Glossary

Charter: A charter is an ERC-721 NFT: the position that lets its holder open branches. Charters were first minted in the genesis Dutch mint and are now sold through the charter Dutch auction. A charter by itself earns nothing; it only becomes productive once it opens one or more branches.
Branch: A branch is a license opened under a charter that accrues STANDARD issuance every day it stays open. Branches are opened by buying a license through the license Dutch auction, and a charter can open more than one. Days of issuance (below) measures how many days a branch would take to earn back its license price at the current issuance rate.
License: A license is what you buy, through the license Dutch auction, to open a branch. Its price is paid in STANDARD and burned on purchase. Since Protocol v1.1, the auction reopens twice a day, every 12 hours: each window opens at the higher of (its starting multiplier times the last sale price) or the floor price, then decays on a 2-hour half-life until it sells out or the window rolls over. A single charter can still buy at most 3 licenses in each anchored 24-hour cap window, a separate clock from the 12-hour auction window.
Epoch: An epoch is the protocol's accounting period for reserve policy: at the end of each epoch, the Central Bank reads net ETH flow into or out of the ETH/STANDARD pool over that period and sets the supply multiplier and issuance rate for the next one. Epoch history shows each period's flow direction (its regime), the multiplier it produced, and whether it has settled yet.
Multiplier: The multiplier scales STANDARD issuance up or down between epochs, based on the prior epoch's net flow. It only changes at an epoch boundary and only in the direction the flow signal points; it is a derived figure (computed from measured flow by a stated formula), not a value read directly from a single chain slot.
Signal: The signal is an epoch's net ETH flow plus the previous epoch's, evaluated once the epoch settles. Its sign is what the Central Bank acts on: positive raises the multiplier, negative cuts it, zero holds it, and it sets the regime for the next epoch. Before settlement, an epoch's own running net flow is a preview of what its signal will become; a policy outlook projection ('if this epoch's sign holds') is a bet that preview doesn't flip before the epoch closes.
Regime: The regime is whether the protocol is currently expanding or contracting, set by the prior epoch's signal. In an expansion regime, net ETH inflow buys reserve assets into the expansion vault; in a contraction regime, net outflow triggers buybacks that burn STANDARD from the contraction vault.
Resolution fee: The resolution fee is the percentage taken from a withdrawal (an exit) before the remaining STANDARD is realized as ETH. It scales with exit pressure (below): fee = minimum fee + (maximum fee − minimum fee) × pressure², ranging from 2% at zero pressure up to 60% at full saturation. It is a derived figure, recomputed live from the same measured inputs that feed the pressure gauge.
Exit pressure: Exit pressure gauges how much withdrawal demand the reserve is absorbing right now: trailing 7-day withdrawn STANDARD divided by the greater of pending (held, not yet withdrawn) STANDARD or a fixed floor, normalized by a saturation constant so the result runs from 0 to 1. It is the input the resolution fee formula reads; rising pressure means a higher fee for the next withdrawal.
Days of issuance: Days of issuance (DOI) restates today's license price in terms of how many days of a branch's own issuance it would take to earn that price back, given the current per-branch issuance rate. It answers 'buy now or wait for the price to decay' in issuance terms rather than a dollar or ETH return, since this site never states a return, payback period, or yield figure.
Backing (ETH only / all reserve assets at current pool prices): Backing is what the reserve holds per unit of circulating STANDARD. It is reported three ways. The two ETH-only figures count the ETH in the expansion and contraction vaults: excluding protocol-owned liquidity (POL, below), and including it by adding the reserve's share of the ETH/STANDARD pool's own liquidity. The reserve-inclusive figure adds the ETH value of the expansion vault's other assets (its USDG, stock tokens and Uniswap v4 liquidity positions) to the vault ETH and leaves out POL. Stock tokens and liquidity positions are valued at the current price in the Reserve's own Uniswap pools, and USDG is counted at $1, so selling a large amount would fetch less. The ETH-only figures fell when the vault moved ETH into USDG and pool liquidity; the reserve-inclusive figure counts that value.
POL (protocol-owned liquidity): POL is liquidity the protocol itself owns in the ETH/STANDARD Uniswap v4 pool, managed by the POL Manager contract, as opposed to liquidity supplied by outside market makers. It counts toward backing incl. POL but not backing excl. POL (above), since it isn't sitting in a vault the protocol could otherwise use for a buyback or an expansion buy. Since Protocol v1.1, POL Manager's existing position no longer grows from new fee inflows; a separate PolBuyback contract now buys STANDARD with that share and forwards it to the incentives vault (below) instead.
Incentives vault: Protocol v1.1: the destination for STANDARD bought back by the PolBuyback contract, held for future distribution rather than burned. It's reported separately from POL and from backing (excl./incl. POL, above), since it's STANDARD held for incentive purposes, not ETH-equivalent reserve backing.
Dormancy and bounty: A charter becomes reportable-dormant once it has had no on-chain activity for a set number of blocks. Once reportable, anyone can submit a dormancy report on-chain and claim a bounty, which reassigns the dormant charter's future issuance. The dormancy count on Hold or act and the per-charter clock on My wallet both read the same reportable-at block threshold; the bounty table ranks currently reportable wallets by the bounty a reporter could claim.
