One page Glossary
A
Access token
A token that can be provided as part of an HTTP request that grants access to the service being invoked on. This is part of the OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 specification. https://openid.net/developers/specs/
Here the term token is not referring to a digital asset that is stored in a blockchain
Account
An Account is a Wallet Address associated with a User or Organization. Each address is an Account.
Users can have several accounts (therefore several Wallet addresses on the same blockchain), or even multiple addresses on multiple blockchains
Accounts can be managed by one or more users
Account Holder Roles
Account Holders can have the role of:
Administrator
Enduser, or
Legal Representative
Further Definitions/Use/Example
Eniblock An Account is an Object made up of a Public and Private Keypair that contains the Balance of Funds of the Portfolio of one or more Users.
Funds are stored on the Blockchain, not in the Wallet or the Account
Types of Application Accounts
User Account: An Identity created for an Individual or Organizational End-user. This Account Type provides access to the Application. It contains the ID and Personal Data of an Organisation or User of the Eniblock Platform.
Blockchain Account: Represented by a Blockchain Address controlled by a Keypair of Private/public key. This type of Account manages Privileges on the Blockchain.
Legal Entity: The representation of a Natural or Legal Person.
For added security, passwords are used to encrypt private keys
Activity Service
A Blockchain Explorer providing all the information relative to with the Blockchain, e.g.:
Transactions
Smart Contract
Account
Statistics
Events
Etc.
Further Definitions/Use/Example
An API provider: All the above information relative to with the Blockchain made available through public APIs
An Indexing Node
See also ‘Tezos Network Activity' on TzStats'
Address / Public Key
Used to send and receive transactions on a blockchain network. An address is an alphanumeric character string, which can also be represented as a scannable QR code.
In Ethereum, the address begins with 0x.
Example: 0x06A85356DCb5b307096726FB86A78c59D38e08ee
AddressIdenticon, AddressIcon
See Identicon
Administrator
An Administrator is a person that works for the Issuer and who is responsible for carrying out the administration of the organization on the platform.
Air Gapping
A method for securing computers in which the device does not connect to the internet or any other open networks.
Airdrop
It is a marketing strategy of minting tokens for customers for free.
Here are the different strategies:
Standard Airdrop: the objective is to spread awareness and increase ownership of the project (A new platform, a new cryptocurrency, a new collection, …).
Bounty Airdrop: an action is required in exchange of the token, as reposting an article on a social platform.
Holder Airdrop: used as rewards for customers who already own specific Tokens. The objectives are to promote and give value to those Tokens.
Algorithm
Cryptographic Digital Signature schemes.
Further Definitions/Use/Example
EdDSA (Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm): a digital signature scheme using a variant of Schnorr signature based on twisted Edwards curves.
ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm): offers a variant of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) which uses elliptic curve cryptography.
Alias
An alternative Name.
Altcoin
Any digital currency alternative to Bitcoin. Many altcoins are forks of Bitcoin with minor changes (e.g., Litecoin). See also ‘fork’.
AML (Anti-Money Laundering)
A set of international laws enacted to diminish the potential for criminal organizations or individuals to launder money. These rules and laws are applied to cryptocurrencies with varying effects in different jurisdictions.
API (Application Programming Interface)
A software intermediary that allows two separate applications to communicate with one another. APIs define methods of communication between various components.
ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit)
ASICs are silicon chips designed for specific tasks. For example, an ASIC used for mining cryptocurrencies can perform a calculation to find values that provide a desired solution when placed into a hashing algorithm.
Asset
Generic A digital asset can be anything in a digital format and comes with the right to use. Data that do not possess that right are not considered assets, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_asset.
Blockchain An Asset, or Digital Asset, is something which has economic value. It is represented as a Smart Contract and can be traded on the Blockchain. It can represent for example a security, such as a share or a bond, a digital representation of physical asset, or a purely Digital Asset.
Further Definitions/Use/Example
Fungible Tokens (for custom crypto currencies)
Semi- or Non-Fungible Tokens
A Cryptocurrency
Attestation
The process of validating the integrity of a computing device such as a server needed for trusted computing and confirming the block and the transactions it contains.
Further Definitions/Use/Example
Under the Proof of Stake mechanism (on the Beacon Chain), every validator other than the one proposing a new block provides an Attestation, or vote, in favor of a block with which it agrees, thereby forming consensus and confirming the block and the transactions it contains.
See also Proof of Stake.
Authentication
The process of identifying and validating a user.
Authorization
The process of granting access to a user.
B
Beacon Chain
The Beacon Chain is one element in the infrastructure being built to scale by Ethereum. It is the foundation for a transition from a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to Proof of Stake (PoS).
For more information, see this guide.
BTC, Bitcoin
The first cryptocurrency based on a Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain.
History Bitcoin was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakomoto — a pseudonym for an individual whose real identity is unknown — and the concept of cryptocurrency was outlined in a white paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”
Use “Bitcoin” for the blockchain/network; “bitcoin” for the cryptocurrency. The plural of bitcoin is just bitcoin; the abbreviation is BTC, with a space: I have 250 BTC.
Blacklist
A Blacklist is a mechanism which explicitly denied some identified entities to access a particular service. The blacklist Operation consists in forbidding the Investor to sell or buy a specific token.
Block
After a certain number of transactions have been added to the ledger and consensus has been reached among the nodes that the transactions are valid, then they are cryptographically locked into a “Block” and officially recorded.
This Block forms the basis for the next one; in this way, they are all linked together in a chain, hence the term “Blockchain” (see Blockchain).
Block Height
The number of blocks connected together in the blockchain.
Example: Height 0 could be the very first block, also called the Genesis Block
Block Reward
The reward given to a Miner after it has successfully hashed a Transaction Block.
Block Rewards can be a mixture of coins and transaction fees, the composition depends on the policy used by the cryptocurrency in question, and whether all of the coins have already been successfully mined.
The current block reward for the Bitcoin network is 12.5 bitcoins per block.
Block Time
Block Time refers to how long it takes for a block of transactions (see ‘block’) to be confirmed by the network, either by Miners under PoW or by Validators under PoS.
See also ‘Proof of Work’, ‘Proof of Stake’.
Blockchain
A Blockchain consists of a Ledger that is constantly being updated with changes that are synched between any number of different Nodes
“Distributed Ledger Technology” is another way to describe it
Tezos*
Ethereum
Solana
*Supported Blockchain
BNO (Business Network Operator)
An Operator that can add Organizations to the Consortium.
Bounty / Bug Bounty
A reward offered for exposing vulnerabilities and issues in computer code.
Brain Wallet
A blockchain account generated from a seed phrase or password or passphrase of your choosing.
Humans are not capable of generating enough entropy -or randomness), therefore Wallets derived from these phrases are insecure.
Brain Wallets can be brute forced by super fast computers. For this reason, Brain Wallets are insecure and should not be used.
See also ‘Seed Phrase / Secret Recovery Phrase’.
BSP (Business Service Provider)
BSP Operators are in charge of the creation of a new service that will use data from DSPs and that will be proposed to Vehicle owner during service subscription.
