Ahead-of-Time (AOT) Transaction

An ahead-of-time (AOT) transaction is a blockchain transaction that is prepared, signed or committed to in advance of the moment it is executed or written into a block. The label is not a single standard; it is used loosely for several related ideas. These include pre-signed transactions that a user hands to a service to broadcast later, scheduled or conditional transactions that a smart contract releases when a time or price is reached, and pre-confirmation schemes in which a block producer promises early inclusion before the next block. Some projects also borrow the name from ahead-of-time compilation, where contract code is compiled before it runs to speed up execution. The main risks are stale prices, changed conditions and front-running while the transaction waits in the mempool or a private queue. Also see transaction confirmations and gas fees.