In blockchain, to burn a token is to make it unusable. This is typically done by sending the token to an account with a nulled key (cryptographically inaccessible). However, since EOSIO allows 15 of 21 Block Producers to access tokens on an account that has nulled keys, it is best to burn tokens by using the retire function to remove the tokens from circulation completely. Further, since inflation is based upon the total supply, tokens burned by sending to a nulled account, but not those burned with the retire action, will still be included in the circulating supply.
When a new account is created, the new account is considered the child of the account that created it, which is known as the parent account.
A popular Integrated Development Environment (IDE) built by Obsidian Labs. EOS Studio is a powerful and easy-to-use environment for dapp development, available for free to any developer looking to work on an EOSIO blockchain.
This agreement replaced the interim Constitution. It is a set of rules and guidelines which EOS users should adhere to. It was originally proposed by EOS New York and then passed through many iterations with help from the global EOS community.
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`.
Greylisting an account means that this account will only have access to the amount of resources for which it has delegated. When the blockchain is under-utilized, users and dapps may utilize a portion of the unused bandwidth of the chain. However, a greylisted account will always be limited to their objective limits.
When there are any changes made to the consensus mechanism on the blockchain, there needs to be a hard fork to demarcate this change in the software that is run by both validating and non-validating nodes. Any node that does not upgrade their software will no longer be able to accept blocks from the new part of the chain.
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.
The most recent block created. It is also known as the tip of the chain.
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.
A microfork occurs when a Block Producer begins to produce blocks with the same block height as a block that was recently produced. This is often the result of high latency between producing nodes, which may occur from time to time. Since this is a small divergence in the flow of blocks on the blockchain, this is known as a microfork. There is very little cause for concern, and microforks should be almost undetectable to the average user. Watch our video explanation.
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.
REX also includes a caveat that a user must be either voting for at least 21 Block Producers or be delegating their vote towards a proxy to be eligible to utilize the REX.
A token whose value is intended to remain stable. This can be done by pegging to another currency or token, or algorithmically. Many stablecoins peg to the US dollar, meaning that one token should always be redeemable for one US dollar.
The term 'Standby Producer' refers to all Producers who fall into the second classification above.
These are accounts that begin with the prefix eosio.* and hold either the code or the funds for native blockchain actions (such as voting, multisig, account creation, and so on). To see a list of all system accounts and what each one does, be sure to read our article.
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.
Loans that are taken out to borrow either CPU or Network resources from REX are open for 30 days. Only a user who is borrowing those resources (paying a fee into REX) needs to keep track of the 30-day time period. A user who is leasing out their tokens’ resources (earning value from REX) only needs to be aware of the four-day maturing period.
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.
A metric by which you measure the throughput capacity of a blockchain. As it currently stands, the EOS mainnet has attained 3996 TPS.
Since the blockchain space is so new, it has been adopted primarily by tech enthusiasts who have taken the time to dig deep. But for greater adoption, the important things for a developer to keep in mind is often said to be the experience of the user, which starts with the interface through which they interact with the application.
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.
The strength of a vote is calculated based on the number of tokens an account has staked for either CPU or Network Bandwidth, and the number of REX tokens held by that account, along with the time that the account last performed any of these actions: voteproducer, delegatebw, undelegatebw, buyrex, sellrex, or updaterex.
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.
A whitelist is a subjective measure that a blockchain node can put into effect to allow transactions to be put into a block only if they are listed on their author (account) or contract whitelist. Each node can specify their own whitelist, and these are not publicly viewable. Even if a node does not have the author/contract on their whitelist, it will still accept the transaction as valid if another Block Producer places the transaction into a block. To completely block transactions that are not on the whitelist from being added, all Block Producers will need to have the same whitelist settings at all times. Whitelist takes precedence over blacklist. Watch our video explanation.