A DSP can also be a BSP, however,
A BSP cannot also be a DSP
A service subscription is the means by which the platform allows the BSP to access DSP stored data after the consent of the Vehicule owner (data owner) for a given time period an for a declarative scope.
See also DSP.
BUIDL
Ostensibly coined (see what we did there) by Gitcoin’s Kevin Owocki, it reflects the Ethereum-focused mindset of not just investing in a cryptocurrency as a store of value, but rather investing in it as an ecosystem and a platform for public goods and software.
In this sense, it complements the now-infamous HODL.
See HODL.
Burn
An Operation that allows Administrators to decrease the total supply of existing Tokens by burning existing Token, i.e deleting existing Tokens.
A Burn is made either on the Wallet of an Investor or on the Token crypto-account.
Burned Token
Token that have been sent to an unusable account and that cannot be used in Transactions.
Business Data / Business-data
A Digital Passport event can be linked to a Business-data
Eniblock A.k.a. “Metadata” at the beginning of Projects
Example: Data not relating to a specific car but relating to a car model
For Business-data and Business-dataset, see Metadata
Business Data Assets (Documents)
Business documents relating to specific Categories.
Business Data Catalog (Catalogue Data Source)
A detailed inventory of all data assets in an organization, designed to help quickly find the most appropriate data for any analytical or business purpose.
https://www.ibm.com/topics/data-catalog
Business Data Type
The Business Data Category.
Eniblock A.k.a. “Scope” at the beginning of projects
Business Service Provider Administrator
A Person who adds New Data Sources and their Scope.
Business Service Provider Operator
A Person who operates Data Sources.
Business Dataset
A set of data related to a particular Business.
Example
In the car industry, you could request access to some information regarding the manufacture of some of the equipment or about a certain vehicle model. Such information would be stored in a business dataset.
Eniblock Base URI + Resource (or resource identifier) = API URI
Buyback
A Buyback is when a corporation purchases its own securities in the market.
Bytecode
Bytecode is a “low-level” computer language meant to be processed by a computer, rather than a “high-level” computer language, which is more human-readablee.
In Ethereum, higher-level Solidity is compiled into Ethereum bytecode, which is read by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Byzantium Fork
A “hard fork” in the Ethereum network that occurred in October of 2017.
Further Information
C
Category, aka token type
In a Smart Contract able to manage multiple token types, as the ERC-1155 on EVM, each non fongible token type represent a category.
A category is a set of unlimited amount of tokens sharing the same traits.
In the NFTs solution, those categories are used to regroup listings by token themes.
In the context of a marketplace dedicated to a sport, the players and the clubs are two different categories. All tokens of the player category will have a field position, none token of the clubs category will have this traits.
Circulating Token
Tokens in circulation are calculated by subtracting the burned tokens from the minted Tokens.
Client (Ethereum Client)
A client usually includes a cryptocurrency software wallet.
Ethereum Client is software that accesses the Ethereum blockchain via a local computer and helps to process Transactions.
See also List of Clients.
Coin
A Coin, in cryptocurrency, is a representation of a digital asset value that is generated via its own independent blockchain.
Cold Wallet / Cold Storage
An offline Wallet that is never connected to the internet to protect protect cryptocurrencies from being hacked online.
Collection
This corresponds to all the NFTs managed by a single smart contract.
On EVM, an ERC-721 and ERC-1155 represent a collection.
Confirmation
A Confirmation occurs when a network has verified a blockchain transaction.
Under a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, this happens through a process known as Mining.
Under Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, the process is known as Validation
Once a transaction is successfully confirmed it theoretically cannot be reversed or double spent. The more confirmations a transaction has, the harder it becomes to perform a double spend attack.
Consensus
A Process used by a group of peers, or Nodes, on a blockchain network to agree on the validity of transactions submitted to the network.
Dominant consensus mechanisms are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS).
ConsenSys
ConsenSys (contraction of Consensus Systems) is the software engineering leader of the blockchain space.
Constantinople Fork
One of the “hard forks” made to the Ethereum network in February 2019.
More Information See the Constantinople Fork page.
See also Hard Fork.
Contract
See Smart Contract.
Creator
A Creator is someone who produce and so owns, content that will be part of the metadata of a NFT.
The Creator is generally the beneficiary of the Secondary Market royalties.
The Creator can be part of our client's team or external.
Credentials
Credentials are pieces of data that a system or application uses to verify the identity of a user. Some examples are passwords, one-time-passwords, digital certificates, or even fingerprints.
Crypto
Current Relating to Cryptography.
Technologies that are referred to with the blanket term of Crypto tech are underlain by cryptographic tools and processes such as public/private key pairs that enable them and enable them to be secure.
Origin κρῠ́πτω (krúptō, “I conceal”) Ancient Greek
The term Cryptocurrency is often shortened to the more succinct term “Crypto” and this emerging field is full of instances where something “crypto” is being added to or shortened.
Crypto Bounties
Bounties paid for in cryptocurrency.
See also Bug Bounties.
Crypto Compliance
A blanket term used to refer to ensuring crypto projects conform with applicable regulations and laws.
Cryptoassets
A useful blanket term that covers On-chain assets, such as Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other products which are still emerging.
Cryptocurrency
Digital currency that is based on mathematics and uses encryption techniques to regulate the creation of units of currency as well as verifying the transfer of funds.
Cryptocurrencies operate independently of a central bank and are kept track of through distributed ledger technology.
Cryptoeconomics
The economic analysis of decentralized finance, notably, the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab.
Cryptography
A method for secure communication using code.
Symmetric-key Cryptography is used by various blockchain networks for the transfer of cryptocurrencies. Blockchain addresses generated for wallets are paired with private keys that allow transfer of cryptocurrency.
Paired public and private keys allow funds to be unlocked.
D
DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)
A Digital Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO, pronounced like the Chinese concept) is a powerful and very flexible organizational structure built on a blockchain.
History The first known example of a DAO is referred to as The DAO:
The DAO served as a form of investor-directed venture capital fund, which sought to provide enterprises with new decentralized business models. Ethereum-based, The DAO’s code was open source. The organization set the record for the most crowdfunded project in 2016. Those funds were partially stolen by hackers. The hack caused an Ethereum hard-fork which lead to the creation of Ethereum Classic.
DApp (Decentralized Application)
Open source software application with backend code running on a decentralized peer-to-peer network rather than on a centralized server.
A.k.a. Also written “dApp”, “Dapp” or simply “dapp”,
DDoS Attack(Distributed Denial of Service Attack)
A type of cyber-attack in which the perpetrator continuously overwhelms the system with requests in order to prevent service of legitimate requests.
Decentralization
The transfer of authority and responsibility from a centralized organization, government, or party to a distributed network.
Delegative Democracy
See Liquid Democracy
Deposit
Digital property put into a contract involving a different party such that if certain conditions are not satisfied that property is automatically forfeited to the identified counterparty.
Derive / Derivation
To Derive something is to obtain it from an original source.
