Glossary

Terms used throughout Sharded Markets trading, routing, and settlement documentation.

Term	Definition
Market	Tradable token pair. The MVP supports WHBAR-USDC.
Base asset	First asset in the pair: WHBAR.
Quote asset	Second asset: USDC. Prices and routing bands use USDC.
Shard	Independent liquidity segment with its own policy, fees, health, HCS topic, and orderbook.
Intent	Exact-input trade authorization protected by a minimum output.
Exact input	Precise input amount authorized for transfer during settlement.
Minimum receive	Signed output floor below which settlement must not execute.
Direct routing	Execution mode where the user selects one target shard.
Global market data	Merged display across shards; it does not select execution routing.
NBBO	Best bid and best offer across active shards.
Allowance	Permission for a contract to transfer a bounded token amount; not a deposit.
HCS	Hedera Consensus Service used for ordering and audit transport.
Basis point	One hundredth of one percent: 1 bps = 0.01%.
Settlement	On-chain token exchange and receipt confirmation.
Solver	Backend coordinator that constructs or selects executable routes.
Nonce cancellation	On-chain invalidation preventing an authorization from later settling.