Glossary

Written by: Fatih

These are the meanings we use in what we publish. You may see a term used differently elsewhere; what we mean by it is written here.

AI agent

Software that, given a goal, chooses its own steps, can call tools, and can judge the result. It need not run on a chain. A software framework surviving and a token attached to it surviving are different things; as far as we have measured, frameworks can outlive their tokens.

On-chain

A transaction recorded on a public ledger. Being “on-chain” does not make data correct; it only makes it undeletable. The two are often confused.

Machine-customer payment

Protocols that let one piece of software pay another for a service without a human in the loop. The volume is measurable, but per-seller revenue has also been measured and is small — we treat this as a position, not as a revenue promise.

Status label

A marker for how much weight a claim may bear. Definitions are on the Evidence policy page.

First seen

The moment we first observed a record. It need not equal the source's publication date, and the archive shows both separately.