Crypto-technology we often discuss “deriving” wallets and accounts from seed phrases / Secret Recovery Phrases.
Description
A descriptive statement or account providing key characteristics of an object or element.
Eniblock API A description field.
DevCon
This is shorthand for the Ethereum Developers’ Conference.
DEX(Decentralized Exchange)
A decentralized exchange is a platform for exchanging cryptocurrencies based on functionality programmed on the blockchain (i.e., in smart contracts).
The trading is peer-to-peer, or between pools of liquidity.
This is in contrast with a centralized exchange, which is more akin to a bank or investment firm that specializes in cryptocurrencies.
There are important technical and regulatory differences between the two which are constantly evolving.
Difficulty
The concept outlining how hard it is to verify blocks in a blockchain network during Proof of Work mining.
Bitcoin network The difficulty of mining adjusts every 2016 blocks to keep block verification time to 10 minutes.
Difficulty Bomb
A mechanism to increase the block verification difficulty, making it more expensive and difficult–eventually, prohibitively so–to mine a new block. The intention is to force the shift to PoS consensus.
The Difficulty Bomb, along with the Beacon Chain and others, is an element of Ethereum’s upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 and a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
See also ‘Proof of Stake’.
Digital Asset
A digital commodity that is scarce, electronically transferable, and intangible with a market value.
Digital Identity
An online or networked identity adopted by an individual, organization, or electronic device.
Digital Passport
A Digital Passport is a digital representation of an Asset and its lifecycle.
In Passport for Connected Car (PCC) technology The digital passport is a shortcut for car digital passport, as the asset is a vehicle identified by a unique VIN.
The passport has an Owner:
PCC the owner is identified by a clientId (provided by Keycloak), this clientId is expected to correspond to the same user as the asset owner.
The passport is associated to an event history associated to this passport:
A private part (off chain)
A public part (on chain)
In our project the passport is also a NFT, so it has a token id (UUID)
Digital Passport Datasource
A datasource that provided Digital Passport information
Digital Signature
A code generated by public key encryption and attached to an electronically transmitted document in order to verify the contents of the document.
Distributed Ledger
A type of database which spreads across multiple sites, countries, or institutions.
Distributed ledger data can be Permissioned or Unpermissioned to control who can view it.
DKG (Distributed key generation)
Distributed key generation is a cryptographic process in which multiple parties contribute to the calculation of a shared public and private key set. Unlike most public key encryption models, distributed key generation does not rely on Trusted Third Parties.
Double Spend
An event during which someone on the Bitcoin network tries to send a specific bitcoin transaction to two different recipients at once.
Records are stored sequentially in a continuous ledger.
As each bitcoin transaction is confirmed, double spending becomes almost impossible. The more confirmations a transaction has, the less likely a double spending event will be successful.
Drop
See Airdrop
E
EEA (Enterprise Ethereum Alliance)
A group of Ethereum core developers, startups and large companies working together to commercialize and use Ethereum for different business applications.
More information See the Entethalliance website: https://entethalliance.org/ .
EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal)
EIPs describe standards for the Ethereum platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards.
More specifically, they are proposals for modifications to the network and the way it functions.
See also Official Ethereum Improvement Proposals page.
Encrypted / Unencrypted Keys
Public and private crypographic key pairs are technologies that underpin cryptocurrencies and “crypto” tech in general.
In MetaMask, an unencrypted private key is 64 characters long. It is used to unlock or restore Wallets.
An encrypted key is also 64 letters long and is a regular private key that has gone through the process of encryption.
Example
If the word Apple was your private key, then it was encrypted three letters down the alphabet, your new shortened encrypted key would be “Dssoh”
Since you know the way to encrypt this key, you could derive the original private key from it by reversing the method of encryption
Encrypted private keys are usually kept within the extension or device they are encrypted by and they remain out of sight from the user to add another layer of security and help keep a user’s wallet information safe.
Encryption
Eniblock A process that combines the text to be encrypted (plaintext) with a shorter string of data referred to as a Key in order to produce an output (ciphertext).
This output can be “decrypted” back into the original plaintext by someone else who has the key.
See also There are many types of encryption per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption or https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/encryption.asp#:~:text=Encryption%20is%20a%20means%20of,makes%20the%20original%20information%20unreadable.
ENS (Ethereum Name Service)
The Ethereum Name Service is a protocol to assign human-readable and easy-to-remember addresses to Ethereum addresses and assets, homologous to the traditional internet’s DNS.
Entropy
Cryptography Entropy refers to ‘randomness’.
Generally, the more random something is (or the more entropy it has), the more secure it is.
Epoch
An Epoch, in general, is a measure of time, or of blockchain progression, on a given blockchain.
Ethereum Beacon Chain An Epoch consists of 32 slots, each lasting 12 seconds, for a total of 6.4 minutes per epoch. There is additional functionality built upon the epoch measure in the Beacon Chain to help ensure security and proper operation of the Chain.
ERC (Ethereum Request for Comment)
An Ethereum Request for Comment (ERC) is, essentially, a set of standards for a given operation or topic on the Ethereum network. The authoritative list can be found here.
Ethereum Request for Comment, or ERC, is a bit of a misnomer, as it is used to refer to suggestions for modifications that have already made it through the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) process and have been made standard on Ethereum.
ERC-20 Token Standard
ERC-20 is a technical standard for smart contracts which is used to issue the majority of Tokens (in particular, Cryptocurrency Tokens) extant on Ethereum.
This list of rules states the requirements that a token must fulfil to be compliant and function within the Ethereum network.
ERC-721 Token Standard
ERC-721 is a standard for Ethereum Smart Contracts which allows for the issuance of a Non-Fungible Token (NFT).
This token standard is used to represent unique digital assets that are not interchangeable.
ETH(Ether)
Ether is the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain network.
Ether (ETH) functions as a fuel of the Ethereum ecosystem by acting as a medium of incentive and form of payment for network participants to execute essential operations.
The cryptocurrency of Ethereum is spelt with a lowercase ‘e”
The plural of “ether’ is also “ether”, abbreviated as ETH and is always preceded by a space, eg “I have 10 ETH”
Ether (Denominations)
There are a number of denominations of the currency known as ether or ETH.
Further information See the Ethereum Homestead documentation.
Ethereum
Ethereum is a public blockchain network and decentralized software platform upon which developers build and run applications.
Event
Events are audit streams that admins can view and hook into.
An Event can be made of:
Metrics (a pair of [instrument, value]
Date
Name (Type)
EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine)
The EVM is a virtual machine that operates on the Ethereum network. It is Turing complete and allows anyone, anywhere to execute arbitrary EVM Bytecode.
It is home for Smart Contracts based on the Ethereum blockchain.
Exchange
A place to trade cryptocurrency.
Centralized exchanges, operated by companies like Coinbase and Gemini, function as intermediaries, while decentralized exchanges do not have a central authority.
Expiration Date
The date of expiry of a settlement (order)
The Expiration Date must appear on or after the settlement date (order page).
F
Faucet
A faucet is an application, sometimes a very simple website, other times more complex, that dispenses cryptocurrency for use on test networks only.
