Glossary
Description of important terms from the blockchain, documentchain and cryptocurrency.
Terms and abbreviations
- Altcoin
- All cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin are called Altcoin, as an alternative to this.
- ASIC
- Acronym for “Application Specific Integrated Circuit”. This refers to specialized computers for mining a cryptocurrency.
- BIP
- Acronym for “Bitcoin Improvement Proposal”. Analogously, Altcoins also have terms such as “EIP” for “Ethereum Improvement Proposal”.
- Block
- A block of data within the blockchain that contains transactions or other data.
- Block Explorer
- This is a software or website representing the individual blocks with the data, see example.
- Block reward
- The reward for the miner who has completed a block.
- Blockchain
- A database in which data blocks string together like a chain. The individual blocks are linked together using cryptographic methods. The individual blocks contain data as well as the hash value of the previous block. For cryptocurrencies, the blockchain is usually organized on a decentralized basis and is stored on the computers of all participants. See also Whitepaper.
- Bootstrap
- During the initial synchronization of a full node, it must load all data blocks from other nodes, check them and append them to its own blockchain copy. This process can take a very long time – many hours or a day for Documentchain, but several weeks for Bitcoin. Alternatively, the blockchain can also be loaded completely, and this file is known as a bootstrap. However, this should be viewed very critically and a bootstrap should only be taken from trustworthy sources.
See also Documentchain download option - Cryptocurrency
- A digital means of payment based on cryptographic methods. Examples are Bitcoin, Ethereum and DMS.
- DMS
- The cryptocurrency “DMS” is the digital currency of the Documentchain. This is primarily used to save the document hash values for document revision, but it can also be used for other payments. The currency symbol is derived from the acronym for Document Management System.
- Documentchain
- This term is derived from Blockchain. In addition to the transactions, the data blocks also contain information for a tamper-proof document revision.
- Faucet
- For cryptocurrencies, the term stands for a website on which free coins are distributed.
- Hash
- A hash is the checksum of data. The hash of an arbitrarily large data block or document is determined and stored using a cryptographic function. To check whether the data is unchanged, the hash value is again calculated from the data and compared with the stored value.
- InstantSend
- Immediate payment. For enhanced security, the payee can not dispose of the received coins immediately. The payee has to wait for a predetermined number of network confirmations before he or she returns the coins. To get DMS, the payee has to wait six blocks, which takes 33 minutes on average. With InstantSend, however, the transactions are not confirmed by the miners, but by the Masternodes. The receiver has to wait only one block, which takes three minutes on average(between 0 and 6 minutes).
- Masternode
- A node is a computer on the network that stores a copy of the complete blockchain and makes it available to the network. A masternode performs additional functions and is rewarded with a portion of the block reward.
- Mining
- Mining is the computationally intensive process in which the individual data (transactions) are combined into blocks and added to the blockchain. The calculation is intentionally made more difficult (see PoW), so that only one block is completed every six minutes on average. The time span is different for the vrious cryptocurrencies, but in this context one speaks of “block time”.
- Proof of Existence
- Abbreviated “PoE”, it enables proof that a document or any file has existed since a point in time and is unchanged. This is the core function of Documentchain.
- Proof of Work
- Abbreviated “PoW” is the proof that work has been done. Work describes in this context the processing power of computers. In a decentralized blockchain network without a central review instance, the majority of participants are trusted. However, it is not possible to identify a participant – behind allegedly many participants could be only one individual. You can not pretend computing power, it actually has to be present in order to perform the required calculations. To outsmart this principle, the attacker has to spend more than half of the total computing power of the network. This is called a 51% attack.
- Symbol
- The ticker of a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s symbol is BTC, Documentchain’s is DMS.
- Wallet
- The virtual wallet holds one or more cryptocurrencies.