Consensus Fork
A consensus fork is a divergence in blockchain history or protocol interpretation caused by participants not agreeing on the same valid chain,…
Crypto & Blockchain Fundamentals
Core concepts behind cryptocurrency, blockchain and distributed systems.
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Terms (367)
Consensus Message
A consensus message is a protocol message exchanged by blockchain nodes to propose blocks, vote, attest, commit, report state, or coordinate progress…
Consensus Node
A consensus node is a network participant that runs the consensus protocol or supports it by validating, relaying, and tracking blocks and…
Consensus Quorum
A consensus quorum is the minimum voting power or participant threshold required for a protocol decision, such as accepting a proposal, committing…
Consensus Vote
A consensus vote is an authenticated statement by a validator supporting a block, checkpoint, fork-choice target, or protocol decision at a specific…
Contract Account
A contract account is a blockchain account controlled by deployed program code rather than directly by a conventional private key. Transactions or…
Contract Address
A contract address is the network-specific blockchain address assigned to deployed smart-contract code. Applications use it to call functions, identify token contracts,…
Contract Transaction
A contract transaction is a blockchain transaction that deploys a smart contract or invokes contract code to read or change state. It…
Cost per Transaction
Cost per transaction is the total expense associated with processing one blockchain transaction or business payment. It may include the blockchain network…
Cross-Chain Confirmation Normalization
Cross-chain confirmation normalization is an operational method for translating different blockchain confirmation and finality signals into a consistent risk policy. It does…
Cross-Chain Transaction
A cross-chain transaction is a coordinated operation whose intended result spans two or more blockchains, such as transferring value, relaying a message,…
Current Transaction Fee
The current transaction fee is the network cost estimated or required to submit a blockchain transaction under present conditions. It depends on…
Data Account
A data account is a blockchain account used primarily to store program state rather than executable code. It can contain serialized balances,…
Data Encoding
Data encoding is the conversion of information into a defined representation for storage, transmission, signing, or processing. Blockchain systems encode numbers, addresses,…
Data Integrity
Data integrity is the assurance that information remains complete, consistent, and unaltered except through authorized or protocol-valid changes. Blockchain systems support integrity…
Data Scalability
Data scalability is a blockchain system’s ability to increase the amount of transaction, state, proof, or application data it can make available…
Decentralization
Decentralization is the distribution of authority, validation, data, or infrastructure across multiple independent participants instead of one controlling party. In blockchain systems,…
Decoded Transaction
A decoded transaction is a raw blockchain transaction translated from protocol encoding into readable fields such as sender, recipient, amount, fee, contract…
Delayed Finality
Delayed finality is a condition in which blocks or transactions continue to appear or remain provisionally canonical, but the network’s stronger finality…
Delegated Transaction
A delegated transaction is a blockchain transaction in which one party authorizes another party, service, or smart contract to submit or execute…
Derived Account
A derived account is an account whose address or identifier is calculated from other known inputs instead of being selected only from…
Derived Unique Key Per Transaction (DUKPT)
Derived Unique Key Per Transaction, or DUKPT, is a payment-security key-management method that derives a different encryption key for each transaction from…
Deterministic Account
A deterministic account is an account whose address, key, or identifier can be reproduced from the same defined inputs and derivation procedure.…
Deterministic Execution
Deterministic execution means that every correct node processing the same valid input from the same prior state under the same protocol rules…