Glossary

Address poisoning: a scam where someone sends you a tiny transfer from an address that looks like one you use, hoping you’ll copy it from your history later. Confluence warns you when a recipient looks similar to one you know.

Approval: permission you give, in your wallet, for a contract to move a specific token for you. Needed before a burn, and before swapping some tokens.

Attestation: Circle’s signed proof that a burn happened on the source chain. The destination chain needs it to mint the USDC.

Basis points (bps): hundredths of a percent. 1 bps is 0.01%.

Burn and mint: how CCTP moves USDC. It’s destroyed (burned) on the source chain and created (minted) on the destination chain, so no wrapped copies exist.

CCTP: Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, which moves native USDC between chains using burn and mint.

Confluence ID: a permanent, public name like @alice that points to a wallet, so people can pay you by name.

Pay link: a link like app.confluencebuild.xyz/pay/@alice that opens the Pay page with your ID filled in. Share it, or its QR code, to get paid.

Explorer: a website that shows a blockchain’s transactions. Confluence links to the right explorer for each chain.

Fast Transfer: Circle’s option to get an attestation before the source chain fully finalizes, for a small fee.

Finality: the point at which a blockchain transaction can no longer be reversed. Standard CCTP transfers wait for it.

Forwarding Service: Circle’s service that submits the destination mint for you, so bridged USDC arrives automatically.

Gas: the network fee paid to process a transaction, in the chain’s own token (USDC on Arc).

Native USDC: USDC issued directly by Circle on a chain, as opposed to a wrapped or bridged copy.

Quote: the price, fees and expected result shown before you confirm. Quotes refresh because prices and fees change.

Relay: a cross-chain network whose solvers deliver bridges and swaps across many chains and tokens. Used by Relay routes.

Refund: when Relay can’t complete a route, it returns your funds to the wallet you sent from, on that chain, minus the gas for the refund.

Sign-In with Ethereum: a standard way to prove you own a wallet by signing a message. Free, and not a transaction.

Slippage: how much a price may move between the quote and your swap. If it moves more, the swap doesn’t go through.

Solver: a participant in Relay’s network that fills your route by delivering tokens on the destination.