Faucets are used by developers to test dapps or smart contracts before deploying them on the Ethereum Mainnet, or users who want to practice an action on the blockchain with no risk.
Tokens dispensed by a test Faucet stay on the test networks and cannot be exchanged for mainnet equivalents.
Federation
Authentication delegation to one or more IDPs.
Fiat Currency
Government-issued currency.
Example
US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), Yuan (CNY), and Yen (JPY).
Final, Finality
The state of a transaction when:
There are sufficient confirmations of the transaction, or
The block that contains it is mined or validated.
This reflects a fundamental rule of blockchains: unlike traditional financial systems where charges can be “reversed”, there is no “undoing” a transaction on the blockchain.
Once finality is reached, the transaction is immutable, i.e. it can no longer be changed
Finney
A denomination of Ether.
See Ether (Denomination).
Force Transfer
A Force Transfer allows an Administrator to launch a Transfer Operation from an Investor’s wallet to another wallet without the Investors' approval.
Fork
A Fork creates an alternative version of a blockchain.
Soft Forks render two chains with some compatibility, while
Hard Forks create a new version of the chain that must be adopted to continue participation.
An instance of a contentious Hard Fork can create two versions of a blockchain network.
Forks are often enacted intentionally to apply upgrades to a network.
See also Hard Fork.
Freeze Token
Operation that locks all current Tokens that are in circulation.
Example Tokens can be frozen for instance because of a ban on certain token transactions, a ban on certain wallets or a ban on wallets with a certain amount.
Frozen Token
Token that cannot be transferred to another address until certain unlocking conditions are met.
G
Gas
A measure of the computational steps required for a transaction on the Ethereum network. This then equates to a fee for network users paid in small units of ETH specified as Gwei.
Further information See also:
Ether (denominations)
Gas Limit
The Gas Limit is the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for any given transaction to go through the Ethereum network.
Another way of looking at it is as a “rough estimate” of how much computing power your transaction will take.
Gas Price
The Gas Price is the cost the network is paid for the computational work being performed in a given transaction. It is paid in units of ETH called Gwei.
Depending on network congestion, the gas price may vary significantly.
Gas station
A Gas station is a sort of relayer that allow the end user of a service (Marketplace, Exchange…) not to pay any transaction fees. The service usally pay a subscription to the Gas Station to be able to use it and allow just a certain number of “feeless” transaction to the end user (eg: 10Tx per week) in order not to have abuse of use.
Genesis Block
The initial block of data computed in the history of a blockchain network.
Giveaway
Giveaway refers to an Issuer minting an Asset for free directly into an end-user's wallet. Specifically, a giveaway occurs when the Issuer mints an asset that has been listed in the primary market and has not been sold. Giveaway is in this sense different from Airdrop.
Gwei
A minuscule and common denomination of ETH, and
The unit in which gas prices are often specified.
See Ether (Denominations) for more information.
H
Halving
Cryptocurrency Halving refers to a process that reduces the issuance rate of new coins. More precisely, halving is the periodical reduction of the block subsidy provided to miners.
The halving ensures that a crypto asset will follow a steady issuance rate until its maximum supply is eventually reached.
Many cryptocurrencies have a finite supply, which makes them a scarce digital commodity.
Bitcoin The total amount of Bitcoin that will ever be issued is 21 million. The number of bitcoins generated per block is decreased 50% every four years. This is called “halving.”
The final halving will take place in the year 2140.
Hard Fork
A hard fork occurs when there is a change in the blockchain that is not backward compatible (not compatible with older versions), thus requiring all participants to upgrade to the new version in order to be able to continue participating on the network.
See also Fork.
Hardware Wallet
A physical device that can be connected to the web and interact with online exchanges, but can also be used as cold storage (not connected to the internet).
Hash
A programmatic function that takes an input, and then outputs an alphanumeric string known as the “hash value” or “digital fingerprint.”
Each block in the blockchain contains the hash value that validated the transaction before it followed by its own hash value.
Hashes confirm transactions on the blockchain.
HD Wallet
Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets enable the creation of a very large number of accounts based on an initial seed phrase.
History This technology was first created for Bitcoin and later adopted in Ethereum Wallets.
Example When restoring a MetaMask Wallet from the Secret Recovery Phrase, if you “create” accounts, they will be the same accounts as previously created from that same phrase. They are derived from it.
Hexadecimal
Hexadecimal is a base 16 counting system, as opposed to a base 10 counting system.
Used all over Ethereum for a variety of things, a hexadecimal string is comprised of the numbers 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and letters A B C D E.
Hot Wallet / Hot Storage
This type of Wallet is directly connected to the internet at all times, for example one that is held on a centralized exchange.
Hot Wallets are considered to have lower security than cold storage systems or hardware wallets.
Hyperledger
A Hyperledger is an ecosystem of open-system tools, librarie and products designed to enable and support enterprise-grade blockchain technology.
In general, these products focus on creating solutions for Permissioned Blockchains, that is non-public blockchains with alternative consensus mechanisms other than Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Stake (PoS).
Example There are use cases where such institutions would want to integrate with public blockchains and for that reason Hyperledger Besu and Hyperledger Burrow are actively developed projects, the former being a Java-based Ethereum client, the latter being a smart contract platform which supports EVM bytecode.
I
ICO (Initial Coin Offering)
An Initial Coin Offering (also called ICO) occurs when a new cryptocurrency sells advance tokens in exchange for upfront capital.
These have been a vehicle for fraud and scams, and as such are subject to ever-evolving regulation and legislation.
Identicon /AddressIdenticon /AddressIcon
The colorful blob of colors that corresponds to your address. It is an easy way to see if your address is correct.
More specifically, you can choose between jazzicons (created by the MetaMask) or blockies.
Identity Broker
An Identity Broker is an intermediary service that connects multiple service providers with different identity providers.
Identity Provider
An Identity Provider is an individual who manages identity providers and users roles inside the platform.
See the wikipedia page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_provider
Identity token
A token that provides identity information about the user. Part of the OpenID Connect specification. https://openid.net/developers/specs/
here the term TOKEN do not refer a digital asset stored in the blockchain
Immutability
Cannot be altered or changed. This is a key element of blockchain networks: once written onto a blockchain ledger, data cannot be altered.
Immutability provides the basis for commerce and trade to take place on blockchain networks.
Infura
Infura is part of ConsenSys. It offers backend access to the Ethereum Network over established HTTP and WebSockets technology.
This enables developers of dapps and websites seeking to interact with the Ethereum blockchain to do so at scale.
Initialization
This is the Collaborate setup or Eniblock setup (instantiate the servers, etc.).
Internal Transaction
An Internal Transaction on the Ethereum network is one that occurs between smart contracts, rather than between addresses.
They are not included on the blockchain and therefore do not incur gas fees, but they are often crucial to carrying out the action in question, and can be viewed on Etherscan.
Investor
An Investor is a person or an entity who commits capital with the expectation of receiving financial returns.
This capital can be cash when the Investor purchases tokens via a bank transfer, or can also be Tokens when the Investor performs a Token Swap.
