Core Concepts

This section introduces the foundational ideas behind the VSL and how it works in practice on the devnet.

Whether you're building your first application on VSL or just getting familiar with the architecture, this section will help you understand how claims are submitted, verified, and settled and how accounts and actors interact to make that possible.

These are the following pages you'll find in this section:

Devnet Architecture

The devnet architecture is the foundation of the VSL prototype. It introduces the three core roles in the system and describes how they interact to perform claim settlement.

This guide walks through each actor’s responsibility and explains how messages are signed, verified, and processed across the network using the VSL API. You’ll also get a high-level look at how claim settlement unfolds step by step.

The Devnet Architecture

Transactions and Claims

At the heart of VSL is the concept of a claim—a signed message that represents a verifiable statement, such as a payment, a computation result, or a fact.

This guide explains what claims are, how they're structured, and how they move through the submission, verification, and settlement stages. You'll also learn how the FastSet protocol informs the system’s design, and how validators determine when a claim is considered final.

Transactions and Claims

Account Model

Accounts in VSL are minimal but expressive. Each account is defined by a public/private key pair and holds a native token balance, custom assets, and an optional user-defined state.

This guide explains how accounts are structured, how they change state through signed messages, and how claim-based settlement ensures every change is recorded verifiably.

The Account Model

By understanding these three core areas, you’ll gain a solid foundation for interacting with the VSL devnet, building apps on it, or extending its design in the future.

When you're ready, you can explore the API Reference or dive into our Metamask integration.