Tokens may be used to safeguard sensitive data involving, for example, bank accounts, financial statements, medical records, criminal records, driver’s licenses, loan applications, stock trades, voter registrations, and other types of personally identifiable information (PII)
Initial Coin Offering (ICO) –In an ICO, a quantity of cryptocurrency is sold in the form of “tokens” (“coins”) to speculators or investors, in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies. The tokens sold are promoted as future functional units of currency if or when the ICO’s funding goal is met and the project launches. In some cases, like Ethereum, the tokens are required to use the system for its purposes.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to minimize the volatility of the price of the stablecoin, relative to some “stable” asset or basket of assets.
Backed Stablecoins are redeemable in commodities (such as precious or industrial metals).
Currency backed stable coins are pegged to one or more fiat currencies (e.g. US Dollar, Euro etc.)
Cryptocurrency backed stable coins are issued with cryptocurrencies as collateral, which is conceptually similar to fiat-backed stablecoins; the significant difference between the two designs is that while fiat collateralization typically happens off the blockchain, the cryptocurrency or crypto asset used to back this type of stablecoins is done on the blockchain, using smart contracts in a more decentralized fashion.
Colored coins are a class of methods for associating real world assets (e.g. a deed for a house, stocks, bonds or futures) with blocks on the blockchain network.
Mining– process of generating a new block on the blockchain – typically includes a PoW assertion.
Mining pool– a collection of miners who have pooled their resources together in order to mine a cryptocurrency
Single mining pool– A mining pool that mines a single cryptocurrency.
Multipool mining– mining poll that mines multiple cryptocurrencies
Orphan blocks– a successfully completed PoW that was not accepted by the consensus protocol – discarded (waste) in bitcoin
Stale blocks– a block that is abandoned because the mining node already received a solution from some of other node.
Uncle blocks– an orphan block; in Etherium, orphan (uncle) blocks can earn ether.
Genesis blocks– the first block on the blockchain.
Just as a Mint creates new currency notes and coins, minting on a blockchain expands the size of the cryptocurrency in circulation and supported by the blockchain.
To Burn a crypto currency asset is to destroy it – reduces the size of the cryptocurrency in circulation and supported by the blockchain.
Fiat currency is an object (like a paper bill or metal coin) that has been established as money, often by a government
A Digital Currency is a type of currency designed to be used in the digital form. A cryptocurrency is a digital currency.
On a permission less network, anyone who meets certain technical requirements can access the network or operate a node.
On a permissioned network, an entity controls access to the network and oversees who can operate a node.
Blockchain Governance is the approach to decision making taken by the decentralized nodes on a blockchain.
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a special type of cryptographic token which represents something unique; non-fungible tokens are thus not interchangeable. This is in contrast to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, and many network or utility tokens that are fungible in nature.
A cryptocurrency wallet is a device (e.g. usb stick), physical medium, program or a service which stores the public and/or private keys and can be used to track ownership, receive or spend cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrency itself is not in the wallet. In case of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies derived from it, the cryptocurrency is decentrally stored and maintained in a publicly available ledger called the blockchain. A public key allows for other wallets to make payments to the wallet’s account(address), whereas a private key enables the spending of cryptocurrency from that address.