Investor Account
An Investor Account can be created for a person or an organization. When the Investor invests as an individual the Account is personal whereas the Account is professional (i.e created for an organization) when a legal entity is investing.
IPFS (InterPlanetary File System)
A decentralized file storage and referencing system for the Ethereum blockchain.
IPFS is an open source protocol that enables storing and sharing hypermedia (text, audio, visual) in a distributed manner without relying on a single point of failure.
This distributed file system enables applications to run faster, safer and more transparently
K
Key derivation
Key derivation is the process of generating multiple private keys from a single seed key. This technique is commonly used in cryptocurrency wallets to allow a user to manage multiple accounts or addresses from a single recovery seed, without having to store multiple separate private keys. Key derivation is typically done using a deterministic mathematical function, meaning that the same input data (the seed) will always produce the same results.
Keystore File
A Keystore File is a special, encrypted version of a private key in JSON format. See also ‘private key’.
KYC (Know Your Customer)
A process in which a business must verify the identity and background information (address, financials, etc) of their customers.
Example Current regulations and laws require banks and other financial institutions to keep and report customers’ personal information and transactions.
L
Layer 2
Layer 2 is a set of upcoming scaling solutions for Ethereum. For the authoritative description, see the Layer 2 scaling page.
Light Client
A Client that downloads only a small part of the blockchain.
This allows users of low-power or low-storage hardware like smartphones and laptops to maintain almost the same guarantee of security by sometimes selectively downloading small parts of the state.
Liquid Democracy, Delegative Democracy
A government system where votes can be delegated or proxied to other individuals such as friends, politicians, or subject matter experts.
A liquid democracy has been explored as a governance mechanism for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations where every participant is able to vote or delegate their vote to another individual.
Example In a liquid democracy, Bernadette could give Ahmad her vote and Ahmad would then vote for both himself and Bernadette.
Liquid Token
A Token which can be sold by an Investor.
Liquidity
The availability of Liquid Assets to a company or market.
An asset is considered more liquid if it can easily be converted into cash. The harder the ability to turn an asset into cash the more illiquid the asset.
Example Stocks are considered relatively liquid assets as they can be easily converted to cash whilst real estate is considered an illiquid asset.
The liquidity of an asset affects its risk potential and market price.
Listing
The Listing is the mechanism used to sell a Asset. It has many characteristics such as a name, a serial number, attributes, a price (minimum in the case of an auction). A listing may be available either on the primary market or on the secondary market.
Locked Token
A Token which cannot be sold by an Investor.
Logic smart contract
The logic contract contains all the function that will be called via the proxy contract. It contains the business logic. It also contains some function depending of the upgradability pattern chosen.
M
Mainnet
The primary network where actual transactions take place on a specific distributed ledger.
Example The Ethereum Mainnet is the public blockchain where network validation and transactions take place.
Market Capitalization, Market Cap
This term refers to the total value held in a particular industry, market, company, or asset.
For a publicly traded company, the market cap is the total dollar market value of a company’s outstanding shares. For Bitcoin or Ethereum, the total market cap is a reflection of the current existing supply times the market price.
Merkle Patricia Trie
Often referred to simply as a “Merkle trie” (pronounced “tree”), a Merkle Patricia trie is a data structure in which a single hash code function (a type of cryptographic code) splits into smaller branches.
In a similar way to a family tree, where a parent branch splits into child branches, which are then extrapolated into grandchild branches, a Merkle Patricia trie keeps a record of the filiation and history of each element. This type of data structure enables for faster verification on a blockchain network.
Mesh
ConsenSys Mesh is a network of loosely coupled, tightly aligned teams, products, and investments advancing the Ethereum ecosystem and the arrival of Web 3.0.
Metadata, Business-data, Business-dataset
Metadata, in the context of NFT, provides the information to differentiate from one NFT to another(type of token). It contains the structure of data (scope, resource).
Example SITA
MetaMask
MetaMask, either in its mobile app form on iOS and Android, or in its browser extension form, is a tool to access and interact with blockchains and the decentralized web.
Its functions include that of a Wallet, a Dapp Permissions Manager, and Token Swap Platform.
Mining
Mining is the process by which blocks or transactions are verified and added to a blockchain using a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
In order to verify a block a miner must use a computer to solve a cryptographic problem
Once the computer has solved the problem, the block is considered “mined” or verified.
Example: Bitcoin or Ethereum PoW blockchains the first computer to mine or verify the block receives bitcoin or ether as a reward.
Mint
A Mint is an Operation that allows Administrator to increase the total supply of existing Tokens by minting new Tokens, i.e creating new Tokens.
A Mint is made either on the Wallet of an Investor or on the Token crypto-account.
Mnemonic Phrase
See Seed Phrase / Secret Recovery Phrase.
Multi Signature (Multisig)
A Crypto-asset Wallet that requires multiple Keys to access.
Typically, a specified number of individuals are required to approve or “sign” a transaction before they are able to access the wallet. This is different to most Wallets which only require one signature to approve a transaction.
N
Node (Full Node)
Any computer connected to the blockchain network is referred to as a Node.
A full node is a computer that can fully validate transactions and download the entire data of a specific blockchain.
In contrast, a “lightweight” or “light” node does not download all pieces of a blockchain’s data and uses a different validation process.
NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens)
A non-fungible token is a type of token that is a unique digital asset and has no equal token. This is in contrast to cryptocurrencies like ether that are fungible by nature.
When discussing Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), “fungibility” refers to an object’s ability to be exchanged for another.
Example An individual dollar is considered fungible as dollars can be traded with one another.
Artwork is usually deemed non-fungible as paintings, sculptures, or masterpieces are likely to be unique and/or unequal in quality or value.
NFT Fractionalization
Some popular NFT collections are unaffordable for the majority of the potential buyers.
Complete acquisition of real estate is not within the reach of all budgets.
A fractional NFT consists of dividing a single NFT into subsets allowing you to become the owner of a part of a high value asset.
Nonce
Nonce refers to a unique transaction identification number that increases in value with each successive transaction in order to ensure various safety features (such as preventing a double-spend).
Origin Contraction of the phrase “Not More Than Once” on the Ethereum Mainnet, Nonce can have different meanings depending on the context, and be used in many different ways.
Cryptography Due to its broader use, you may encounter Nonce being used differently on various Sidechains or Decentralized Projects.
O
OAuth
OAuth is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used as a way for Internet users to grant websites or applications access to their information on other websites but without giving them the passwords.
OAuth 2.0 Client, Credentials Grant
The Client Credentials grant type is used by clients to obtain an access token outside of the context of a user.
This is typically used by clients to access resources about themselves rather than to access a user's resources.
Seehttps://oauth.net/2/grant-types/client-credentials/
Offer
The act of offering something for sale, or the submission of a bid to buy something.
Ommer Block
Under the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, miners received rewards for being the first to mine a new block.
However, at times a block would be mined just after, and in competition with, the last block, which is known as the Ommer Block.
