Glossary
What are digital currencies?
A digital form of currency, usually transacted within a distributed ledger called a blockchain.
What is cryptocurrency?
A digital form of currency, usually transacted within a distributed ledger called a blockchain that is secured by cryptography
What is a blockchain?
A distributed database which is built with a time-stamping mechanism that adds data in blocks which are verified by all parties, this secures the database by ensuring immutability
What is a token?
A digital asset that represents something of value and can be transacted and stored digitally.
What is a public ledger?
An open and distributed database for storing and transacting digital assets
What is a block explorer?
A tool to track and monitor transactions, transaction details and balances which are stored inside distributed ledgers or blockchains
What is a verified transaction?
A transaction that has been verified by all participating parties on the network
What is a wallet address?
A unique address consisting of a string of characters which is linked to your personal wallet.
What is a payment ID?
A string of characters added to a transaction to separate transactions within a wallet address and link them to a specific receiver
What is a memo text?
A string of characters added to a transaction as a message for the receiver to read
What is a destination tag?
A string of characters added to a transaction to separate transactions within a wallet address and link them to a specific receiver
What is a wallet?
A device, program or service which interacts with the public ledger by creating transactions and storing the public and private key of a certain account.
What is a TXID?
A unique string of characters that is used to identify your transaction on a distributed ledger
What is synchronization?
The process of updating your software to view the latest version of the distributed ledger
What is open source?
A program people can openly inspect, modify, and enhance because its source code is publicly accessible.
What is a smart contract?
A self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between multiple parties being directly written into lines of code.
What is a white paper?
An authenticated report describing the benefits and fundamental line of thought of new technology, in this context usually a cryptocurrency
What is decentralized?
A system or network distributed amongst multiple parties without a central point of control
What is an ICO?
ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering, which refers to the process of funding a new cryptocurrency project
What is a ticker symbol?
An abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares, stocks or in this context a cryptocurrency or token
What is a hashing algorithm?
A function that can be used to change data of arbitrary size into a fixed size, used in distributed ledgers to safely compile and store data
What is a block reward?
Coins that are awarded to cryptocurrency miners with each new block that is added to the blockchain to incentivize miners to keep the network secure
What is block time?
The average time it takes to add a new block to the blockchain
What is a block?
A block of data of which the size is specified by the protocol of the specific coin
What is Gas?
Refers to the currency that is used as 'fuel' on particular blockchains to execute specific actions like transactions or the deployment of smart contracts
What is a dApp?
'Decentralized Applications'. Applications that are being deployed on blockchains and cryptocurrency protocols which are not being controlled by an authoritative entity
What is scalability?
The property of a network, protocol or system to handle growing amounts of work/transactions as result of the addition of more resources to the system, in this context usually a blockchain
What is Proof of Work?
A consensus algorithm that uses the solving of complex cryptographic puzzles to achieve consensus within a network
What is Proof of Stake?
A consensus algorithm that uses the economic staking of assets to achieve consensus within a network
What is a stealth address?
A privacy enhancing mechanism where the sender of the coins is required to create a one-time address for every transaction
What are ring signatures?
A type of digital signature used to anonymize the signing of transactions
What are bulletproofs?
A non-interactive zero knowledge proof that can be used to convince another party about the positive status of an encrypted transaction without revealing the actual transaction
What is zero-knowledge proof?
A method where one party can prove to the other party that they are in possession of certain information without actually revealing any of the information itself
What is encryption?
The process of encoding data with the use of a certain keyset that can be decoded with the use of this keyset
What is fungibility?
The interchangeability of an asset with other individual assets of the same type
What is a miner?
An individual or group running specific software to validate transactions and other data on a cryptocurrency network and are rewarded with cryptocurrency to do this
What is a consensus algorithm?
An algorithm used to reach consensus about the status of data on a network without the need of a central authority
What is P2P?
Stands for peer-to-peer and describes the direct transaction of data between two parties without the interference of a third party
What is a protocol?
A rule or prescription describing how different activities should be performed in this case on a cryptocurrency network
What is an ASIC?
An 'Application-Specific Integrated Circuit' is an integrated circuit built for a particular use only, in this case hardware built for mining a cryptocurrency.
What is SHA256?
SHA256 is part of Secure Hash Algorithm 2 which is a set of cryptographic functions designed by the NSA and is used as the main hashing algorithm in a lot of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin
What is circulating supply?
The total amount of circulating cryptocurrency units or tokens that are publicly available on the whole network.
What is SegWit?
SegWit refers to 'Segregated Witness' a new method of storing data in a cryptocurrency where the data storage capacity per block is increased.
What is a hard fork?
A rule or protocol change in a cryptocurrency network where the validating software (wallet) needs to be updated in order to keep maintaining the network.
What is a soft fork?
A rule or protocol change in a cryptocurrency network where the validating software (wallet) does not necessarily need to be updated as it backwards compatible.
What is immutability?
The property of a network or data set, in this case, a blockchain, which states that it cannot be modified anymore after it is created and verified by the network
What is a rollback?
A rigorous action whereby the blockchain is restored at a certain point in time or block usually used to avoid a major flaw inside certain blocks
What is a hybrid blockchain?
A blockchain where two different protocols are combined, for example, combining proof of stake and proof of work or combining the properties of a private and a public blockchain
What is a DAO?
A decentralized organization operating completely autonomous via rules set in code where no centralized management is needed
What is a mining pool?
A shared collection of mining resources or processing power by a network of miners whose goal is to split the reward equally, according to the amount of power each contributed
What is a private key?
A private key is a key built out of a certain amount of characters that gives you access to your wallet address in the public ledger and allows you to spend your cryptocurrency
What is a public key?
A public key is a key built out of a certain amount of characters that is publically known and can be used to receive cryptocurrency from other parties