List of notions

Abstract

Ledger A book, a list, or other collection of financial accounts and/or transactions. % Attack A potential attack on a blockchain network, where a single entity or organization is able to control the majority of the hash power, potentially causing a network disruption. In such a scenario, the attacker would have enough mining power to intentionally exclude or modify the ordering of transactions. -blocks Confirmation A period of time (commonly around  min) necessary for adding six new blocks behind a solved block that contain some transaction. After this period, the transaction is considered confirmed because creating a new version of the blockchain that will not contain a given transaction becomes too difficult, because too expensive in computing power. Altcoins Cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. Artificial Neural Networks A computing system is based on a collection of connected units or nodes called artificial neurons, which loosely model the neurons in a biological brain. Bitcoin The most popular cryptocurrency, running on a blockchain created in January  by an unknown person under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin/Digital Wallet A software program for holding and trading Bitcoins which uses a person’s private key (secret number) to access the person’s public Bitcoin address (an identifier of – alphanumeric characters) and transaction signatures that need to be securely stored; the Bitcoin wallet comes in many forms – the four main types are desktop, mobile, web, and hardware. Blockchain A distributed ledger consists of a series of transaction blocks where each block (except the first and the last) is linked with the previous and next block by means of cryptography, making that way an unbreakable chain of blocks. Blockchain Fork A situation within the community (of nodes/members of a blockchain PP network) that occurs when in the network exist two or more versions of the blockchain (i.e., different nodes may have different versions of the file which contains blockchain data). Blockchain Mining A peer-to-peer computer process aimed to secure and verify transactions of a given cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin). Border Gateway Protocol Protocol for routing of IP packets (routing protocol); it is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems on the Internet. Branch Tip A tip that represents the last individual transaction in a branch tip bundle (see IOTA bundle).