Glossary
Short, user-oriented definitions for the terms used throughout the Forge docs. The same terms appear in the Forge app.
Lending model
vToken: A market token representing a user's supplied position in a Forge market. Examples: vWsTAO for TAO suppliers and vWAlpha<netuid> for Alpha collateral suppliers. A vToken's exchange rate against the underlying asset increases as interest accrues.
Underlying asset: The economic asset that a market holds. For vWsTAO, the underlying is wrapped staked TAO. For vWAlpha<netuid>, the underlying is a subnet-specific wAlpha wrapper backed by native Bittensor Alpha stake.
Exchange rate: The conversion between vToken balance and underlying asset balance for a market. Grows over time for assets that accrue interest.
Root yield: The base yield TAO suppliers receive before additional borrower-paid interest is added.
Utilization: Borrowed amount divided by total supplied, for a given market. Higher utilization usually drives higher borrow and supply rates.
Reserve factor: The share of borrower interest kept by the protocol as reserves instead of being paid to suppliers.
Performance fee: The share of wrapper yield retained by the protocol. Planned mainnet economics retain 25% of Alpha collateral emissions and pass 75% through to borrowers. The current testnet wrapper performance fee is 0%.
Risk parameters
Max LTV / Collateral factor: The app usually shows this user-facing borrowing limit as Max LTV. In the protocol and these docs, the same concept is called collateral factor: the fraction of a collateral asset's value that can support new borrows. A 25% Max LTV, or 25% collateral factor, on Alpha means 100 TAO of Alpha supports up to 25 TAO of borrowing.
Liquidation threshold: The fraction of collateral value at which an account becomes liquidatable. Set higher than the collateral factor so newly opened max-sized borrows are not instantly liquidatable.
Liquidation incentive: The bonus paid out when a liquidator repays unhealthy debt and takes collateral. Forge's Liquidator splits this between the liquidator and the protocol.
Protocol seize share: The portion of seized collateral that the Liquidator routes to the protocol reserve rather than the liquidator.
Supply cap / Borrow cap: Per-market limits on how much of an asset can be supplied or borrowed. In Forge, a borrow cap of 0 means borrowing is disabled for that market.
Interest-rate curve: The rule that determines how borrow rates change as utilization changes. In Forge, TAO borrow rates rise as more TAO liquidity is used.
Bittensor concepts
TAO: The native asset of the Bittensor network. Used to pay gas on Bittensor EVM and as the borrow asset in Forge.
wsTAO: Wrapped staked TAO, the ERC20 wrapper used by Forge's TAO market underneath the vWsTAO vToken.
Alpha: Native Bittensor subnet stake. Not a generic ERC20 token. It lives in the Bittensor staking pallet and is associated with a subnet, a hotkey, and a coldkey.
Subnet / netuid: A Bittensor subnet, identified by its numeric netuid. Forge lists collateral markets per subnet, named vWAlpha<netuid>.
Hotkey / Coldkey: Bittensor account roles. A coldkey holds the funds. A hotkey is a delegated operating key used by the runtime. Stake is associated with a (hotkey, coldkey, subnet) triple.
H160 / SS58: The EVM address format (0x...) and Substrate address format (5...) used by Bittensor. Every EVM address has a deterministic SS58 mirror that the Bittensor runtime uses to connect EVM activity to Subtensor state.
Staking precompile: The Bittensor EVM precompile (StakingV2 at 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000805) that lets EVM contracts hold, move, and exit native Alpha stake. Forge's wAlpha wrappers use the precompile's approve and transferStakeFrom paths to take collateral.
Forge governance
Forge Guardian Multisig: The control plane for Forge parameter changes, pauses, and emergency operations. It is structured as multiple multisigs scoped to different security needs.
Endure risk-intelligence subnet: The Bittensor subnet that can inform Forge's risk framework over time. Forge parameters are managed by the Forge Guardian Multisig and shown in the Forge app.