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Adam Back
He is a well known Cypherpunk, Cryptographer and widely recognized for his invention Hashcash a protocol that is used to identify email spam and control it. He proposed Hashcash in 1997 which was used by Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoinās inventor, to develop Proof of Work (PoW) consensus protocol. PoW is used in Bitcoin network as part of mining algorithm. He is also known as one of the first two people contacted by Satoshi Nakamoto for developing Bitcoin protocol. Adam Back is currently the CEO of Blockstream, a company that he co-founded in 2014. Blockstream is focused on building crypto financial infrastructure based on Bitcoin.
Address
In Blockchain world, an address would typically be a hashed version of the āpublic keyā, which will be referred to by an individual or a platform, in order to transfer any cryptocurrency to a wallet. It is a combination of unique numbers and letters and works similar to an email address. Its like a bank account for cryptocurrency asset. In a public blockchain, address can also be used to perform analytics on a wallet as it is sufficient to trace assets in the wallet. In Bitcoin world, different address formats are used. Eg: P2PKH (addresses start with number 1) - 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2.
AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)
Also known by its original name Rijndael, Advanced Encryption Standard was developed by two Belgian cryptographers Vincent Rijmen and Joan Daemen. It is based on a design principle known as substitution - permutation network, made popular in 2001. Development started in 1997 when the need for alternate to Digital Encryption Standard (DES) was felt as DES was beginning to become vulnerable to brute force attacks. It is used in Software and Hardware globally to protect sensitive data in areas of government computer security, cybersecurity and electronic data protection. 3 different versions are available AES 128, AES 192 and AES 256. 128, 192 and 256 represent the key length that is used to encrypt and decrypt information. AES 128 uses 128 bit key length.
Air Drop
Air Drop is a popular marketing campaign or technique used in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) whereby a certain allotment of the native cryptocurrency (tokens) is set aside for free distribution and given to contributors and the community in general. This is mostly done to increase awareness, create early value for tokens as recipients will begin to trade their airdropped tokens. It also promotes participation in ICOs, Blockchain network or enhance activities on the platform. Cryptocurrency start-ups have traditionally airdropped tokens to the wallet holders on Bitcoin and Ethereum networks. Uniswap (UNI) airdrop is believed to be one of the most lucrative airdrops in recent times.
Air Gapping
When an individual or an entity is highly concerned about the security of any sensitive data or valuable asset held digitally like tokens and cryptocurrencies, they typically ensure physical separation of their devices from unsecure networks. This helps prevent likely cyberattacks that originate from unsecured networks or unauthorized access.
Alan Turing
Regarded as the Father of Modern Computer Science, Alan Mathison Turingās work led to the origin of Turing completeness. In the Blockchain world, Turing completeness means that the protocol is able to use its code base to perform any task as long as it has correct instructions, enough time and processing power. In essence, it allows writing programming loops. Turing completeness became prominent when Ethereum claimed it is Turing complete while Bitcoin is not. In reality, Bitcoin is Turing complete. Turing completeness helps to protect the data to avoid possible information thefts, enhances security of the system from hackers and offers safe transaction system.
Alt Coins / Alt Tokens/ Alternate Coins
They represent all cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. There are various attributes that differentiate alternate coins from Bitcoin such as Consensus mechanism, Smart Contracts, Low price volatility or no volatility at all. There are more than 10,000 alternate coins trading in over 350 exchanges globally
Anti-Fragile
An anti-fragile asset performs better when there is risk and uncertainty, and gains strength from adverse events. This concept was created by the famous author Nasim Nicholas Taleb. He said that āsome things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stresses and love adventure, risk and uncertaintyā. A classic example is Bitcoin (BTC), it has become stronger with every price hit it has suffered over the years.
API (Application Programming Interface)
An Application Programming Interface allows any system to fetch from or push data to a third-party system. Prevalence of APIs has opened multiple possibilities across segments. In Banking, Open API Banking has resulted in creation of many innovative products & services by Fintechs and Banks leading to improved customer engagement, enhanced transaction security and increased convenience.
Ashdraked
Ashdraking is a complete loss of a crypto investorās capital as a result of shorting Bitcoin where the aim is to sell Bitcoin at a higher price and buy it back at lower price. The term is named after āLord Ashdrakeā, a pseudonymous Romanian Bitcoin trader who used to short Bitcoin - betting that its value would decline. Initially he made large profits as Bitcoin declined in 2014 - 2015. Then he shorted Bitcoin at $300 expecting prices to drop. On the contrary, Bitcoin prices went upto $600 in a few weeks and he lost lots of money.
ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit)
An Application Specific Integrated Circuit is particularly built for a specific computational use rather than being general-purpose. These have become very popular and are used in mining cryptocurrencies as mining on personal computers is difficult. They are more efficient than General Processing Units (GPUs). Once a cryptocurrency specific ASIC is released, mining without ASIC is usually unprofitable.
