Glossary of Tech Terms

Blockchain: A decentralized, distributed ledger that records transactions on multiple computers.

Cryptocurrency: A digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptography to secure its transactions, to control the creation of additional units, and to verify the transfer of assets.

Bitcoin: The first and most widely used cryptocurrency, created in 2009.

Ethereum: A decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference.

Mining: The process of verifying transactions and adding them to the public ledger (blockchain). Miners are rewarded for their work with cryptocurrency.

Node: A computer that participates in the operation of a blockchain network.

Wallet: A software program that stores private and public keys and interacts with various blockchain to enable users to send and receive cryptocurrency and monitor their balance.

Private key: A secret piece of data that enables the owner to access their cryptocurrency.

Public key: A cryptographic code that allows a user to receive cryptocurrency.

Smart contract: A self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code.

Token: A unit of value that represents a digital asset built on a blockchain system.

ICO (Initial Coin Offering): A fundraising mechanism in which new projects sell their underlying crypto tokens in exchange for bitcoin and ether.

Altcoin: Any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin.

Gas: A unit of measurement used to determine the amount of computational effort required to execute a transaction or smart contract on the Ethereum network.

DApps (Decentralized Applications): Applications that run on a decentralized network rather than a single computer.

DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization): A fully autonomous organization that is run through code and smart contracts.

PoW (Proof of Work): A consensus mechanism that requires miners to perform a certain amount of computational work before being able to add a new block to the blockchain.

PoS (Proof of Stake): A consensus mechanism that requires users to show ownership of a certain number of tokens in order to create a new block on the blockchain.

TPS (Transactions Per Second): A measurement of a blockchain's performance, representing the number of transactions that the network can process in one second.

Forks: A split in the blockchain, resulting in two separate chains. A soft fork is a backward-compatible update to the protocol, while a hard fork is a radical change to the protocol that requires all nodes to upgrade.

Hash: A mathematical function that converts an input of data into a fixed-size output, called a hash value or hash.

Hash rate: The number of hashes a miner can perform per second.

Block height: The number of blocks preceding a particular block on the blockchain.

Block reward: The number of cryptocurrency units a miner is rewarded for successfully mining a block.

Consensus: The process by which nodes in a blockchain network reach agreement on the state of the blockchain.

Double spend: An attack on a blockchain in which the same cryptocurrency is spent twice.

51% attack: An attack on a blockchain in which a single entity controls more than 50% of the network's mining power, allowing them to manipulate the blockchain.

Replay attack: An attack in which a malicious actor broadcasts a valid transaction to multiple blockchain networks in an attempt to execute the same action on each of them.