Glossary

Canonical terms used throughout this docs set.

A

ant-client — Direct Rust and CLI interface to the Autonomi Network via ant-core and the ant binary.

ant-core — Headless Rust library powering antd, the Direct Rust interface, and the ant CLI.

ant-keygen — ML-DSA-65 release-signing utility.

ant-protocol — Shared wire protocol crate used by ant-core and ant-node for chunk messages, payment proofs, and devnet manifests.

ant-sdk — Software development kit for building on Autonomi, including libraries that connect directly, client libraries for antd, and tools such as antd.

antd — Separate background service that handles Autonomi Network access for your application, exposing REST on http://localhost:8082 and gRPC on localhost:50051 by default.

Autonomi Network Token (ANT) — ERC-20 token on Arbitrum used for storage payments.

Arbitrum — Layer 2 Ethereum network used by Autonomi payment tooling.

Autonomi — Decentralized data storage network for storing and retrieving content.

Autonomi Network — The peer-to-peer network reached through antd, ant-core, ant, and ant-node.

B

BLAKE3 — Cryptographic hash used for content addresses and for self-encryption chunk hashing.

C

ChaCha20-Poly1305 — Authenticated encryption primitive used in self-encryption.

chunk — Immutable, content-addressed storage unit of up to 4 MB; data and file operations store encrypted chunks, while raw chunk operations store caller-supplied bytes.

close group — The set of nodes closest to a target address in XOR space.

content addressing — Deriving an address from content rather than from a mutable location.

D

daemon — A program that runs as a background service, separate from the application that calls it.

DataMap — Retrieval metadata that ties uploaded content back to its encrypted chunks.

E

external signer — Wallet or signing flow that submits upload-payment transactions without giving antd or ant-core direct custody of the private key.

H

HKDF — Key-derivation primitive exposed by saorsa-pqc.

K

Kademlia DHT — Peer-routing system that locates nodes by XOR distance.

L

library — Reusable code that your application imports or links and runs as part of its own process.

local trust scoring — Per-node reputation based on direct peer observations combined through an exponential moving average.

M

Merkle batch payment — Batch-payment mode used for larger chunk sets.

ML-DSA-65 — NIST FIPS 204 digital signature algorithm used for transport authentication and release-signing tools.

ML-KEM-768 — NIST FIPS 203 key encapsulation mechanism used during transport session establishment.

N

NAT traversal — Peer-observed address discovery, coordinator hints, hole punching, and optional UPnP-assisted address mapping used to keep peers reachable across NAT boundaries. Relay-assisted fallback handles cases where direct traversal still fails.

P

pay-once — Storage payment model where you pay when you upload and do not pay ongoing storage fees.

post-quantum cryptography — Cryptographic algorithms designed to resist quantum attacks. Autonomi uses them for transport key exchange, transport identity, and release signing; content self-encryption remains a separate BLAKE3 plus ChaCha20-Poly1305 layer.

Q

QUIC — UDP-based transport protocol used for peer connections, NAT traversal coordination, and relay-assisted fallback.

S

SDK (software development kit) — A collection of libraries, tools, and documentation for building applications, not a single running program.

self-encryption — Client-side content processing that returns a DataMap plus encrypted chunks.

X

XOR distance — Distance metric used for peer and data proximity in Kademlia-style routing.