Asymmetric Keys
Asymmetric keys is the use of two distinct or separate public and private keys (keys are different and not same as is the case with Symmetric keys). Public key is used for encryption and this can be decrypted only by a private key. Public and Private keys are mathematically connected with each other and their relationship differs from one algorithm to another. These keys in cryptocurrencies ensure that transaction sources are legitimate and hackers cannot steal the funds. In Bitcoin, the wallet address is a hashed version of the corresponding public key. It proves the ownership of address to receive funds / tokens / coins.
ATH (All Time High)
All Time High for a cryptocurrency or any stock price is the maximum price that the asset has reached as on current date. For Eg, Bitcoin reached an ATH of USD 19,783 in 2017 and then an ATH of USD 61,712 in March, 2021.
ATL (All Time Low)
All Time Low is the lowest price of a cryptocurrency or any stock till date. This is used as a measure to understand the performance of an asset and the relative changes in the price.
Atomic Swaps
An atomic swap is when two cryptocurrencies can be traded amongst each other i.e. converted from one into another without the intervention of a third-party platform or exchange. They are made wallet to wallet in a fully person to person manner. They are called atomic as it results in either successful completion of swap and each trader receives the otherās funds or nothing happens with both traders keeping their respective funds. Tier Nolan who accomplished this in 2013 is widely considered as inventor of atomic swaps. The first atomic swap was established between Bitcoin and Litecoin.
ABCI (Application Blockchain Interface)
The purpose of ABCI (Application Blockchain Interface) is to provide a clean interface between any finite, deterministic state transition machine on one computer and the mechanics of a blockchain-based replication engine across multiple computers also known as consensus engine.
AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)
AKS is an open-source fully managed container orchestration service available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud that can be used to deploy, scale and manage Docker containers and container-based applications in a cluster environment. It helps in setting up and managing containerized applications in seconds and was released on 8th March 2019.
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B money
B-money was one of the earliest cryptocurrencies, which was never launched officially. B-money endeavored to provide many of the same services and features (anonymous, distributed cash system) that cryptocurrencies of today provide. It was invented by Wei Dai. He is a member of Cypherpunks and co proposed VMAC message authentication algorithm. The smallest unit of Ether is named as Wei in his honor. 1 Wei is one quintillionth of an Ether.
BAAS (Blockchain As A Service)
BAAS is the third-party creation and management of cloud based networks for companies in the business of building blockchain applications. These third-party services are a relatively new development in the growing field of blockchain technology.
IBM, AWS, Azure, Oracle, SAP, Alibaba, Stezy, Zeeve, Settlemint, Chainstack are some of the leading Blockchain as a Service Providers across the world.
Bakong
Bakong is the first Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) launched by The National Bank of Cambodia. This was co-developed by Japanese fintech firm SORAMITSU and launched on Oct 28, 2020. Bakong supports transactions in riel and dollars and it has its own mobile app for transactions.
Bear Trap
A bear trap starts with a group of traders selling a large number of cryptos. This makes other traders sell since they suspect a price correction. This causes the price to fall further. Thatās when the bear trap is released when the earlier sellers buy back the crypto at a lower price. Bear traps can happen over hours or days.
Bear Whale
A person in Crypto market who places a huge quantity to sell at a discount to market price, which pushes market prices to lower levels. This event has occurred in Bitcoin in the year 2014 where an individual known as Bearwhale lost faith in Bitcoin and transferred 30,000 coins to Bitstamp and placed a sell limit order at USD 300 per coin while market price was USD 350.
Besu
Hyperledger Besu is an Ethereum client designed to be enterprise-friendly for both public and private permissioned Blockchain use cases. It can also be operated on test networks such as Rinkeby, Ropsten, and Gƶrli. Hyperledger Besu includes several consensus algorithms including Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Authority (IBFT, IBFT 2.0, Etherhash, and Clique). Its comprehensive permissioning schemes are designed specifically for use in a consortium environment.
BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance)
BFT is the property of a system that is able to resist the class of failures derived from the Byzantine Generalsā Problem. This means that a BFT system is able to continue operating even if some of the nodes in Blockchain network fail or act maliciously. It is used as one of the consensus mechanisms in Blockchain networks to protect Blockchains from manipulation by rogue nodes or unknown actors. Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance was introduced by Miguel Castro and Barbara Liskov at MIT Laboratory and used by Blockchain protocols ā Hyperledger, Stellar and Ripple.
Binance
Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange that provides a platform for trading various cryptocurrencies. As of January 2018, Binance was the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of trading volume. Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high frequency trading software. Binance has also launched two cryptos developed internally ā Binance Coin (BNB) with a market cap of over USD 50 billion and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). BNB can be used to pay exchange fees on Binance for various transactions.
BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal)
It is a standard for proposing changes to Bitcoin protocol. They include consensus related critical changes like soft fork and hard fork protocol upgrades, bitcoin software implementations such as modifications pertaining to backing up seed formats and peer to peer layer. The first BIP ā BIP 0001 was proposed by Amir Taaki in the year 2011. BIP 141 also known as Segragated Witness or SegWit has resulted in increasing Block size to address size limitation problem that reduced Bitcoin transaction speeds.
Bit
Bit is a common unit used to designate a sub-unit of a bitcoin - 1,000,000 bits is equal to 1 bitcoin (BTC)...
