Glossary

The vocabulary you will see across PulseGrid, grouped by area.

Devices and people

Device. A physical machine (sensor, radio, meter, energy monitor) that signs its own telemetry. It holds its own key, spends zero gas, and never sends a transaction itself.
Device key. The signing key registered on-chain for a device. Every anchor must carry a signature from this key. It can be rotated on-chain by the operator.
Operator. The wallet that registers a device and receives its pay (or has its bond slashed). Anyone can become an operator by deploying a node; the registry is permissionless.
Funder. The party that funds a device's pay escrow. Often the same wallet as the operator, but the policy allows them to be different.

Reading. A single measurement (for example power in kW), signed by the device with EIP-712.
Anchor. The on-chain record that a specific signed reading was delivered. The raw payload rides in a blob; a compact hash is the permanent settlement fact.
Interval / epoch. The settlement window. Its length is a deploy parameter (600 seconds on the current mainnet instance). Anchors are counted per device per epoch.
Nonce. A per-device counter that orders anchors and blocks replays. Stale or out-of-order readings are rejected.

SLA (Service-Level Agreement). The on-chain policy for a device: the minimum anchors per interval, the pay and slash amounts, and (optionally) a value range. It is versioned and append-only, and a new version only governs future intervals.
Liveness SLA. Pays when the device delivered at least the minimum number of anchors this interval.
Value-layer SLA. Also checks data quality: the device signs each reading's value, and settlement pays only when enough readings fall inside the policy's [min, max] range. Out-of-range delivery is slashed.
Settlement. The per-interval decision. settleEpoch(deviceId, epoch) re-derives PAY or SLASH on-chain from the anchor counts and the SLA. One settlement per interval, ever.
Pay. On a satisfied interval, stablecoin moves from the funder's escrow to the operator.
Slash. On a missed or out-of-range interval, stablecoin moves from the operator's bond to the treasury.
Escrow (pay escrow). The funder's balance that pays the operator on satisfied intervals.
Bond. The operator's stake that is slashed on missed intervals. It is what gives the operator skin in the game.

Settlement Agent. The autonomous service that calls settleEpoch each interval. It drives settlement but never decides it: it supplies only the device id and interval.
Keeper. Any caller of settleEpoch. Keepers earn an equal tip from a dedicated keeper pool (never taken from pay or slash), so settlement is permissionless.
Sponsor relayer. The service that submits a device's signed reading on-chain and pays the gas, so the device stays gasless. It is trusted only for liveness; it cannot forge a signature or alter a reading.
EIP-712. The typed-data signing standard the device uses, so a signature verifies identically on-chain, in the Go SDK, and in the browser.
Blob (EIP-4844). The transaction type that carries raw telemetry as a data-availability layer, with a compact on-chain hash used for settlement.