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Key Concepts

This page defines the building blocks you'll meet everywhere in Convex: the vocabulary of accounts, transactions and actors, and the economic model that keeps the network sustainable. For why the platform is built this way, see What Makes Convex Different; for the underlying technology, see Lattice Technology.

Lattice technology in one paragraph​

Convex is built on lattice technology: data structures with a merge function that is commutative, associative and idempotent, so distributed copies are mathematically guaranteed to converge — the idea behind CRDTs, extended with cryptographic security, transaction ordering, and immutable Merkle-tree data structures. Consensus itself is one application of this: peers merge signed Beliefs until the network agrees on a single transaction ordering. The full story is on the Lattice Technology page.

Convergent Proof of Stake (CPoS)​

CPoS is the consensus algorithm securing on-chain transactions, described in detail in the White Paper. Its main properties:

  • Byzantine fault tolerance (67% stake required for stable consensus)
  • Stake-weighted voting by peers
  • Leaderless design — peers submit transactions in parallel, with zero block delay
  • Resistance to front-running

Users and developers don't need to think about CPoS in daily use: peers handle it, clients get fast, secure transactions.

Core building blocks​

  • Accounts are the fundamental unit of identity. Every account has a permanent numeric address (like #42), can hold coins and other assets, and is secured by a replaceable Ed25519 key pair. Accounts also act as programmable environments — each has its own namespace of definitions.
  • Transactions are signed instructions executed atomically against the global state: transfers, smart contract calls, or arbitrary Convex Lisp code. If anything fails, the whole transaction rolls back automatically.
  • Queries read network state. They are free, unsigned, and change nothing — never confuse them with transactions.
  • Actors are autonomous accounts — the Convex equivalent of smart contracts. Once deployed, an actor's code executes deterministically on the CVM and can hold assets, enforce rules and provide services to other accounts.
  • Convex Coins (CVM) are the native utility token, used to pay for transaction execution. The smallest unit is the copper: 1 Convex Coin = 1,000,000,000 copper. See Convex Coins.
  • Juice meters execution cost: every CVM operation has a defined juice price, so computation is paid for in proportion to the work (CAD007).
  • Memory accounting meters storage: allocating on-chain memory consumes an account's memory allowance, releasing data refunds it, and allowance trades against Convex Coins in a global pool (CAD006). This is how Convex avoids unbounded state growth — see Memory is money.
  • Digital assets of any kind — fungible tokens, NFTs, custom instruments — share a universal asset model (CAD019), so wallets and applications handle them uniformly.

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