A Blockchain Terminology Concept Map

All my articles by topic.

There are many blockchain glossaries on the web. But how many concept maps can be found around? I tried to draw one with some simplifications (and omissions), purists don’t take it wrong!

How to read it

The diagram below shows a network of the main concepts defining the blockchain technology and related ecosystems. In addition, the most common relationships between these concepts are also reported.

Concept map of main blockchain terms

The extended Glossary

Below is a glossary of the main blockchain terms and concepts. Not all of them have been included in the concept map, to avoid making it too difficult to read.

(Decentralised) Network: a set of nodes interacting with each other to exchange information and coordinate a common service.

• Heterarchy: an organization where the entities are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked in a number of different ways.
• Testnet: a Network used by the developers community to experiment and test protocol advancements.
• Ledger: a register of transactions across peers.
• Centralised: a (digital) service owned by a single entity (company, organisation, private).
• Decentralised: a digital service provided by a number of distinct and possibly anonymous entities.
• Distributed: a digital service which is sharded across different nodes cooperating to offer a single service, but non necessarily decentralised.
• Trusted: a centralised service which requires trust which requires trust versus a single entity to be used by parties.
• Trustless: a decentralised service which does not require trust versus a single entity to be used by parties.
• Frictionless: a decentralised service exposing less usability and accessibility friction compared to an equivalent centralised service.
• Bordered: opposite of borderless, subjected to country border regulations and restrictions.
• Borderless: opposite of bordered, not subjected to country border regulations and restrictions.
• Asset: any valuable physical or digital non replicable object.
• Crypto Asset: an Asset that can be represented on a Blockchain.
• Fiat Currency: any country / area emitted currency (EUR, USD, …).
• Cryptocurrency: a currency existing on a Blockchain Network.
• Token: a generic Crypto Asset which is not currency.
• Utility Token: a Token representing a utility (allows to use an infrastructure).
• Security Token: a Token representing a security (allows to ear value from the possession).
• Equity Token: a Token representing an equity (a security providing also governance rights).
• Stablecoin: a Token providing a stable value, usually collateralised with Fiat Currency.
• Bitcoin: the first blockchain, launched by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009.
• Ethereum: an Altcoin that is both a Cryptocurrency and a Utility Token enabling the usage of its own Network.
• Consensus: an algorithm used among peers in a Network to continuously agree on a common state.
• Fork: a controlled or accidental event causing the creation of alternative versions of concurrent Blockchains in the same Network.
• Soft Fork: a change in protocol generating Transactions that are compatible with the previous version of the protocol.
• Hard Fork: a change in protocol generating Transactions that are considered invalid from the previous version of the protocol.
• 51% Attack: an attack to a Consensus algorithm performed by Network nodes controlling at least the 51% of Consensus power or stake.
• Double Spending: the most common attack that can be performed in a 51% Attack scenario: consists in revoking one or more previously confirmed transactions.
• Blockchain: used both to address a decentralised Ledger Network or the data structure of a decentralised Ledger arranged as a list of blocks of transactions.
• Block: logic grouping of transactions chained in a Blockchain.
• Block Explorer: an online, usually web tool, to inspect Blockchain data.
• Confirmations: or depth of a Block, the number of newer Blocks built on top of a given Block, the more in depth, the more is confirmed.
• Genesis Block: the first Block of a Blockchain.
• Coinbase: the payload of a Genesis Block.
• Transaction: a value transfer from a set of input addresses to a set of output addresses.
• Transaction Fee: a fee paid by a Network user to incentivise Transaction validation.
• Address: a compact representation of a Public Key used to receive Transactions.
• Multisignature: a transaction locked with different Private Keys, required in combination to be unlocked.
• Wallet: a software to handle asymmetric keys to sign transactions.
• Mining: the process of reaching Consensus in a Network through the construction and verification of a new block using expensive computation.
• Cryptographic Hash: a function converting a variable size input in a fixed size output minimising the probability of conflict (different inputs generate the same output).
• Miner: an entity performing Mining operations (PoW).
• Hashrate: a performance index of a mining hardware (rig) in terms of hashes per second.
• FPGA: programmable hardware used in early algo-specific mining operations to reach high performances.
• ASIC: dedicated hardware used in algo-specific mining operations.
• GPU: Graphic Processing Using, commodity hardware used in high performance mining operations.
• Stake: an amount of blocked Tokens used as warranty by PoS validators.
• Holder: a holder of a Stake validating a PoS Network.
• Block Reward: the economic reward the protocol attributes to a Miner for mining a Block.
• Nonce: the random number to be computed to validate a Block that is added to the block header until a hash with target Difficulty is found.
• Difficulty: an adaptive index specifying how complex is to mine a Block.
• DLT: Decentralised Ledger Technologies, a superset of technologies including Blockchain and DAG.
• DAG: Decentralised Acyclic Graph, a technology to implement DLT without a chain of Blocks.
• Altcoin: common name for Blockchain projects derived from Bitcoin.
• Exchange: a Centralized service to exchange fiat and Crypto Assets.
• DEX: Decentralized EXchange, an on-chain implementation of a basic Exchange.
• Turing Complete: a programming language expressivity that allows to represent arbitrary complexity.
• On-chain: any code running in a decentralised fashion.
• Off-chain: any code running in a centralised fashion.
• Smart Contract: a (usually Turing Complete) on chain deterministic program able to manipulate Crypto Assets.
• EVM: the Ethereum Virtual Machine is a Turing Complete virtual machine able to execute Transaction bytecode.
• Dapp: Decentralised Application, any application which runs completely on-chain.
• DAO: Decentralised Autonomous Organization: any group of people acting together and coordinating through a Decentralized Application.
• DAC: Decentralized Autonomous Corporation, a for profit DAO.
• ICO: Initial Coin Offering, a crowdfunding method to finance a project by selling Utility Tokens.
• STO: Security Token Offering, a crowdfunding method to finance a project by selling Tokens representing securities.
• Merkle Tree: a data structure composed of hierarchical hashes that allows to quickly verify and demonstrate the existence of data inside a large dataset.
• PoW: Proof of Work, a Consensus method based on brute force computation.
• PoS: Proof of Stake, a Consensus method based on Token stakes.
• Hybrid PoS/PoW: hybrid PoS (holders) + PoW(miners) Consensus method.
• PoA: Proof of Authority, a Consensus based on Authority nodes that can sign Transactions, weight of an Authority usually is fixed.
• PoR: Proof of Reputation, a variant of PoA, where Nodes cumulate weight (reputation) through their work over time signing Transactions without objects. Reputation of an honest node increases over time.
• Asymmetric keys: a couple of keys that allow to demonstrate the ownership of a secret.
• Signature: a hash computed on arbitrary data using a Private Key and verifiable with a Public Key.
• Public Key: the key used to verify the ownership of a secret.
• Private Key: the secret used to sign data.
• Scalability: the ability of a Network to support more Transactions and reduce the confirmation time.
• Sidechain: a scalability solution based on sub chains depending on a main chain, able to transfer Assets among them.
• 2nd Layer: a scalability solution based on a off-chain layer operating on on-chain setup.
• Oracle: a Trusted bridge between the on-chain and off-chain world, providing input data for Smart Contracts.

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