This block, known as an Ommer (previously as an Uncle), could get rolled into subsequent blocks and the miner of the original ommer would get a partial block reward.
This whole functionality is deprecated as of the Beacon Chain.
On-chain / Off-chain
An On-chain transaction, simply called a Transaction, occurs, and is considered valid when, the blockchain is modified to reflect the transaction on the public ledger.
By contrast, an Off-chain transaction takes the value outside of the blockchain. It can be executed using multiple methods.
Onboarding, Organization Onboarding
The process of adding a new Organization, with a specific role, and set the necessary configuration to allow such an organization to use the different services of the Platform.
The Onboarding process includes:
Organization declaration and Public tezos address assignation.
Dapp deployment and configuration
Admin and Operation Identity federation ( refer to User (admin and operators) Identity Federation [INTERNAL]
Credentials for accessing to the different data sources of the consortium participants.
Operation
An Operation is an administrative task created by Administrators or Investors that must be signed on-chain.
Example Mint, Burn, Whitelist, Add Admin, etc., an action performed on data or state of the machine that modifies it
Optimistic Rollup
A Rollup that assumes the validity and good faith of transactions, and only runs a fraud proof in the case of fraud being alleged.
See also ‘Rollup’.
Oracle
Common use Oracle is any entity or person that is relied on to report the outcome of an event.
Blockchain Network An oracle (human or machine) helps communicate data to a Smart Contract which can then be used to verify an event or specific outcome.
Organization
An Organization is an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department. an organization will be identified by A unique legal name i.e PSA, Mobivia.
An Organization can have the following roles:
Data Service Provider (DSP): An organization that proposes storage services for vehicle or business data (i.e PSA cloud service, Cloud storage companies)
Bussines Service Provider(BSP): An organization that consumes any data part of the system. By default, an organization in the system has the role of BSP
Business network operator(BNO_: an organization that manages other organizations and makes decisions regarding the platform
Owner
The Owner of the Document (Owner) is an Investor.
The Owner can consult the Document but cannot edit it.
P
P2P (Peer-to-peer)
P2P refers to interactions that happen between two parties, usually two separate individuals.
A P2P network can be any number of individuals.
Blockchain Network Individuals are able to transact or interact with each other without relying on an intermediary or single point of failure.
Parity
Parity Technologies is the name of a blockchain technology company that develops a number of significant projects in the Ethereum space.
One of its first projects was an Ethereum client, now known as Parity Ethereum; often this client is simply referred to as ‘Parity’.
Permissioned Ledger
A blockchain network in which access to ledger or network requires permission from an individual or group of individuals, as opposed to a public blockchain.
Permissioned ledgers may have one or many owners. Consensus on a permissioned ledger is conducted by the trusted actors, such as government departments, banks, or other known entities.
Permissioned blockchains or ledgers contain highly-verifiable data sets because the consensus process creates a digital signature, which can be seen by all parties. A permissioned ledger is much easier to maintain and considerably faster than a public blockchain.
Example Quorum or Hyperledger Besu are permissioned ledgers that can be more easily set up for large enterprises. In contrast, the public Ethereum blockchain is a permissionless ledger which anyone can access.
Plasma
Plasma is a term that is used to refer to one of the scaling solutions being deployed to create Layer 2 of the Ethereum network.
A Plasma network functions similarly to an Optimistic rollup, inasmuch as it relies on Layer 1 Ethereum mainnet to maintain the record of transactions, and as the source for arbitration or fraud resolution.
However, a Plasma network differs in other important technical ways from rollups, and is currently limited to simple operations, such as swaps and token transfers.
PoA (Proof of Authority)
A consensus mechanism used in private blockchains, granting a single private key the authority to generate all of the blocks or validate transactions.
Portfolio
A Portfolio is a collection of Financial Investments.
PoS (Proof of Stake)
A consensus mechanism in which an individual or “validator” validates transactions or blocks. Validators “stake” their cryptocurrency, such as ether, on whichever transactions they choose to validate.
If the individual validates a block (group of transactions) correctly then the individual receives a reward. Typically, if a validator verifies an incorrect transaction then they lose the cryptocurrency that they staked.
PoS requires a negligible amount of computing power compared to Proof of Work consensus.
PoW (Proof of Work)
A consensus mechanism in which each block is ‘mined’ by a group of individuals or nodes on the network. Hashing a block, which is in itself an easy computational process, under PoW requires each miner to solve for a set, difficult variable.
In effect, the process of hashing each block becomes a competition. This addition of solving for a target increases the difficulty of successfully hashing each block.
For each hashed block, the overall process of hashing will have taken some time and computational effort. Thus, a hashed block is considered Proof of Work, and the miner that successfully hashes the block first receives a reward, in the form of cryptocurrency.
PoW is singificantly more energy-intensive than other consensus mechanisms, such as Proof of Stake.
PoW / PoS Hybrid
A Hybrid consensus model that utilizes a combination of Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of Work (PoW) consensus.
Using the Hybrid consensus mechanism, blocks are validated from not only miners, but also voters (stakeholders) to form a balanced network governance.
Primary
Boolean value to indicate the default Wallet to use in case of several wallets.
Primary Market
A place where securities are issued and sold to the public for the first time.
Primary Market Order
A Primary Market Order (referred as Order) consists of an Investor’s instruction to purchase or sell Tokens directly from an issuer. It can be either an Investor Buy Order (Issuance) or Investor Sell Order (Buyback Order).
Private Blockchain
A blockchain or distributed ledger that has a closed network where participants are controlled by a single entity.
A Private Blockchain requires a verification process for new participants.
A Private Blockchain may also limit which individuals are able to participate in consensus of the blockchain network.
See also Permissioned Ledger.
Private Currency
A currency or token issued by a private individual or firm. Typically, the token or currency is limited to use within the network of that particular firm or individual.
Not to be confused with a “privacy cryptocurrency” which are cryptocurrency with specific privacy features, such as hidden user identities.
Private Key
A Private Key is an alphanumeric string of data that, in MetaMask, corresponds to a single specific account in a wallet.
Private keys can be thought of as a password that enables an individual to access their crypto account.
Caution: Never reveal your private key to anyone, as whoever controls the private key controls the account funds. If you lose your Private Key, you lose access to that account.
Protocol
A set of rules that dictate how data is exchanged and transmitted. This pertains to cryptocurrency in blockchain when referring to the formal rules that outline how these actions are performed across a specific network.
Proxy smart contract
Contract acting as an intermediary contract, delegating calls from user to the actual logic contract.
It will allow admin to update the logic of a contract without affecting the state of that contract, nor changing the proxy address. Plus, if done the right way, the storage inside the proxy contract can still be viable and users can continue to interact with it the usual way.
Public Blockchain
A globally open network where anyone can participate in transactions, execute the consensus protocol to help determine which blocks get added to the chain, and maintain the shared ledger.
Public Key
In cryptography, you have a Keypair: the Public Key and the Private Key.
You can derive a Public Key from a Private Key, but cannot derive a Private Key from a Public Key.
