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Glossary

Bob​

A price-gated vault protocol where deposited tokens unlock when the token price reaches a specific price or when the vault expires.

Bob Vault Share​

A fungible ERC-20 token representing a user's claim on a vault's underlying tokens and any accrued yield. Each vault deploys its own share token.

Claim Fee​

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

Closed-Ended Stream​

Closed-ended streams have a fixed deposit amount and a fixed duration. Once the sender creates the stream, a specific start and end time are recorded on the blockchain. They contrast with open-ended streams.

Comptroller​

A smart contract with exclusive access to specific functions of the protocol.

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.

important

If your ERC-20 token does not follow the standard implementation, it may be supported as long as the transfer and transferFrom methods strictly reduce the sender's balance by the transfer amount and increase the recipient's balance by the same amount.

That means tokens that charge fees (or tax) on transfer, rebase tokens, interest-bearing tokens, and permissioned tokens where the admin can arbitrarily change balances are not supported.

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 distribution.

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The amount of tokens that can be withdrawn by the recipient.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 accrues per second in a Flow stream.

Status​

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

  1. NULL
  2. PENDING
  3. PAUSED_INSOLVENT
  4. PAUSED_SOLVENT
  5. STREAMING_INSOLVENT
  6. STREAMING_SOLVENT
  7. 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 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 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 rate per second.

Lockup Math​

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

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 distribution curve.

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 distribution curve.

Tranched Model​

A Lockup distribution model with token releases 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.

Merkle Airdrop​

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

Merkle Tree​

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

Open-Ended Stream​

Open-ended streams are streams that don't have an end time and are not tethered to a specific deposit amount. They may also be called "indefinite streams". They contrast with closed-ended streams.

PRBMath​

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

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.

Recurring Payments​

A business use case for open-ended streams, where payments such as salaries, grants, or subscriptions accrue over time and can be topped up periodically.

Stream​

A digital agreement for distributing financial assets over time.

In Sablier, streams distribute ERC-20 tokens over time and are represented as ERC-721 NFTs. Sablier offers two stream protocols called Lockup and Flow. In Lockup, the creator has to lock up a specified amount of tokens, whereas in Flow, the creator is not required to lock up any amount of tokens.

Streaming​

The continuous form of token distribution where tokens become withdrawable over time, often by the second.

Streaming is Sablier's flagship feature, but Sablier also includes non-stream distribution systems such as Merkle Airdrops and Bob.

Token​

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

Token Distribution​

The umbrella category for releasing tokens to recipients over time or through claims. Sablier supports token distribution through streams, Merkle Airdrops, and price-gated vaults.

Vesting​

One of the most popular use cases for token distribution over time.

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.