Insights on Crypto Payments, Infrastructure, and Operations

Glossary terms starting with P

Numbers and symbols are grouped under #. Letter matching ignores case and uses the first displayed title character.

Protocol Bridge

A protocol bridge is a cross-chain mechanism whose contracts, verifiers, messages, and relayers are governed by a defined interoperability protocol. Security may…

Protocol Exploit

Protocol Exploit is an attack or weakness pattern that abuses a design, implementation, economic, or integration weakness to violate a protocol’s intended…

Protocol Finality

Protocol finality is the level of settlement certainty provided by a blockchain’s consensus rules once specified conditions are met. It determines when…

Protocol Layer

A protocol layer is a functional level that applies specific rules and exposes defined services to components above or beside it. Layering…

Protocol Reserve

A protocol reserve is a pool of controlled assets intended to cover obligations, absorb losses, fund operations, or support system stability. Reserve…

Protocol Revenue

Protocol revenue is value captured for protocol-controlled recipients from fees or other activities under a stated accounting methodology. Gross user fees are…

Protocol Risk

Protocol risk is exposure to loss or failure arising from a protocol’s rules, assumptions, implementation, governance, incentives, or dependencies. Protocol Risk must…

Protocol Security

Protocol Security is a security mechanism or control discipline that protects a protocol’s intended correctness, availability, authorization, privacy, and economic properties against…

Protocol Treasury

A protocol treasury is an asset pool governed to finance the development, security, incentives, liquidity, and operations of a decentralized protocol. For…

Prover Node

A prover node reconstructs a computation or state transition and generates a cryptographic proof that a verifier can check efficiently. The verifier…

Provider Settlement

Provider settlement is the process by which a payment provider calculates and transfers eligible net or gross proceeds to a merchant, platform,…

Provider-to-Bank Reconciliation

Provider-to-Bank Reconciliation is the comparison of a payment provider’s settlement or transaction records with bank-account activity to confirm cash movement. It focuses…

Provider-to-Ledger Reconciliation

Provider-to-Ledger Reconciliation is the comparison of provider reports or API records with internal ledger entries to verify accounting completeness and accuracy. It…

Provisional Settlement

Provisional settlement makes value or a settlement position available before every condition for final and irrevocable settlement has been satisfied. The credit…

Proximity Payment

A proximity payment is initiated through short-range interaction between a payer's device or credential and merchant acceptance equipment. It commonly uses contactless…

Proxy Token Contract

A proxy token contract is an upgradeable token architecture in which users interact with a stable proxy address while implementation logic is…

Pruned Node

A pruned node validates blockchain history but deletes selected older block or state data after retaining what current operation requires. Exact retention…

Pseudonymity

Pseudonymity is the use of identifiers such as blockchain addresses instead of directly recording a person’s legal name. It can reduce immediate…

Public Key

A public key is cryptographic information derived from a private key and used to verify signatures or construct blockchain addresses and accounts.…

Public Mempool

A public mempool is a node's pool of accepted unconfirmed transactions that are broadly announced through the peer-to-peer network. There is no…

Public-Key Cryptography

Public-key cryptography is a family of cryptographic methods that uses a mathematically related public key and private key. The public key can…

Pull Payment

A pull payment is initiated by the payee or its provider against the payer's account or authorized payment method under a mandate…

Pull-Based Oracle

A pull-based oracle lets a user or application submit a recent authenticated data report on-chain when a transaction needs it. Pull delivery…

Purchasing Power Risk

Purchasing power risk is the possibility that inflation or price changes reduce what money or stored value can buy over time. Decision-makers…