Glossary
30 terms, defined for someone who has never used a blockchain. Every lesson on Radian links back here rather than assuming you know a word.
- Address
- Your public identifier on the network, like an email address for money. Share it freely; it reveals your activity but grants no access. Lesson →
- Airdrop
- A project distributing free tokens to qualifying addresses. Real ones never require payment or unusual signatures. Lesson →
- Approval
- Standing permission you grant a contract to move a specific token from your wallet. The mechanism drainer scams abuse; keep approvals exact and revoke old ones. Lesson →
- Arc
- Circle's Layer-1 blockchain for stablecoin finance: USDC gas, sub-second finality, institutional validators. Public mainnet September 16, 2026. Lesson →
- ARC (token)
- A potential network token described in a Circle whitepaper; none has launched, and anything trading under the name is counterfeit. Status page →
- Arcscan
- Arc's block explorer: the public, searchable view of every transaction, address, and token. Lesson →
- Bridge
- Moving assets between blockchains. Generic bridges carry real risk; USDC moves to Arc natively via Circle's CCTP. Lesson →
- CCTP
- Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol: burns USDC on one chain, mints real USDC on another. The canonical way dollars reach Arc.
- Chain ID
- The number that uniquely identifies a network to wallets. Arc testnet is 5042002; mainnet's publishes at launch.
- Confidential transfers
- Arc's opt-in privacy feature: amounts shielded, addresses visible, with view keys for auditors. Institutional plumbing, off by default.
- Contract (smart contract)
- A program deployed on-chain that executes exactly as written. Tokens, DEXes and locks are all contracts.
- Custody
- The question of who holds the keys to your funds: you, an exchange, or a hardware device. Lesson →
- Dapp
- A website interface to on-chain contracts — a DEX, a lender, a token tool. The site is the front end; the chain does the work. Lesson →
- DEX
- A decentralized exchange where trades execute against liquidity pools rather than an order book. Uniswap and Aerodrome run on Arc. Lesson →
- Drainer
- A malicious site that disguises an asset-stealing approval as a routine signature. The reason you read before you sign. Lesson →
- EURC
- Circle's euro stablecoin: one token, one euro, same design as USDC. Lesson →
- EVM
- The Ethereum Virtual Machine, the standard runtime Arc is compatible with — meaning Ethereum's tools and contracts work on Arc unchanged.
- Finality
- The moment a transaction becomes irreversible. Arc reaches it in under a second; cards and wires take days. Lesson →
- Gas
- The fee paid for any transaction. On Arc it is paid in USDC — fractions of a cent, denominated in dollars. Lesson →
- Liquidity pool
- The paired token reserves a DEX trades against. Its depth determines how much a trade moves the price.
- Liquidity lock
- LP tokens deposited in a time-locked contract so nobody — including the team — can pull the pool early. The strongest anti-rug signal, verifiable on Arcscan.
- LP tokens
- The receipt for supplying liquidity to a pool; whoever holds them can withdraw that liquidity — hence locking them.
- Mainnet / testnet
- The real network with real money, and its free rehearsal copy. Arc's testnet is live now; mainnet opens September 16, 2026.
- Malachite
- Arc's consensus engine, responsible for its sub-second deterministic finality.
- Recovery phrase
- The twelve or twenty-four words that regenerate your wallet's keys. Whoever holds them holds everything; paper only, forever. Lesson →
- Rug pull
- A team draining a token's liquidity and leaving holders unable to sell. Defeated in advance by locked liquidity — which is checkable, not a promise.
- Slippage
- The gap between quoted and executed price, growing with order size relative to pool depth. Lesson →
- Stablecoin
- A token engineered to hold a fixed value, usually one dollar, via redeemable reserves. It moves value; it does not grow it. Lesson →
- Validator
- An operator that orders and confirms the network's transactions. Arc's founding cohort is eleven named institutions, BlackRock and Visa among them. Lesson →
