Glossary

The platform's word for a signed work. When a creator uploads a piece (an image, an audio file, a video, a written piece) and the platform applies a cryptographic signature using the C2PA standard, the result is a signal. The signal is the file plus the embedded manifest that documents the authorship claim, the timestamp, and any disclosed tool-chain. Signals travel: when a signal is shared, sold, or downloaded, the signature goes with the file.

AE is the platform's internal currency. It's used for tipping creators, supporting work, purchasing auras and sky themes, unlocking tier-locked content, and buying rights to other creators' work. The name is shorthand for "ArcVelvet energy" and is intentionally framed as an interaction medium rather than a speculation vehicle. AE has no blockchain backing and does not trade on any external market.

There are two kinds of AE in your wallet. Withdrawable AE is the portion you have earned through real economic activity on the platform: sales, tips received, content unlocks. On account deletion, this portion attempts a Stripe payout. If the payout fails (no Stripe Connect account, or the payout itself errors), the balance goes into a 12-month escrow window during which you can claim it via email-verified request.

Non-withdrawable AE is the portion from platform-promotional credits: founding-creator onboarding bonuses, seasonal events, and similar. This portion is for spending on the platform and is forfeit on the deletion date. Both balances are displayed separately in the deletion preview before you confirm anything.

A status level that accumulates as creators ship work and the work earns. Higher prestige tiers unlock discount rates on platform fees and visual distinctions on the creator's profile. The tier ladder runs from Neon (entry) through Signal, Velvet, Obsidian, and Mythic (top). Prestige is calculated from platform activity and updates over time; it is not purchasable.

A visual cosmetic that renders around a creator's profile and signal cards in the cosmic-luxe visual language of the platform. Auras range from subtle ambient halos through more elaborate animated visual elements. Most auras are purchased with AE; some are awarded for milestones or earned through prestige progression.

The cosmic-luxe backdrop a creator chooses for their profile and signal-detail surfaces. Themes range from minimal dark to elaborate animated cosmic scenes. Sky themes are part of the platform's "your space looks like yours" framing, paired with auras as the two primary creator-customisation surfaces. Most are purchased with AE.

ARC is the platform's chain-of-custody product, distinct from the signal marketplace. Where signals address creator-side provenance for digital work, ARC addresses provenance for anything photographable that carries a documentation trail: physical art, signed prints, limited-edition objects, documented creative practice. An ARC item carries a Ledger ID that links forward through resales, so when a buyer later sells the item the new record references the previous one. The cryptographic substrate is the same as for signals (C2PA + COSE); the user-facing flow is different because the use case is different.

A status for creators who joined the platform during its pre-launch and early-launch periods. Founding-tier creators receive a permanent badge on their profile, a small ongoing fee discount on sales, and access to certain experimental features earlier than general availability. The cap is set so the tier remains meaningful; the platform does not retroactively grant founding tier after the cap is reached.

The vault is a creator's private storage area on the platform. Work uploaded to the vault is signed and recorded but is not surfaced publicly until the creator chooses to publish. It functions as the staging area between upload and discovery, useful for creators who want to sign work on capture and decide on publication separately.

The horizontal scrolling surface where visitors browse signals. Discovery rails are curated by category (rising creators, top earners, gold-tier featured work, and so on) and appear on the main feed. Each card on a rail represents a published signal; tapping the card opens the signal-detail console with the full work and the option to verify, share, or interact.

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, an open standards body operating under the Linux Foundation's Joint Development Foundation. C2PA publishes the specification (currently v2.2) that defines how cryptographic provenance records get embedded in digital files, how they get verified, and how they travel between creators, platforms, and viewers. ArcVelvet implements the C2PA specification at the practitioner level. The standard is open; the implementation is open-source. More at /references.

The user-facing name (championed by Adobe and the broader Content Authenticity Initiative) for the cryptographic provenance records the C2PA standard defines. When a creator or a viewer sees "Content Credentials" attached to a piece of media, that is the same underlying substrate ArcVelvet signs against. The inspector tool at contentcredentials.org reads these credentials and presents the verification result in plain language.

The structured metadata block embedded in a signed file. The manifest contains the assertions the signer is making about the file (who, when, how, with what tools, with what disclosed inputs), plus the cryptographic signature that ties those assertions to a specific signing certificate. When you verify a file's Content Credentials, the tool is reading and validating the manifest.

A single claim within a manifest. Examples of assertions: "this file was created on this date," "the creator used these AI tools," "this file is a derivative of that file." The platform's own custom assertions (com.arcvelvet.capture, com.arcvelvet.sale, the reversal and license claims) are documented at /trust. Assertions are individually verifiable and individually disclosable.

COSE stands for CBOR Object Signing and Encryption. It is the cryptographic envelope that wraps the actual signature inside a manifest. CBOR is a binary format optimised for size; COSE specifies how a digital signature gets formatted to ride inside a CBOR structure. ArcVelvet's signatures use the ES256 algorithm (ECDSA with P-256 and SHA-256), the C2PA-recommended algorithm for the current standard's profile.

JUMBF stands for JPEG Universal Metadata Box Format. It is the container the C2PA standard uses to embed manifests inside files. For images (JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF), the JUMBF block sits in the file's metadata structure where it survives normal use of the file but can be read by any C2PA-conformant tool. For audio and video formats, C2PA defines equivalent containers in format-specific metadata locations.

The platform uses "provenance" rather than "authenticity" deliberately. Provenance is a record of where a thing comes from and what has happened to it. Authenticity is a claim about whether a thing is what it claims to be. Provenance is verifiable through cryptographic signatures and chain-of-custody records. Authenticity is a question that depends on context and ultimately on human judgment about what a thing claims to be.

A C2PA signature provides provenance: who signed it, when, with what disclosed tools. It does not, by itself, certify authenticity in the deeper sense. That distinction matters because the platform is trying to do the first job well rather than overclaim the second.

The architectural distinction the platform was designed around. A cryptographic record can establish decidability: given a file and a signature, you can decide whether the signature is valid, who signed it, and when. That is a yes-or-no question with a verifiable answer. Truth is a different category: whether the work is original, whether the creator owns the underlying rights, whether the disclosed tool-chain is complete. Those are questions that require human judgment, context, and often legal process.

The platform commits to producing strong decidability: every signed signal is cryptographically verifiable forever, by anyone with a C2PA reader, with no dependence on ArcVelvet remaining online. The platform does not try to adjudicate truth. That commitment is named in the trust documentation as the architectural posture the rest of the platform follows from.