Glossary

The protocol's utility and governance token. It is not the asset being traded — settlements use stablecoins such as USDC. OPEN is staked as economic accountability and carries governance rights. Minted once at genesis with a fixed maximum supply.

The numbered specification series. The number encodes the layer: 1000s networking, 2000s marketplace, 3000s reputation, 4000s governance, 5000s identity, 6000s notifications, 7000s oracle and risk.

OFS-0000

The peer-to-peer transport layer every compliant node implements, built on libp2p with QUIC, Noise and Yamux.

OFS-1000

The trade lifecycle: reservation, escrow funding, fiat payment, confirmation, settlement. A trade may never skip a mandatory state.

OFS-2000

The governance vehicle for changing the protocol — the equivalent of an RFC or EIP.

OFS-4000

How nodes are prioritized. Effective priority combines reputation, stake and measured network performance; staking more cannot compensate for poor performance.

OFS-1600

A publicly signed statement expressing a merchant's willingness to trade, with asset, direction, currency, limits, pricing model and payment methods.

OFS-2100

The step that claims a portion of an advertisement for a specific buyer, before escrow is funded.

OFS-2200

On-chain custody of the stablecoins for the duration of a trade. Stablecoins enter escrow before fiat payment begins, so a buyer never sends fiat without funds already secured.

OFS-2300

The on-chain architecture holding trade funds. Trade settlement is secured here rather than by merchant stake.

How state-changing events propagate across the network, so no node depends on a central feed.

OFS-1200

A signed, compressed copy of marketplace state with a state root, letting a new node synchronize quickly instead of replaying all history.

OFS-1300

A directory that introduces a newly started node to peers, then becomes optional. It approves nothing and coordinates nothing.

OFS-1100

The directory where providers publish what they offer and where. It is a directory, not a marketplace: it makes no recommendations, and clients choose for themselves.

OFS-1500

A voluntary, signed proof that a wallet controls a communication channel such as an email or Telegram account. It establishes control, never legal identity, nationality or regulatory status.

OFS-5000

The two-phase arbitrator vote: publish a commitment first, reveal the vote and secret later, so no arbitrator can see others' votes before casting their own.

OFS-2400

Loss of part of a stake for protocol violations. Rules are deterministic and publicly documented; ordinary outages affect reputation and reward eligibility rather than triggering slashing.

The most-repeated commitment in the whitepaper: AllenHark leads initial development, and responsibility for infrastructure and governance is designed to transfer to the community.

The company leading initial development. It operates bootstrap infrastructure during launch and competes with every other provider under identical protocol rules. It is designed to become unnecessary.