Reference
Glossary
Every term you will meet on this site and most you will meet elsewhere, defined in one sentence a beginner can read and then explained properly. Where a term is routinely misunderstood, the entry says how.
Consensus & Security22Cryptography8Custody & Access15Data & Measurement27DeFi17Foundations20Institutional Access13Market Structure28Regulation & Policy19Risk & Failure Modes23Scaling & Infrastructure18Stablecoins13Tokens & Supply37
22 terms shown
| Term | Category | In one sentence |
|---|---|---|
| 51 Percent Attack | Consensus & Security | An attack where one party controls enough block production to rewrite recent history and spend the same coins twice. |
| Block Builder | Consensus & Security | A specialized party that assembles the contents of a block and sells it to the validator whose turn it is to propose. |
| Chain Reorganization | Consensus & Security | When nodes drop recent blocks and adopt a different competing sequence, so the transactions in the discarded blocks are undone. |
| Consensus Mechanism | Consensus & Security | The rule set that lets many independent computers agree on one shared history without trusting each other. |
| Delegated Proof of Stake | Consensus & Security | A version of proof of stake where coin holders vote for a small fixed set of block producers instead of validating themselves. |
| Finality | Consensus & Security | The point at which a recorded transaction can no longer be undone by the network reorganizing its recent history. |
| Fork | Consensus & Security | Any situation where a blockchain has two competing versions, either briefly by accident or lastingly because the rules changed. |
| Halving | Consensus & Security | A scheduled event in some proof-of-work networks where the new coins paid to miners for each block are cut in half. |
| Hard Fork | Consensus & Security | A rule change that makes previously invalid blocks valid, so every participant must upgrade or end up on a different chain. |
| Hash Rate | Consensus & Security | How many guesses per second the machines securing a proof-of-work network are making, measured in hashes per second. |
| MEV | Consensus & Security | The extra value a block producer can capture by choosing which transactions go into a block and in what order. |
| Mempool | Consensus & Security | The waiting area of transactions that have been broadcast to the network but not yet included in a block. |
| Mining | Consensus & Security | The process of competing to add the next block in a proof-of-work network, done by machines that guess hashes at high speed. |
| Mining Difficulty | Consensus & Security | A number the network raises or lowers so blocks keep arriving at the intended average pace, whatever mining power joins or leaves. |
| Node Client Diversity | Consensus & Security | How evenly a network's nodes are spread across independently written software implementations of the same rules. |
| Nothing-at-Stake | Consensus & Security | A theoretical weakness of early proof-of-stake designs in which validators could back every competing chain at no cost. |
| Proof of History | Consensus & Security | A timestamping technique used by Solana that creates a verifiable sequence of events before validators vote on them. |
| Proof of Stake | Consensus & Security | A system where the right to propose and approve blocks goes to participants who lock up the network's own coins as collateral. |
| Proof of Work | Consensus & Security | A system where computers compete to solve a hard guessing puzzle, and the winner adds the next block. |
| Slashing | Consensus & Security | The automatic destruction of part of a validator's staked deposit as a penalty for provably harmful behavior. |
| Soft Fork | Consensus & Security | A rule change that only tightens the rules, so nodes that have not upgraded still accept the new blocks. |
| Validator | Consensus & Security | A participant in a proof-of-stake network that proposes and approves blocks, backed by a deposit that can be cut for misbehavior. |