Glossary
You know software. This is the vocabulary that’s specific to Stellar, escrow, and the TOSS bounty model, defined plainly and linked from the pages that use them.
Bounty
A reward in USDC attached to a GitHub issue. It becomes payable when the assigned contributor’s merged PR closes the issue. Internally it’s a record that reserves funds from the repo’s escrow balance and tracks a status (open → assigned → paid/cancelled).
Escrow
A per-repository smart contract on Stellar that holds the repo’s USDC. Bounties reserve against its balance; releases, refunds, and splits are on-chain operations against it. Neither you nor the contributor can move the funds directly — the contract releases based on verified state.
Milestone
The escrow’s unit of payment for a single bounty. When a contributor connects a wallet, the bounty’s milestone is pushed on-chain with an amount and a receiver address. Releasing a milestone pays the contributor; disputing and resolving one refunds the maintainer.
USDC
A stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, issued on Stellar by Circle. Bounties are denominated and paid in USDC. Your wallet must add a trustline before it can hold USDC.
Trustline
A one-time, on-chain authorization that lets your Stellar account hold a specific asset — here, USDC. Without it, a USDC payout can’t land in your wallet. It costs a tiny amount of XLM and persists until you remove it.
XLM
Stellar’s native asset (Lumens). Pays per-transaction network fees and satisfies the account’s minimum reserve. You need a small balance to connect a wallet, add a trustline, deploy, or fund.
Stellar
The blockchain TOSS settles on. Fast finality (a few seconds) and sub-cent fees. You interact with it only through your wallet’s sign prompts.
Mainnet
Stellar’s production network, where balances are real money. These docs assume mainnet throughout.
Recovery phrase (seed phrase)
The 12–24 words that deterministically derive your wallet’s keys. Whoever holds them controls the funds. Treat them like a root private key: offline, never pasted into a site, never shared. TOSS never asks for them.
Reward tier
A named (label, amount) pair stored on the repo. The defaults are low, medium, high, but tiers are fully editable — rename, delete, or add tiers mapped to any GitHub label. Labeling an issue with a tier applies that amount.
Manual bounty
A bounty whose amount isn’t a preset tier. You label the issue rewarded + manual and set the amount with @trustless-oss <amount> or by putting the amount in the issue body.
The bot (@trustless-oss)
The GitHub App account that reacts to labels, assignments, merges, and comment commands. Mentioning @trustless-oss with a command triggers an action; it also posts status comments (bounty created, split saved, payout released).
Split / partial payout
A pre-merge instruction (@trustless-oss pay 70) that divides the reward on merge: the contributor gets the percentage, the remainder returns to the maintainer. Stored as an intent; applied at release time.
Dispute / reject
Rejecting work (@trustless-oss reject or the rejected label) disputes the milestone on-chain and resolves it back to the maintainer’s wallet, refunding the reserved funds and cancelling the bounty.
Closes #N
A GitHub keyword in a PR body that links it to an issue (Closes, Fixes, Resolves, and their variants all work). TOSS uses this link to match a merged PR to its bounty.
Next: Set up your wallet · How payouts work