: Settlement asset used to pay GAS on ZK-AI Chain when network settlement is live. ZKAI is the protocol economic unit; ZK-SNAP receipts remain valid without chain settlement.
PRS: Public Recognition Surface — public auditability interface. PRS exposes receipt_id, batch_root, anchor_id, inclusion proof material, and computed recognition state without locators, tenant identifiers, or identifiability-increasing metadata.
PDS: Permissioned Disclosure Surface — authorization-gated audit escalation. PDS may provide encrypted locator envelopes, retention policy, commitment openings, and evidence artifacts bound to receipt context.
OAS: Optional Attribution Surface — explicit opt-in publisher identity interface. OAS may carry DID-based claims and rotation artifacts; it is not required for DoT-5 recognition.
DoT-6: Hybrid cryptographic assurance: valid Ed25519 base signature plus valid ML-DSA-65 post-quantum signature over the same ZK-SNAP v0.1 receipt preimage. DoT-6 does not assert semantic, model, or computation correctness.
hybrid_sig: Canonical detached attachment for DoT-6 upgrade. Contains an ML-DSA-65 signature over the same ZK-SNAP v0.1 preimage as the base Ed25519 signature. Receipt bytes remain immutable; the upgrade is attachment-only.
batch_root: Merkle root committing a batch of receipt_ids for on-log recognition. Verifiers connect receipt_id to witness evidence through inclusion proofs without mutating receipt bytes.