Glossary

Core: Smart contracts that are foundational, and are essential for Superform to exist. Upgrading to a new version of core would require deploying an entirely new set of smart contracts on all chains and would be considered a new version of the Superform Protocol.

APY: Annual Percentage Yield is the actual rate of return earned on an investment, taking into account the effect of compounding interest.

Vaults: Vaults are smart contracts that accept deposits and then perform a specific action to earn interest on that deposit. This could be fees earned from lending, trading, token reward or any arbitrary source from the vault developer.

Slippage: The amount the price moves in a trading pair between when a transaction is submitted and when it is executed.

Cross-chain: An action or transaction that starts on one network (ex: Ethereum) and ends on another network (ex: Optimism).

Same-chain: An action or transaction that only happens on one network.

Transaction Types: The Superform Protocol has a variety of transaction types depending on user input. Each of the below can be deposit or withdraw

Dust: Dust is a trace amount of tokens left over after a transaction. It has small or negligible monetary value (from a fraction of pennies to a few dollars) and is usually not enough to cover the cost of a transaction, meaning that what remains is "trapped". Due to fluctuations in gas price and a difference between the Superform API's estimate of costs, dust may occur.

Forms: Forms are adapters that act as intermediaries for transaction to and from vaults listed on the Superform Protocol. All form implementations must adhere to the BaseForm interface and may override available virtual functions for added functionality from the standard deposit/withdraw functionality. BaseForm accepts ERC-4626 vaults. Additional Forms could be deployed to handle KYC-enabled or time-locked vaults.

Superforms: Anybody can permissionlessly create a Superform by adding vaults to Forms.

SuperPositions: SuperPositions are cross-chain or single chain 'LP' tokens that are minted to users post-deposit. They act as an record of ownership and can be burned to claim funds from the underlying vault(s) within them. SuperPositions are ERC1155A, an opinionated variant of ERC1155 which includes single id approvals for better control of the approval process. SuperPositions are transferrable and viewable on NFT marketplaces like OpenSea.

AMB: An Arbitrary Message Bridge (AMB) is a protocol that enables the transfer of arbitrary data and messages between different blockchain networks, facilitating interoperability and complex cross-chain interactions beyond simple asset transfers. LayerZero, Hyerlane and Wormhole are all AMBs.

Subgraphs: Subgraphs are data indexing protocols that define how data from networks, like Ethereum, is structured and queried. They allow for efficient retrieval of specific data from a blockchain by indexing selected information, which is then accessible via a GraphQL API.

ERC-1155A: ERC1155A is a Superform extension of the ERC1155 standard which introduces valuable additional functionality. This contract is abstract and is implemented in SuperPositions. Key features include single id approvals, range-based approvals, and the ability to convert between synthetic ERC20 tokens and the native ERC1155S token format.

ERC-4626: ERC4626 is a tokenized vault standard. Vaults are smart contracts that take in token deposits and do something with those tokens to provide token rewards to the depositor. Standardizing vault implementations makes it easier for applications, plugins, and tools to integrate with vaults. Rather than building many custom adapters for each vault implementation, applications can easily build on top of any vault following the ERC-4626 standard.

ERC-20: ERC20 tokens are fungible tokens like USDC or DAI. The Superform Protocol supports standard ERC20 implementations for transactions.

Emergency Queue: Forms may be put in a paused status by the Emergency Admin. This stops all deposits from being processed, but withdrawals (users burning SuperPositions) are then put into an EmergencyQueue. This contract serves to handle those withdrawal requests.

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