An educational crypto, finance, and AI vocabulary puzzle about inference performance, agent coordination, blockchain data plumbing, and payment rails.
Model Serving
These terms cover speed, parallelism, precision, and capacity in AI inference.
- Latency: Latency is the delay between a request and the model's response.
- Batching: Batching groups multiple requests so a system can process them together more efficiently.
- Quantization: Quantization reduces numerical precision to make model inference lighter and often faster.
- Throughput: Throughput measures how much output a system can produce over time.
Agent Workflows
These terms cover step planning, external actions, safety rules, and temporary working notes.
- Planner: A planner is an agent component that breaks a goal into steps or subgoals.
- Tool Call: A tool call is a request from an AI system to an external function, API, or tool.
- Guardrail: A guardrail is a rule that limits an AI agent's actions or outputs.
- Scratchpad: A scratchpad is a temporary space where an agent can organize intermediate thoughts or steps.
On-Chain Data
These terms cover outside data feeds, indexing layers, and historical chain storage.
OracleIndexerSubgraphArchive Node - Oracle: An oracle brings outside data, such as prices or rates, into a blockchain system.
- Indexer: An indexer organizes blockchain events and state so they can be queried quickly.
- Subgraph: A subgraph is an index-backed query layer built from blockchain data.
- Archive Node: An archive node stores historical blockchain state for later inspection.
Settlement Ops
These terms cover final transfer, matching obligations, offsetting balances, and checking records.
SettlementClearingNettingReconciliation
- Settlement: Settlement is the completed transfer of assets or cash that fulfills an obligation.
- Clearing: Clearing matches obligations and prepares them for settlement.
- Netting: Netting reduces the number or size of payments by offsetting opposing obligations.
- Reconciliation: Reconciliation compares records to find and explain differences.