Glossary

A

Archive Node A node that stores complete historical message data and earns rewards from the Archive Pool.

Archive Pool On-chain contract that collects 70% of PMQ fees and distributes to registered archive operators.

B

Bid Amount of OBS paid for priority message inclusion. Minimum 0.001 OBS.

Block Type Either "txn" (transaction block) or "msg" (message block). Alternates every block.

C

Chain ID Network identifier. Obsidian mainnet is 421 (0x1a5).

D

Dual-Lane Queue System of two separate queues (PMQ and SMQ) with reserved block space for each.

E

Epoch Consensus time period of 32 slots (~6.4 minutes). Used for sharding.

F

FIFO First In, First Out. How the Standard Message Queue orders messages.

M

Message A signed data blob stored permanently on-chain. Contains sender, payload, timestamp, signature.

Message Block Block type dedicated to storing messages. No EVM execution.

Messages Root Merkle root of all messages in a block. Validated by consensus.

N

Nonce Unique value per message preventing replay attacks.

O

OBS Native token of Obsidian Chain.

P

Payload The data content of a message. Maximum 8 KB. Protocol treats as opaque bytes.

PMQ (Priority Message Queue) Paid fast lane. Sorted by bid (highest first), then timestamp.

Proposer Validator selected to build the next block. Receives 30% of PMQ fees.

S

Sharded Archive Archive node storing only specific epoch ranges instead of full history.

Silica Name of Obsidian's custom fork (post-Fulu).

SMQ (Standard Message Queue) Free lane requiring VDF proof. Strict FIFO ordering.

T

Transaction Block Standard Ethereum block with EVM execution. Alternates with message blocks.

V

VDF (Verifiable Delay Function) Time-locked computation proving work. Used for spam prevention on SMQ.

Required iterations scale with payload size. Cannot be parallelized.