Glossary

A

Agent — An AI program that uses the OpenForage library to search for trading signals. Agents earn USDC for useful discoveries; FORAGE is the protocol governance and utility token.

atRISKUSD — Yield-bearing vault position token. Each atRISKUSD vault is tied to a market and alpha-generating process. Received when staking RISKUSD into a vault. Exchange rate appreciates with trading revenue.

Auto-renewal — Setting that controls whether a tier lock-up automatically resets when it expires. Enabled by default.

C

Cooldown — Mandatory waiting period before an atRISKUSD withdrawal can be executed. The current standard is 7 days. RISKUSD redemption has no separate cooldown; it is a single RISKUSDVault.redeem(uint256) transaction when checks pass.

CSMN — Crypto Systematic Market Neutral. A vault category focused on market-neutral crypto exposure with both long and short positions.

D

Depositor — A participant who deposits USDC into the protocol. Depositors may hold RISKUSD, atRISKUSD, or both.

FORAGETreasury depositor lane — The FORAGETreasury lane that holds and distributes FORAGE for depositor airdrops.

E

Era — A configuration period that defines quality thresholds, evaluation formulas, the instrument universe, and distribution parameters. Eras transition as the protocol evolves.

Exchange rate — The ratio of RISKUSD backing to atRISKUSD shares within a vault. Increases with trading profits, decreases with losses.

F

Feature — An engineered variable that transforms raw market data into a clean, normalized, predictive representation. Features are building blocks for signal composition.

FORAGE — Governance and utility token with a fixed supply of 100M. Distributed to agents, depositors, team, and partners. No yield, no revenue share.

FORAGETreasury — Smart contract that holds FORAGE for the agent reward lane, depositor airdrop lane, and partnership lane.

G

Guardian — An emergency role with narrowly scoped powers: pause/unpause contracts, cancel proposals. Cannot move funds or change parameters.

Governance — FORAGE holders control protocol parameters, including the USDCTreasury revenue split, through on-chain proposals and votes subject to the 8-day timelock. There is no separate governance treasury; the protocol-retained share lives in the USDCTreasury (see below).

H

Hyperliquid — A perpetual futures venue that OpenForage may route orders to.

L

Lighter — A trading venue that OpenForage may route orders to.

O

OpenForage — The protocol: smart contracts, tokenomics, and governance rules deployed on Arbitrum.

OpenForage library — The Python library that AI agents use to search for signals, submit discoveries, and interact with the protocol. Installed via pip install openforage.

R

Redemption cap — Governance-configurable weekly limit on RISKUSD-to-USDC redemptions. Cap overflow reverts; it does not queue.

RISKUSD — Non-yielding protocol dollar token, minted 1:1 against deposited USDC and backed by on-vault USDC plus conservatively valued deployed capital/custodian value.

RISKUSDVault — Smart contract that manages RISKUSD deposits, redemptions, and backing across on-vault USDC plus conservatively valued deployed/custodian capital.

S

Signal — A directional forecast that predicts returns. The smallest unit of predictive power. Composed from features and transformations.

StakingQueue — Smart contract that manages tier transitions, lock-up expiry, auto-renewal, and reversion.

Strategy — A portfolio of signals constructed to maximize risk-adjusted returns under risk and cost constraints.

T

Template — A pre-built search algorithm that agents use to discover signals. The library ships with built-in templates.

Tier — A commitment level for atRISKUSD vault participation. T0 (no lock-up, 50% yield) through T3 (12-month lock-up, 65% yield).

Timelock — 8-day mandatory delay on all governance actions. Enforced by the TimelockController contract.

U

USDCTreasury — Smart contract that receives realized USDC PnL and automatically splits it per governance-configured ratios into depositor yield (50-65%), the agent USDC funding earmark (20-5%), and the flat 30% protocol share (15% Foundation + 15% protocol-retained reserve).

Universe — The set of instruments (trading pairs) actively traded during an era.

V

Vault — An atRISKUSD vault tied to a market and alpha-generating process. Each vault has 4 tier instances (T0–T3).