The public key, is obtained and used by anyone to encrypt messages before they are sent to a known recipient with a matching private key for decryption.
By pairing a Public Key with a Private Key, Transactions not dependent on trusting involved parties or intermediaries.
The Public Key encrypts a message into an unreadable format and the corresponding Private Key makes it readable again for the intended party, and the intended party only.
Public Key Hash
A.k.a. public_key_hash: Account
R
Relayer
Any party or entity which hosts an off-chain orderbook. Relayers help traders discover counter-parties and cryptographically move orders between them. 0x is an example of a popular Ethereum relayer protocol.
Resource
Eniblock Collaborate A Resource is a stock or supply of Assets (e.g., documents, files, JSON replies, etc.) that have a certain value. A resource is defined by 3 components:
Resource Owner URL
Resource Category
Resource Name
Role
Roles identify a type or category of user. Admin, user, manager, and employee are all typical roles that may exist in an organization. Applications often assign access and permissions to specific roles rather than individual users as dealing with users can be too fine grained and hard to manage.
Rollups
Rollups are elements in the set of tools and infrastructure being built as Layer 2, the scaling solutions for the Ethereum network.
They generally consist of solutions in which the transaction data is still kept on Layer 1, the original Ethereum network, while transaction computation occurs on a side network, freeing up computational power on Layer.
There are different ways of approaching this problem from a technical point of view, namely Zero Knowledge, or ZK, rollups, and Optimistic rollups. See the entries on both of these types of rollup for more, and more in-depth discussion here.
RPC (Remote Procedure Call)
The Remote Procedure Call is a protocol that, while not blockchain-specific, is used to transfer data between endpoints. You may often see it referred to as JSON-RPC, which is its full name.
Rug Pull
Similar to the traditional financial scam of a pyramid scheme, a Rug Pull is a Cryptocurrency or Crypto-token based scam in which the creators of the token create hype, through injecting liquidity into their token, airdropping and other schemes.
Once investors pile in and boost the price of the token up to a certain point, the creators liquidate their share of the tokens, leaving their investors with next to nothing.
S
Satoshi Nakamoto
A pseudonymous individual or entity who created the Bitcoin protocol, solving the digital currency issue of the “double spend”.
Nakamoto first published a white paper describing the project in 2008 and the first Bitcoin software was released one year later.
Smart Contracts
Smart Contracts are software intended to automatically execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract
They are programs the terms of which are recorded in computer code. While they often contain agreements or sets of actions between parties that emulate a traditional legal contract, they are not, in and of themselves, legal documents.
Smart Contracts are automated actions that can be coded and executed once a set of conditions is met, and are the dominant form of programming on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Smart Contracts factory
A smart contract factory is a type of smart contract that is used to create other smart contracts. It allows users to deploy new smart contracts based on pre-defined templates, without the need to write the entire code for the contract from scratch.
Smart contract factories are often used in blockchain projects that involve the creation of many similar smart contracts, such as for the issuance of tokens or the creation of decentralized applications (DApps). They can help streamline the process of creating new contracts, making it easier and more efficient for users to deploy new contracts on the blockchain.
Scalability
A change in size or scale to handle a network’s demands. This word is used to refer to a blockchain project’s ability to handle network traffic, future growth, and capacity in its intended application.
SDK (Software Development Kit)
A Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of tools used for developing applications provided by hardware and software providers.
SDKs are usually comprised of application programming interfaces (APIs), sample code, documentation, etc.
Secondary Market
A place where eligible Investors buy and sell securities they already own. In the Secondary Market, Investors exchange with each other rather than with the issuing entity.
Secondary Market Trade
Often referred as Trade, is an Investor’s instruction to purchase or sell Tokens to another Investor. It can be either a Buy or a Sell Trade.
Seed (Phrase) - Secret Recovery Phrase
The Seed Phrase, Mnemonic, or Secret Recovery Phrase is a crucial part of public blockchain technology, originally created for Bitcoin, that refers to a set of ordered words which correspond to determined values.
These values never change, and therefore the same string of words in the same order will always produce the same number–this is the underlying functionality that allows seed phrases to back up wallets.
The Secret Recovery Phrase should be known only to the owner of the account.
If the seed phrase is given to someone else, that person has complete control over the account. They can drain it of tokens and funds, execute transactions with it, etc.
Self-executing
Functions independently, is not controlled by any other party other than itself.
Self-executing Smart Contracts cut costs/overhead by removing the need for an arbitrator and trust toward a third party.
Serialization
The process of converting a data structure into a sequence of bytes. Ethereum internally uses an encoding format called recursive-length prefix encoding (RLP).
Service
Eniblock Collaborate A service is a business that offers a particular type of help or work.
Example
An insurance company that exploits business and personal data to offer a service like an insurance
An application that process datasets to filter and aggregate data to produce a report
Service Account
A Service Account belongs to an Application instead of an individual User. It should be authenticated to allow an Application to access a Resource Server.
Service Offer
Selected Datasources and a subset of Scopes defined for a subset.
Settlement Date
Date when a Trade is Final. At this date the buyer must have made the payment to the seller, and the seller delivers the assets to the buyer.
Before the settlement is done, the settlement date corresponds to a target date.
After the settlement is done, the settlement date corresponds to the actual settlement date.
Sharding
Sharding refers to splitting the entire network into multiple portions called “Shards.”
Each Shard would contain its own independent state, meaning a unique set of account balances and smart contracts.
Usually, shards must be tightly coupled and side-chains must be loosely coupled.
Sidechains
A Sidechain is a separate blockchain that is Ethereum-compatible.
While a Sidechain is a sort of scaling tool, as a Class they aren’t part of Layer 2. They simply represent a way in which developers can build and enable cheaper transactions for the user (on the sidechain, in sidechain-native tokens or currencies) while maintaining compatibility with the Ethereum network.
This often requires routing tokens through a special portal or bridge, as sending tokens from a sidechain to Ethereum mainnet or vice versa would result in token loss.
Slashing Condition
Under a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, a slashing condition is one that causes the validator’s deposit to be destroyed when they trigger it.
See also Proof of Stake.
Slot
A Slot, on the Ethereum Beacon Chain, is a 12-second period of time during which a new block may (or may not) be proposed. Every 32 slots composes an epoch. See also ‘epoch’.
Smart Contract Access Token
Smart Contract created to manage the Access Token (e.g., JWT), so the consumer (e.g. Application) can consume data.
Multi-signature Smart Contract Proxy Controller
Authorization of Multiple Data Owners. This Smart Contract manages the Owners' Signatures to approve a Transaction (e.g. share a document)
It acts as a proxy between a user and a contract, and manages access to certain functionality of the underlying smart contract.
Example Peugeot, Alice
Soft Fork
A change to the software protocol where only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid.
Since old nodes will recognize the new blocks as valid, a soft fork is backward-compatible. However, this can result in a potential divide in the blockchain, as the old software generates blocks that read as invalid according to the new rules.
Software Library - Library
A Software Library is a suite of data and programming code that is used to develop software programs and applications.
It is designed to assist both the programmer and the programming language compiler in building and executing software.
