Fund & Legal Structure
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AIFM | Alternative Investment Fund Manager. A regulated entity in the EU responsible for managing an Alternative Investment Fund, like a RAIF. |
| ART | Asset-Referenced Token. A type of stablecoin under MiCAR that references the value of a basket of assets, rather than a single currency. |
| Custodian | A financial institution that holds customers' securities for safekeeping to minimize the risk of their theft or loss. |
| Depositary | Under AIFMD, a regulated entity responsible for the safekeeping of a fund's assets and oversight of the fund manager. |
| KYC / KYB | Know Your Customer / Know Your Business. The mandatory process of identifying and verifying the identity of clients. |
| MiCAR | Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. The EU's legal framework for regulating crypto-assets and their service providers. |
| RAIF | Reserved Alternative Investment Fund. A flexible and quickly-established Luxembourg fund structure available to well-informed and professional investors, supervised via its AIFM. |
| SCSp | Société en Commandite Spéciale or Special Limited Partnership. A common legal form for investment funds in Luxembourg. |
YieldGuard Protocol & Tokens
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AggregatorVault | The core YieldGuard smart contract, compliant with ERC-4626, that accepts deposits and issues yTBill tokens. |
| Exit Fee | A fee charged upon withdrawal from a fund. In YieldGuard, this fee is rebated to remaining holders. |
| Soul-Bound Token (SBT) | A non-transferable NFT used to represent an identity, credential, or status, such as YieldGuard's KYC_PASS. |
| yTBill | The ERC-4626 receipt token that users receive when they deposit USDC.e into the YieldGuard AggregatorVault. |
Financial & Investment Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| APR / APY | Annual Percentage Rate / Annual Percentage Yield. APY includes the effect of compounding interest, while APR does not. |
| Basis Points (bp) | A unit of measure equal to 1/100th of 1 percent (0.01%). Used to express changes in interest rates and fees. |
| CAGR | Compound Annual Growth Rate. The mean annual growth rate of an investment over a specified period longer than one year. |
| NAV (Net Asset Value) | The total value of a fund's assets minus its liabilities, often expressed on a per-share basis. |
| Slippage | The difference between the expected price of a trade and the price at which the trade is executed. |
| T-Bill | Treasury Bill. A short-term debt security issued by the U.S. government with a maturity of one year or less. |
| T+0 / T+1 | Shorthand for trade settlement time. T+0 means the trade settles on the same day (Trade date). T+1 means it settles on the next business day. This indicates how quickly an asset can be converted to cash. |
| TVL (Total Value Locked) | The overall value of crypto assets deposited in a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol or platform. |
Blockchain & Technical Concepts
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Anvil | A local testnet node included with the Foundry development toolkit, used for simulating blockchain interactions. |
| API | Application Programming Interface. A way for different software programs to communicate with each other. |
| Arbitrum | A Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum that offers faster transactions and lower fees. YieldGuard is deployed on Arbitrum. |
| Audit | A formal inspection of a smart contract's code by independent security experts to find vulnerabilities. |
| Blockchain | A distributed, immutable digital ledger that records transactions in a secure and transparent manner. |
| Bug Bounty | A program that rewards security researchers for finding and reporting vulnerabilities in software. |
| Chainlink | A decentralized oracle network that provides reliable, real-world data (like asset prices or reserves) to smart contracts. |
| DAO | Decentralized Autonomous Organization. An organization represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent and controlled by its members. |
| DeFi | Decentralized Finance. A blockchain-based form of finance that does not rely on central financial intermediaries like brokerages, exchanges, or banks. |
| ERC-20 | The standard for fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing them to be easily exchanged and integrated. |
| ERC-4626 | An Ethereum token standard for "Tokenized Vaults," which represent shares in a yield-bearing underlying asset. |
| Foundry | A popular toolkit for Ethereum application development, including testing and deployment tools like Forge and Anvil. |
| Layer-2 (L2) | A secondary framework or protocol built on top of an existing blockchain (like Ethereum) to improve its scalability and speed. |
| MPC | Multi-Party Computation. A cryptographic technology that allows multiple parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private. Used for secure key management. |
| Multisig | Multi-signature. A type of digital signature that requires two or more users to sign a transaction before it can be executed. Used for enhanced security. |
| Oracle | A service that connects smart contracts with off-chain data, like asset prices or Proof of Reserve data. |
| PoR (Proof of Reserve) | A third-party audit to verify that an issuer holds sufficient reserves to back the assets they have issued on the blockchain. |
| Smart Contract | A self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement directly written into code, running on a blockchain. |
| Tokenized Wrappers | ERC-20 tokens that represent ownership of an underlying real-world asset, like a U.S. Treasury Bill, making it usable in DeFi. |
| Wallet | A software application or hardware device that allows users to store and manage their cryptocurrencies and interact with blockchains. |