Key Terms
The vocabulary used throughout the Aethos documentation and ecosystem
Policy
An immutable set of qualifiers defined by communities, including developers, DAOs, and organizations, to enforce rules for their onchain applications. Aethos Operators interpret these policies in order to validate transactions that meet the specified criteria.
Developers integrating Aethos create policies, which are represented as JSON objects stored on Ethereum. Policies are implemented using the Policy Expression Language (PEL: Examples will be publicized soon).
Operators
A network of nodes responsible for attesting that transactions meet their destination protocol’s policy. Aethos Operators are a set of highly reputable entities approved by the Aethos team and network stakeholders.
Aethos currently operates as a permissioned, proof-of-authority network. In the future, the network will transition to a permissionless, proof-of-stake model.
Middleware
Offchain infrastructure maintained by the Aethos labs entity responsible for broadcasting transactions to Operators and aggregating their signatures. In the future, the Middleware can be run by any individual or entity.