A glossary of terms that every EOS user should know.
Let's make blockchain lingo easier to learn and understand.
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A token distribution method. It is generally compared to an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), where tokens are sold. However, with an airdrop, tokens are given for free with the hope of creating an immediate user base for minimal cost.
There are many different ways to structure voting mechanisms in a society. EOSIO uses Approval Voting. Approval Voting is a system in which a voter can vote an equal weight towards multiple candidates. It allows for a much flatter distribution of votes due to the fact that an account can vote for 1 to 30 different Block Producers, versus if each account could only select a single candidate.
Byzantine Fault Tolerance, or BFT, refers to the ability of a system to still function correctly if some of its components fail, or behave maliciously, even when there is imperfect information regarding which components are working correctly.
In the context of blockchains, it is important for the consensus mechanism to have this property. For EOSIO specifically, the DPoS consensus mechanism should work even if some of the Block Producers fail or misbehave.
The term Byzantine comes from a computer science problem , the Byzantine Generals' Problem, in which a group of army commanders encircling a city have to agree on a plan, while some of the generals may be disloyal.
An automated tool for booting up an EOSIO network. It can be used to create a test environment locally, a meshed network across different servers, or a fully functional EOSIO network.
Block Producers are teams around the world who create the blocks that make up the EOS blockchain. They are elected by the EOS token holders. 21 Block Producers create blocks, while a list of Standby Block Producers vie for votes to be within the Top 21. Another name that is commonly used is Supernode.
Block.one is the company that created the EOSIO software. The CEO is Brendan Blumer and the CTO is Daniel Larmier. Block.one held the largest and longest ICO in history, lasting 350 days, and raising over $4 Billion USD. They have committed $1 Billion USD towards Venture Capital firms who will help to build technologies that leverage the EOSIO software.
A public blockchain is a distributed ledger, publicly available to anyone. It is a relatively new technology, with the first such example created by Satoshi Nakamoto, called Bitcoin. It is a chain made up of blocks of transactions (also known as Distributed Ledger Technology)
When a blockchain user refers to ‘cold storage,’ they referring to an offline method of storing their private keys. This is a very secure means for storing your private keys, as they are not being exposed over the internet.
EOS is known as a ‘Governed Blockchain.’ As such, it has a Constitution, similar to the manner in which many political jurisdictions have their own Constitution. It is a set of rules which all EOS users have agreed to abide by, by virtue of their use of the EOS platform.
On EOS, CPU represents processing time, one of the blockchain resources that are allocated by means of the delegation mechanism. Each action requires a certain amount of CPU processing time, therefore if you would like to broadcast transactions to the EOS network, your account must have a sufficient allocation of CPU.
DAC is an acronym for a Decentralized Autonomous Corporation (or Decentralized Autonomous Community). This is similar to a co-op, as it is a member-run Corporation, which is self-governing, and can function autonomously. The entire business logic of a DAC is encoded into a smart contract that resides on the blockchain. Also known as a DAO - Decentralized Autonomous Organization.
A blockchain is a distributed ledger, publicly available to anyone. It is a relatively new technology, with the first such example created by Satoshi Nakamoto, called Bitcoin. It is a chain made up blocks of transactions.
DPoS is the consensus mechanism on which EOSIO is built. Within this context, the trustworthiness of the network is derived from the reputation and the future rewards of Block Producers, which keeps them honest. Block Producers are incentivized to remain honest, or risk losing their position in their network. It would take at least 15 of the actively producing Block Producers to collude together to render this mechanism ineffective.
EOS Core Arbitration Forum; the default arbitration forum for the EOS Mainnet. It is named in the current Constitution in Article IX. Users and developers are free to name and use other Arbitration Forums, however this is the current default forum.
EOS is the token symbol of the native token on the EOS platform. It is also the name usually used for the EOS mainnet (with chain ID: aca376f206b8fc25a6ed44dbdc66547c36c6c33e3a119ffbeaef943642f0e906).
