Glossary
The terms you'll meet across Arrow's docs, Discord, and governance, in plain words. Use the site search to jump to any of them from anywhere.
The organization
Arrow — A decentralized community building open-source aircraft in public, governed as a DAO. Aircraft first, DAO second.
DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) — An organization whose rules and treasury are controlled by its members through open voting rather than by a management chain. Arrow's decisions are made by $ARROW token holders.
AIP (Arrow Improvement Proposal) — The formal mechanism for changing how Arrow works: contributor pay, project funding, mission, protocol design. Anyone can write one. See Arrow Improvement Proposals.
$ARROW — Arrow's governance token: fixed 100M supply, used for voting, manufacturing bonds, and contributor compensation. See The $ARROW Token.
GBC (Grants and Bounties Committee) — The elected body that reviews and releases contributor compensation, created by AIP-002.
Snapshot — The platform where Arrow's governance votes happen, token-weighted and public. See Snapshot.
Treasury — The DAO's pooled funds, deployed against budgets that governance approves. See Treasury.
Bounty — A funded, defined-scope task anyone can claim, published on the bounty board.
Grant — Ongoing funded work, typically through the Time Commitment Grant system from AIP-004, which sets five compensation levels.
Projects Framework — The AIP-006 structure for DAO-funded projects: a named leader, a monthly budget cap, and public accountability before payment releases. The current lineup is on the Active Projects page.
CLA (Contributor License Agreement) — The one-time agreement every contributor signs so the open-source licensing of Arrow's work stays clean. See Sign the CLA.
Disciplines taxonomy — The community-approved set of nine categories and forty-three disciplines that tags bounties and contributor profiles with one shared vocabulary.
The aircraft
Quiver — Arrow's first completed aircraft: a modular open-source quadcopter, available as a devkit. See the Quiver docs.
Quiver Mini — A lighter, lower-cost variant of Quiver, currently in design.
Spearhead — Arrow's fixed-wing VTOL demonstrator, currently in development, pushing toward higher speeds and longer range. See the Spearhead docs.
Caribou — Arrow's heavy-lift hexacopter for payload-heavy missions like agricultural spraying. See the Caribou docs.
Longshot — A community-built lithium-ion battery pack to replace Quiver's commercial LiPo.
Feather — An open fixed-wing UAV design, lightweight and built for community iteration.
Devkit — A complete aircraft kit Arrow puts in builders' hands, for assembly, experimentation, and building attachments on top of.
The technology
VTOL / eVTOL — Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft; the "e" means electric. Arrow builds VTOL aircraft because they need minimal ground infrastructure.
Fixed-wing VTOL — An aircraft that takes off and lands vertically but cruises on wings like a plane, gaining speed and range over a pure multicopter.
ArduPilot / PX4 — The two major open-source autopilot software projects. Arrow aircraft fly on open flight stacks.
Pixhawk — A family of open-standard flight controller hardware that runs ArduPilot or PX4.
Flight controller — The onboard computer that keeps an aircraft stable and executes commands, running the autopilot software.
ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) — The electronics that translate the flight controller's commands into motor speed.
LiPo (Lithium polymer battery) — The common battery chemistry for electric aircraft, favored for high discharge rates.
MTOW (Maximum Takeoff Weight) — The heaviest an aircraft is designed to be at takeoff, including payload and batteries.
Airframe — The aircraft's physical structure: frame, arms, wings, and skin, everything except propulsion, electronics, and payload.
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