50 most commonly used terms in Blockchain technology

by Kiran · September 13, 2018

The 50 most commonly used terms in Blockchain technology are :

AltCoins
Known as Bitcoin alternative , mostly used with small changes to proof of work algorithm of Bitcoin blockchain.

ASIC
Application Specific Integrated Circuit designed to process SHA-256 hashing to mine bitcoins.

Bitcoin
An open source, decentralized cryptocurrency

Bitcoin Atm
The place where people trade fiat currency & Bitcoins.

Blockchain
Ledgers of transactions where no single user controls.

Block
Records of bitcoin transactiions which cannot be tampered.

Block Reward
Amount recieved by miner for processing transactions in agiven block.

Chain Linking
Connecting blockchains witth each otherfor transactions.

Cloud Mining
People invest money in a company which already has mining data centres so that they get the share of revenues.

Consortium blockchain
Consensus process is controlled by a selected nodes . ( public route and hybrid route )

cryptographic Hash Function
Mathematical algorithm that takes a digital data password , producing single fixed length output.

Cryptojacking
Using a unauthorized device to mine cruptocurrency . ( ex- pirate bay)

DAPP
Decentralized Application with no entity controlling the majority of it’s token

Digital Signature
A private key during transaction along with corresponding public key , where verifications is done by whole network.

Ethereum
It is an open ware platform based on blockchain technology where smart contracts are written and deploy DAPPs
The applications are run on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)

Fiat currency
Govt approved money for financial transactions

Fork
parallel version of bulding block where winning blockchain gets determined by its users by majority

Genesis block
first block in the blockchain

Hardfork
A change to the blockchain protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid and clients upgrade existing ones

Hashcash
It is a proof-of-work (POW) system used to limit email spams & DOS attacks

Halving
Limiting of block reward given to miners after mining certain number of blocks . Mining reward halves every 210,000 blocks .

ICO
Initial Coin Offering is a crowdfunding platform to fund projects by pre-selling coins/tokens to investors interested , where Entrepreneurs present a whitepaper describing the business model and the technical specifications of a project before the ICO .

IPFS
The InterPlanetary File System is an open source project that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files .

Light Node
verifying a limited number of transactions on a blockchain network .

Lightning Network
Enables instant payments across a network of participants in a decentralized network .

Merkle tree
Linking data together with a cryptographic hash . If we modify the block, the hash will change & will make the block invalid .

Mining
It is the mechanism used to introduce coins into the system . These serve the purpose of disseminating new coins in a decentralized manner as well as motivating people to provide security to the system .

Mining Difficulty
Measures how hard it will be to find the next coin in the block. The average time for finding a Bitcoin block is set for 10 min , Litecoin for 2.5 min .

Mining Pool
Different users organizing together to provide computing power for the bitcoin network.

Oracle
Accessing smart contract access with outside network on their own to improve performance .

Private Blockchains
Blockchain where write permissions are kept centralized to one unit / organization .

Private key
A locally stored secret key by user which is generated with public key .

Proof of Authority(PoA)
A mechanism in a private blockchain which gives a client the right to make all blocks in blockchain .

Proof of work
POS aims to achieve distributed consensus to prove ownership of a certain amount of currency .

Proof of stake
PoS aims to achieve distributed consensus in a blockchain network .

Public Blockchains
A blockchain that anyone in the world can read , send & expect to see if they are valid can participate in consensus .

Ring Signature
Make sure individual transaction outputs on the blockchain can’t be traced , signed by group of people .

Satoshi Nakamoto
Creator of bitcoin and its protocol .

SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm)
They are like fingerprint of the data. Hashes are one-way functions which cannot be decrypted back , unless by bruteforcing it .

Smart contracts
Protocols that facilitate, verify and enforce the negotiation of contract .

Sidechains
They avoid liquidity shortages , market fluctuations , etc & interoperable with other cryptocurrencies .

Softfork
Changing protocols of a coin where previuos blocks are amde invalid .

Solidity
The programming language designed to developing smart contract .

Simplified Payment Verification
SPV are clients where verification of payments are done without complete blockchain .

Swarm
A storage platform & content distribution service of Ethereum .

State Channel
They are interactions which are conducted off the blockchain without requiring additional trust .

Token
A digital identity for transactions .

Testnet
A developer version of client software for testing .

Transaction Fees
Fee while drawing coins during tranfers .

Turing completeness
Performed on a machine to know if it performs calculation like any other programmable computer does .

Wallet
collection of private keys to communicate with the corresponding blockchain