A media organization started by Kevin Wilcox and Yohann "Bluejays" Calpu with the help of Jenny "TopKpop", to be an independent source of news for the English-speaking community of EOS. They are most known for their weekly YouTube vlog, EOS RAD.io, the Block Producer Candidate Reports pre-launch, and for the EOS forum that they started; forums.eosgo.io.
EOS Go was acquired by a Block Producer team in October 2018.
ERC-20 stands for: Ethereum Request for Comment-20, and essentially is the standardized criteria needed for creating a token on the Ethereum Network. The EOS ICO was done on the Ethereum Network, so the EOS token was originally sold as an ERC-20 token.
Unlike on other blockchains where one can only have a high degree of confidence that a transaction is accepted by waiting for enough confirmations, on EOSIO software it is possible to reach definite finality. Transactions behind the Last Irreversible Block are actually final and cannot be removed through a longer chain coming into existence through an attack. This will be extremely important once Inter-Blockchain Communication is functional.
An acronym for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A common term used in the crypto-space to signify something that is not supported by facts, and is intended to halt or slow down some action by creating uncertainty.
A popular coding language developed by Google. Developers who wish to develop using this language can use a full-fledged library for EOSIO in Go developed by EOS Canada, called `eos-go`.
The agreed upon process that we as a community choose to abide by so as to maintain a peaceful and fair usage of our common pool resources.
Hashing is the process of transforming a string into a fixed-length value or key that represents the original string. A string of data will always produce the same hash, so it is used as a means of verifying the contents of the string against the expected content. There are many different hashing algorithms.
A term used to signify that something cannot be changed. The history of a blockchain is incorporated in every subsequent block, and as such is considered immutable.
The mechanism through which new tokens are created on the EOS mainnet. 20% of these are used to pay Block Producers and Standby Producers, with the remainder going into the eosio.saving account. Currently, inflation is set at 5%.
The main EOSIO blockchain. As the EOSIO software is open source and freely available, there can be many instances of it. The first one to be spun up for public usage was the one with chain ID: aca376f206b8fc25a6ed44dbdc66547c36c6c33e3a119ffbeaef943642f0e906.
Similar to .com and .org at the end of a URL, there are namespaces available in EOS. If a user wins a namespace auction for some suffix, say “com”, then they will be able to create special account names with “.com” at the end. The suffix is the namespace they bid on. Some major auctions that have been won were for .io .eos and .com.
An oracle is a system that makes off-chain data available on-chain. An example of this would be an oracle that takes the score of a basketball game and puts it on-chain for smart contracts to consume and base decisions on.
A private key is what can be used to sign a transaction that authenticates the holder, and allows the blockchain to only allow authorized actions that are listed as permissions on an EOS account. It is linked to a corresponding public key counterpart.
The term proxy can be used in two distinct definitions:
1. A user is registered as a proxy by calling the `regproxy` action, and can now have other users voting weight delegated along with their vote.
2. The actual act of delegating your vote towards another account. If a user does not want, or have the available time, to research which Block Producers should receive their vote (but still wants to participate in voting), they can proxy their vote strength towards another account.
The term 'Standby Producer' refers to all Producers who fall into the second classification above.
A testing environment in which developers can test their contracts or applications, where Block Producers can verify that their infrastructure operates as intended, and where new tweaks to source code can be checked for any missed bugs or unintended consequences. Testnets can be set up to mimic production networks, to simulate possible attacks, or for other purposes.
The unit of measurement of a cryptocurrency. On EOS, each EOS token can be split down to the 4th decimal place. You may sometimes see the words token and coin being used interchangeably.
With on-chain governance being at the forefront of EOSIO software, voting is a fundamental part of the system. The most widely used application of voting is to elect which Block Producers will actually produce blocks for the network. Voting will also be used to help collect the communal decisions through which we will change the course of the network - through referendums to alter the Constitution, to elect members to any boards that may form, and to vote things through the Worker Proposal System, amongst others.
A software or hardware tool that stores your private keys, through which you sign transactions. A common misconception is that a wallet holds your tokens. However, tokens are never held, only the private keys that have control/rights over those tokens are being held.
A token holder who holds a very large stake.
