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Glossary

Broker​

A third-party entity that interacts with the Sablier Protocol on behalf of its users, who may charge service fees for facilitating these interactions.

Broker Fee​

The fee collected, in streaming tokens, by the broker upon creating a stream for their users.

Claim Fee​

The minimum fee, in native tokens, required for claiming an airdrop from a Merkle Airdrop campaign.

DeFi​

Short for Decentralized Finance: an ecosystem of financial applications and services built on blockchain networks, primarily Ethereum, that leverage smart contracts to enable trustless, permissionless, and transparent financial transactions without relying on traditional intermediaries like banks or financial institutions.

ERC-20​

ERC-20 tokens are fungible tokens on Ethereum. Sablier supports all standard ERC-20 implementations, including those with the missing return value bug.

ERC-721​

ERC-721 tokens are non-fungible tokens ("NFTs") on Ethereum. Both Lockup and Flow streams are represented as NFTs.

Ethereum​

A global, open-source platform for decentralized applications.

Ethereum Virtual Machine​

The technical architecture of Ethereum, which many other blockchains have appropriated.

Flow​

A term coined by us for our debt tracking protocol that tracks tokens owed between two parties, enabling open-ended token streaming.

Covered debt​

The amount of tokens that can be withdrawn by the recipient.

Flow Protocol​

Smart contracts that are considered foundational, and are essential for Flow streams to exist. Upgrading to a new version of Flow would require deploying an entirely new set of smart contracts, and would be considered a new version of the Flow protocol.

Rate Per Second​

The amount of tokens that are streamed per second in a Flow stream.

Status​

A Flow stream can have one out of six possible statuses:

  1. NULL
  2. PAUSED_INSOLVENT
  3. PAUSED_SOLVENT
  4. STREAMING_INSOLVENT
  5. STREAMING_SOLVENT
  6. VOIDED

Uncovered debt​

The amount of tokens that sender owes to the stream.

Foundry​

Foundry is the application development toolkit that has been used to develop the Sablier Protocol.

Gas Fee​

Gas fees are transaction fees paid to the blockchain validators in native tokens such as ETH. Sablier Labs does not take any cut from this.

Gas is paid only when streams are created, canceled, transferred, or withdrawn from. It does not accrue in real-time.

Lockup​

A term coined by us to refer to the requirement of locking up tokens in order to create a stream.

Allow List​

A list of smart contract recipients that are authorized to be run by the Lockup protocol upon withdraw and cancel.

The stream itself is represented as an NFT (ERC-721).

Cliff Time​

The cut-off point for releasing tokens. Prior to the cliff, the recipient cannot withdraw, though tokens continue to accrue in the stream.

Distribution Model​

A distribution model represents the streaming function used to create lockup streams. There are three types of models supported by the Lockup protocol:

  1. Linear
  2. Dynamic
  3. Tranched

Dynamic Model​

A Lockup distribution model with a streaming rate per second that can vary over time.

End Time​

The time when a stream is scheduled to end.

Linear Model​

A Lockup distribution model with a constant streaming rate per second.

Lockup Protocol​

Smart contracts that are considered foundational, and are essential for Lockup streams to exist. Upgrading to a new version of Lockup would require deploying an entirely new set of smart contracts, and would be considered a new version of the Lockup protocol.

Monotonicity​

A protocol invariant that states that the total amount of tokens released by the stream can only increase over time and never decrease.

Renounce​

A renounced stream is a stream that cannot be canceled anymore.

Segment​

A data object that encapsulates these three properties:

  1. Amount
  2. Exponent
  3. Timestamp

Segments are an essential component of Dynamic distribution model, as they facilitate the calculation of the custom streaming curve.

##3 Start time

The time when a stream is scheduled to start.

Status​

A Lockup stream can have one out of six possible statuses:

  1. NULL
  2. PENDING
  3. STREAMING
  4. SETTLED
  5. CANCELED
  6. DEPLETED

Timestamp​

Lockup timestamp represents start time and end time.

Tranche​

A data object that encapsulates these two properties:

  1. Amount
  2. Timestamp

Tranches are an essential component of Tranched distribution model, as they facilitate the calculation of the custom streaming curve.

Tranched Model​

A Lockup distribution model with a streaming in discrete tranches.

Unlock Amounts​

A data object that encapsulates amounts to be unlocked at the start of the stream and at the cliff of the stream.

Vesting Math​

A public library used by the Lockup protocol to calculate the amount of vested tokens at any given time.

Merkle Airdrop​

An onchain distribution of tokens that employs a Merkle tree data structure to perform airdrop eligibility checks.

Merkle Tree​

Aa data structure used to store hashes of the recipients airdrop allocations in Merkle Airdrop Campaigns.

PRBMath​

PRBMath is fixed-point arithmetic library used by the Sablier Protocol for precise calculations.

Protocol Admin​

An entity with exclusive access to specific functions of the protocol.

Real-time finance​

A term coined by us in 2019 to emphasize the wide-ranging use cases for the Sablier Protocol.

Since the withdrawable amounts in streams are updated every second, they embody the concept of real-time financial transactions.

Stream​

A new financial primitive that permits by-the-second payments.

Currently, Sablier offers two distribution protocols called Lockup and Flow. In Lockup, the creator has to lock up a specified amount of tokens, whereas in Flow, creator is not required to lock up any amount of tokens.

Streaming​

By-the-second payments.

Token​

Digital tokens can exist in various forms, but the Sablier Protocol exclusively supports the streaming of ERC-20 tokens.

Vesting​

One of the most popular use cases for streaming today.

The purpose of vesting is to delay gratification. Founders, investors, and employees must wait a certain amount of time before being able to access tokens.

Withdraw Fee​

The fee collected, in native tokens, by the Sablier interface for withdrawing from streams.