Day roll and re-arm: A day roll is the reset of the license Dutch auction at the start of each 12-hour window (Protocol v1.1): whatever didn't sell at the old window's floor stops being offered, and a new window's ladder starts at max(starting multiplier × the last sale price, a floor). Re-arm is that same reset for the underlying auction mechanism: it comes back armed and ready to sell at the new window's opening price, instead of continuing to decay from wherever the prior window left off.
Launch tax: The launch tax is a swap tax applied on the ETH/STANDARD pool by the tax hook contract, on both the buy and sell side, that decays over time toward a permanent floor rate. It exists to dampen early trading volatility right after launch; the tax schedule panel shows the current rate on each side and how it decays.
Basis chips: Every number on this site carries a basis chip saying how it was produced: measured (read straight off a chain log or a chain state read), derived (computed from measured/constant inputs by a stated formula), or constant (read from chain once, not a whitepaper figure). A fourth category, inferred from bytecode, marks figures decoded from a contract's bytecode rather than an on-chain read or an event log, pending confirmation at the next live settlement. The policy outlook panel's projection is the main place you'll see that fourth chip.
Expansion plan (simulation): An expansion plan is an offline, day-by-day simulation of three fixed strategies for buying Branch licenses over a horizon: keep (buy none), selective (buy one on a fixed interval, budget allowing), and aggressive (buy up to the per-charter purchase cap in each anchored 24-hour window, budget allowing). It assumes today's issuance rate, license price, and pool price hold steady, or move at whatever growth rates you give it, for the whole horizon. It is a simulator for comparing tradeoffs, not a forecast of what will happen and not a recommendation: it never names a winning strategy.
Break-even price: The break-even price is the STANDARD/ETH price at which a strategy's simulated net cash would land exactly at zero, with everything else in the plan held fixed. It only shows up when the plan releases credits at the end of the horizon (exit_mode=all). Comparing it across strategies shows how much price cushion each one carries, not which one comes out ahead.
Serving state: A serving-state pill says how current a headline figure is right now, separately from its basis: live means it's polled on a short interval and can change while you're looking at it; cached means it was read once for this page load; stale flags a figure older than expected for that dataset; not ready and error mean the API had nothing, or didn't answer, for this figure yet.
S-Bill: An S-Bill is fixed-term STANDARD staking: depositing locks a chosen amount of STANDARD for one term at the rate in force when you deposit, with that term's premium escrowed up front rather than accruing gradually. Rates are always stated per term, never annual; a simple annualized figure is shown alongside it for comparison, not a compounded yield, since the contract has no automatic roll.
Term: A term is how long an S-Bill's principal stays locked once deposited. The contract owner sets and can change the term length, so every rate and APR figure on this site reads it live, shown on the S-Bills Protocol page, rather than assuming a fixed number of days. A bill matures at the end of its term; maturing does not release or pay out anything on its own, see Settle below.
Per-term rate: The per-term rate is the return an S-Bill deposit locks in for one term, not a year. It drifts within a floor/ceiling band based on recent deposit activity, and the rate a given bill actually earns is fixed at the moment it deposits (or rolls), not the rate shown afterward. The simple APR figure shown alongside it annualizes this rate at the current term length; it is not a compounded yield.
Premium escrow: The premium escrow is the STANDARD set aside from a shared budget at the moment an S-Bill deposits, covering that bill’s promised premium in full up front rather than paying it out day by day. The budget this draws from is a measured figure on the S-Bills Protocol page; a deposit can be blocked if the budget can’t cover its premium. The premium vests linearly over the term (elapsed time divided by the full term); that vested share only matters for an early exit, where it decides who gets the premium, not whether the exiting holder keeps any of it, see Early exit fee.
Early exit fee: The early exit fee is what an S-Bill holder pays to withdraw principal before maturity, as a share of that principal: fee bps = floor + (cap − floor) × pressure², where pressure is the STANDARD withdrawn over a trailing window (plus this withdrawal’s own principal) divided by the greater of that same total plus the protocol’s locked principal, or a pressure floor. The fee tracks how much has recently exited, not how long the bill was held, so exiting the day after depositing or the day before maturity can cost the same fee. An exit returns principal minus this fee; the holder gives up the bill’s entire premium and any stayer bonus, whenever they leave. Half the fee is burned; half, plus whatever share of the premium had vested by exit time, goes to remaining S-Bill holders (see Stayer bonus); the share that had not yet vested returns to the premium budget. The S-Bills Protocol page and the stake quote form both show an estimate from this formula for a bill of a given size exiting right away; the fee can run higher later if more holders exit in the meantime, and an open bill’s own live quote is the exact figure.
Stayer bonus: The stayer bonus is the holders’ half of every early exit fee, plus the share of the exiting bill’s premium that had vested by exit time, distributed to remaining S-Bill principal rather than burned or returned. An exiting holder never receives any of this, vested or not. It accrues per unit of locked principal, so it is only realized by a bill that is still open when a later exit pays its fee; it is not a fixed or guaranteed rate.
Settle: Settle is a permissionless action on a matured S-Bill that releases its principal from the contract's locked-principal total. It does not pay out principal, premium, or bonus by itself; redeeming (owner-only, after maturity) or rolling into a new term are the actions that actually move funds or extend a bill.