The Dime & Web3 Builder Glossary: Essential Terminology

Core Architecture & State Terms

Account

The fundamental unit of data storage on Dime. Every account possesses a unique 32-byte address (public key), an owner Program ID, a balance, and a binary data buffer. Accounts can either store executable bytecode (programs) or mutable state (data accounts).

Program Derived Address (PDA)

An off-curve public key generated programmatically from a combination of seed bytes and a Program ID. Because PDAs have no corresponding private key, only the owning program can sign transactions on their behalf during runtime execution.

Rent & Rent Exemption

The storage fee model on Dime. To prevent validator RAM exhaustion from orphaned accounts, accounts must maintain a minimum balance proportional to their allocated byte size. Once funded above this threshold, an account is considered Rent-Exempt and incurs no recurring deductions.

Compute Units (CU)

The computational resource metric used to measure CPU execution time and memory usage for an instruction. Transactions are allocated a default budget (e.g., 200,000 CU) which can be raised via compute budget instructions.

Consensus & Validator Terms

Proof of History (PoH)

A cryptographic verifiable delay function (VDF) that generates a continuous, verifiable timestamp sequence. PoH allows validator nodes to agree on transaction ordering without requiring synchronous network communication before building blocks.

Slot

A discrete time window (approximately 400 milliseconds) during which a designated leader validator produces and broadcasts a block to the cluster.

Epoch

A fixed sequence of consecutive slots (typically 432,000 slots, or roughly 2 to 3 days). At epoch boundaries, validator staking reward distributions and leader schedules are updated.

Leader Schedule

A deterministic timetable calculated at the start of each epoch that assigns which validator node produces blocks during each individual slot, weighted by active stake.

Rooted / Finalized State

The highest level of consensus confirmation. Once a block has reached sufficient consensus depth across a supermajority (66%+) of active stake, it is rooted and becomes mathematically irreversible under cluster rules.

Execution & Security Terms

Cross-Program Invocation (CPI)

The mechanism allowing one on-chain program to invoke an instruction on another on-chain program within the same transaction execution thread, preserving execution context and security checks.

Ed25519

A public-key signature system using a twisted Edwards curve. Ed25519 provides ultra-fast signature generation and verification while resisting cache-timing side-channel attacks.

Zero-Copy Deserialization

An optimization technique where raw binary account data is mapped directly into memory structures via pointers without copying buffer bytes into newly allocated heap memory.

Deepen Your Understanding

Refer back to this glossary whenever reading our technical guides or working through our Builder Curriculum.