Glossary

ANS-104 Data Item

A file packaged for bundled upload. Turbo signs your file as a data item and packs many of them into a single Arweave transaction. Each data item keeps its own id, so you can fetch it from any gateway exactly like a transaction.

ar.io

A permanent cloud network: independent gateways serve, index and verify permanent data, and ArNS gives it names. Anyone can run a gateway and join.

Ar.io Name System (ArNS)

A decentralized naming system in the ar.io network that maps human-readable names to Arweave transaction IDs and application/content routes.

Ar.io Name Token (ANT)

An NFT on Solana associated with a registered ArNS name. ANT ownership controls name-level configuration such as records, undernames, and transfer operations.

ArDrive

The app for storing and sharing files permanently, built on Turbo. ArDrive is the product for people who want a drive; these docs are for building your own upload and access paths.

ARIO

The native token of the ar.io network, an SPL Token on Solana with 6 decimals (1 ARIO = 1,000,000 mARIO). It is used to stake and reward gateways, and to register and extend ArNS names. See the ARIO token.

Arweave

The storage layer underneath everything here. You pay once and the data persists, replicated across many nodes. Arweave stores the data; ar.io makes it fast to find, read and name.

Bundle

An Arweave transaction, or a data item, whose data holds a set of other data items packed in the ANS-104 format. A bundle contains data items; it is not one of them. See Bundling.

Bundling

Packing many data items into one Arweave transaction. Bundling is what makes small uploads cheap and quick to confirm, and it is what Turbo does with every upload it accepts.

CPI (Cross-Program Invocation)

The mechanism by which Solana programs call into each other. The ar.io architecture uses CPI for token operations — ario-gar and ario-arns call into ario-core for SPL Token transfers.

Cranker

A permissionless actor (bot or user) that submits transactions to drive lazy protocol operations, including the epoch pipeline and other state advancement tasks. Any participant can crank if protocol conditions are met.

Data Item ID

The id of a data item, assigned when it is signed. A gateway can look up a data item by its data item id alone and resolve it to the root transaction that contains it.

Epoch Pipeline

The 6-step process for observation, reward calculation, and distribution each epoch: create_epoch → tally_weights → prescribe_epoch → save_observations → distribute_epoch → close_epoch.

Gateway

An ar.io node that serves Arweave data over HTTP: it retrieves, caches and indexes data, resolves ArNS names, and exposes standard interfaces for the permaweb. Anyone can run one. Turbo is an ar.io gateway run by the ArDrive team, and it also accepts paid uploads. See Gateways.

Gateway Address Registry (GAR)

The protocol-level registry of joined gateways and their metadata. GAR powers gateway discovery and is a core input to observer selection, rewards, and network operations.

Index Band

One piece of a shared index, covering a range of block heights. Older bands rarely change; the band at the chain tip is rebuilt as new data arrives. A gateway installs the bands it needs and replaces one without pausing lookups. See Index Sharing.

Index Publication

The signed document an Index Sharing publisher serves at /ar-io/indexes. It lists every index band and every file's size and SHA-256, and is signed with the gateway's registered observer key, so a subscriber can check it against the Gateway Address Registry. See Reading Shared Indexes.

Index Sharing

How ar.io gateways share the indexes that locate data items inside their bundles. A gateway publishes an index publication signed with its registered observer key, listing its index bands and every file's SHA-256; other gateways and clients verify it and use the bands without trusting the server or peer they fetched them from, over HTTP or BitTorrent. See Index Sharing.

Infohash

A torrent's identifier: the hash of its list of files and the hashes of their pieces. Index publications sign each band's infohashes, so a subscriber can reject any torrent that doesn't match. Publishers of the same bytes produce the same infohash and share one swarm. See Index Sharing.

Metaplex Core

The NFT standard used for Ar.io Name Tokens (ANTs) on Solana. Metaplex Core assets are tradeable on standard NFT marketplaces like Tensor and Magic Eden.

Native Address

An address format that uses the raw public key bytes directly, without additional encoding or transformation.

Normalized Address

A standardized address format that ensures consistent representation across different systems and contexts. Normalized addresses help prevent issues with address matching and lookup operations.

Observer

A gateway selected to evaluate peer gateways during an epoch. Observers test assigned ArNS resolutions and submit reports used by the protocol for performance evaluation and rewards. A gateway's observer key also signs its Index Sharing publications.

Operations Address

A second Solana address that a gateway operator authorizes to update the gateway's metadata and claim the ArNS gateway operator discount. It can't change stake, delegation settings, the observer address, or the operations address itself. See Delegate gateway management.

Optimistic Indexing

A data indexing strategy where new data is immediately made available for queries while verification processes continue in the background. This approach improves performance while maintaining data integrity through eventual consistency.

PDA (Program Derived Address)

Deterministic Solana account addresses derived from a program ID and a set of seeds. The ar.io protocol uses PDAs extensively — for gateways, delegations, withdrawals, vaults, ArNS records, ANT configs, and more.

Permaweb

The permanent web of files, applications and identities built on Arweave, served through ar.io gateways and addressed by transaction id or ArNS name.

Program ID

The unique onchain address of a deployed Solana program. Ar.io protocol interactions target specific program IDs for instructions and state access.

Protocol Balance

A protocol-controlled ARIO token pool that accumulates relevant inflows (for example, protocol fees) and serves as a source for incentive distributions according to protocol rules.

Public Key

A cryptographic key that can be shared publicly and is used to verify digital signatures or encrypt data. In the ar.io context, Solana public keys (Ed25519, base58-encoded) are used to identify wallet addresses and verify transactions.

Root Transaction

The Arweave transaction that contains a data item, found by walking up through every bundle around it. A gateway resolves a data item's root transaction to serve and locate it.

SPL Token

Solana Program Library token standard. ARIO is implemented as an SPL Token on Solana, making it compatible with the full Solana wallet and DeFi ecosystem.

Transaction (Solana)

A signed unit of interaction with Solana containing one or more instructions. Instructions in a transaction are processed atomically: all succeed, or the transaction fails without applying state changes.

Turbo

An ar.io gateway run by the ArDrive team. It serves permanent data like any ar.io gateway and adds paid uploads: it bundles your files into ANS-104 data items, issues the credits you pay with, and posts the data permanently to Arweave. See Getting Started with Turbo.

Turbo Credits

Prepaid upload balance, bought with a card or crypto and spent on uploads and ArNS names. Priced in winc and non-transferable. See Paying for Uploads.

Vault

A protocol-level token lock with a start time, optional end time, and token balance. Vaults are used to hold ARIO over time and may be revocable depending on how they were created.

Wayfinder

A client library that chooses an ar.io gateway for each request and verifies that what comes back matches what was stored, so an app does not have to trust a single gateway. See Wayfinder.

WebSeed

An HTTP address (BEP 19) that serves the same bytes as a torrent swarm, so a download completes even with no peers. On a gateway it is /ar-io/indexes/webseed/, rate limited and x402-priced while the swarm itself is free. Index torrents do not list it: subscribers add a publisher's WebSeed themselves, and only when peers stall. See Index Sharing.

winc

The unit Turbo Credits are counted in, as it appears in the Turbo API. Receipt and balance fields return amounts in winc. Not to be confused with Winston, the smallest unit of AR.

Winston

Winston is the smallest unit of Arweave's native AR token. One AR equals 10^12 Winston.