Solidity
Programming The Programming Language developers use to write Smart Contracts on the Ethereum network.
Try it out on Remix.
Stablecoin
Any Cryptocurrency pegged to a stable asset, like fiat currency or gold.
It theoretically remains stable in price as it is measured against a known amount of an asset less subject to fluctuation.
Staking
Ethereum Staking of tokens or currency carries the traditional meaning of ‘setting aside currency for a determined purpose’; however, ‘staking’ can happen in a variety of venues with different effects.
Example On Decentralized Exchanges (DEXes), there is no centralized authority or bank putting up the funds to allow transfers to happen between parties; rather, the parties amongst themselves have to establish liquidity pools in order to facilitate swaps.
In this context, someone might ‘Stake’ Tokens into a liquidity pool, often for a promised rate of return in exchange for the use of their tokens, with the option to withdraw their tokens later.
Beacon Chain and Ethereum 2.0 Staking means to help ensure the proper functioning and safety of the Network for a reward.
Example 32 ETH may be staked at a determined smart contract address in order to operate a validator on the Beacon Chain,
State
The set of data that a blockchain network strictly needs to keep track of and that represents data currently relevant to applications on the chain.
State Channels
State Channels are part of the set of tools and platforms involved in scaling Ethereum and enabling Layer 2.
While this is a complex subject, State Channels are essentially methods through which the current ‘state’ of the blockchain can be exported, and based on that any given number of transactions can take place off-chain, and then be moved back onto the main Ethereum chain.
Szabo
A denomination of ETH.
See also Ether (Denominations).
T
Testnet
An alternative blockchain developers use to test applications in a near-live environment.
Testnet Koven
Ethereum Testnet that uses Proof of Authority consensus, available through MetaMask.
Testnet Rinkeby
Ethereum testnet that uses Proof of Authority consensus, available through MetaMask.
Testnet Ropsten
Ethereum Testnet that uses Proof of Work consensus and is available through MetaMask
Tezos F2.0
The current protocol used for NFTs, e.g. SITA
Token
A Token is a unit of measure representing an Asset on a blockchain.
There can be different types of Tokens, such as Fungible, Semi-Fungible or Non-Fungible Tokens (see Fungible).
See also ERC-20 and ERC-721.
Eniblock Module Tokens is an Eniblock module. Its intuitive user interface with predefined templates for the creation of all types of digital assets. You can customize templates, save drafts and collaborate during the creation process. Manage configuration, emission and evolution using these templates.
Token Dataset
Token Dataset are also referred to as Business Data, e.g. SITA.
Token Pair
A group of two tokens that can be traded for each other in a Token Swap.
Token Swap
Technically the “Transfer” corresponds to an authorization to the Token Swap smart contract to transfer the Tokens to the counter-party once both parties have signed the trade and have the corresponding funds.
Transaction
A Transaction is a completed agreement between a buyer and a seller to exchange financial assets in return for money or security token.
Transaction Block
A collection of transactions on a blockchain network, gathered into a set or a block that can then be hashed and added to the blockchain.
Transaction Fee
A small fee imposed on some transactions sent across a blockchain network. The transaction fee is awarded to the miner that successfully hashes the block containing the relevant transaction.
Trustless
Trustless is a term that is used on the Decentralized Web.
Traditionally, to call something ‘Trustless’ might sound negative. In the context of decentralized technology, it has a more technical meaning: since everyone has a copy of the ledger of all transactions ever executed, there is no need for a third-party repository of ‘truth’ in whom trust resides.
We do not rely on some centralized server somewhere that could be hacked or changed arbitrarily; anyone can verify the transactions themselves. In a way, the rules and assurances built into the blockchain provide the basis for greater trust, because the system works the same for everyone.
Turing Complete
Any machine that can calculate on a level equal to a programmable computer is Turing Complete, or computationally universal. The EVM, despite not existing on a single physical computer, is Turing Complete.
U
Unfrozen Token
A Token that can be transferred to another address.
User
Users are entities that are able to log into a system. They can have attributes associated with themselves like email, username, address, phone number, and birth day. They can be assigned group membership and have specific roles assigned to them.
V
Validator
A participant in Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus.
On the Beacon Chain, validators need to stake 32 ETH, that is to submit a sort of security deposit, in order to get included in the validator set.
See also Staking.
Validity Proof
The proof submitted along with certain types of rollups to prove that the transactions are valid.
See also Rollups.
Validium
One of the technologies developed for Layer 2 scaling of the Ethereum network.
See the VALIDIUM page.
Vault
Vault is an identity-based secret and encryption management system provided by HashiCorp.
The technology makes it possible to Secure, store and control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, encryption keys to protect secrets and other sensitive data using a user interface, CLI or an HTTP API.
Vault by HashiCorp (vaultproject.io)
VIN - (Vehicle Number Identifier)
See also https://driving-tests.org/vin-decoder/
Voucher
Signed data that autorise a wallet to execute a specific function on a smart contract. The smart contract is able to verify the authenticity of the data before performing computation and transactions based on the voucher data. One common use case of a voucher is the lazy mint. For this case, the NFT issuer will sign a voucher allowing an end-user to claim an NFT. To go further, a voucher can contain any data allowing any kind of behavior like time limitation, user limitation, defining a sale price…
Code example: Lazy minting | NFT School
W
Wallet
A Wallet is a device, program or designated storage location, composed of a public key and a private key, that can be used to manage Tokens and other digital Assets such as cryptocurrencies, NFT, etc.
There can be different types of Wallets, including:
Software Wallets store private keys using programs directly connected to the Internet.
Hardware Wallets are devices that generate and store private keys offline and allow users to sign transactions offline.
Wallets can be custodial or self-custodial.
Custodial wallet: Users delegate the responsibility of storage and usage of your cryptographic material to a trusted third party
Self-custodial wallet: Users are responsible of their own keys
Web3 - Web 3.0
Web3, or Web 3.0, are terms used synonymously with “the decentralized web” and are often used to refer, broadly, to the blockchain and decentralized technology ecosystems as a whole.
Whitelist
A Whitelist is a mechanism which explicitly allows some identified entities to access a particular service.
A Whitelist Operation is the one by which the Issuer allows the Investor to buy and sell a specific Token.
White-label
A White-label product is a product or application produced by one company (the producer) that other companies (the marketers) rebrand to make it appear as if they had made it.
Y
Yellow Pages
The list of Organizations allowed to interact with a Smart Contract
Z
Zero Address
The Zero Address is an address on the Ethereum network that is the recipient of a special transaction used to register the creation of a new smart contract on the network.
zk-SNARK
Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge are a technology vital to the scaling of blockchain technology and the decentralized web.
They are mathematically complex and can be daunting.
See The zkSNARKs in a nutshell page from the Ethereum Foundation for further information.
#
51% Attack
If more than half the computer power or mining hash rate on a network is run by a single person or a single group of people, then a 51% attack is in operation by an entity that has full control of the network and can negatively affect a cryptocurrency by taking over mining operations, stopping or changing transactions and double-spending coins.