Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Dictionary

Terms commonly used in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency

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Fork

Fork – splitting the blockchain into two branches. There are two types of fork: Soft Fork – a change to the protocol where only previously valid blocks or transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognize the new blocks as valid, a soft fork is backward-compatible. Requires a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules. Hard Fork – a radical change to the protocol that invalidates previously valid blocks or transactions. Sometimes, both the old and the new blockchain continue to coexist, separating into two different cryptocurrencies. Requires all the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules. For example, Bitcoin Cash was created by hard forking the Bitcoin protocol; both cryptocurrencies coexist now.

FUD

FUD – short for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Describes the act of sharing negative rumors about a certain cryptocurrency or the market in general, which can negatively affect their price. Usually the rumors are not based on any evidence.

Fungible Token

Fungible token – a cryptocurrency asset that is divisible, interchangeable and is similar to other tokens of its kind. For example, bitcoins are fungible tokens because any bitcoin can be divided, exchanged for another bitcoin and is not unique in any way.

Futures Trading

Futures trading refers to a method of speculating on the price of assets, including cryptocurrencies, without actually owning them. Like commodity or stock futures, cryptocurrency futures enable traders to bet on a digital currency’s future price.

Hash

Hash – a unique alphanumeric string produced by the hash algorithm. For example, 47a83dfbba d320acff42 e5400b2b7d 654acb0a44 1dd982b2f9 34454a730f 8b28 is a SHA-256 hash.

Hash Algorithm

Hash algorithm – an algorithm that transforms the information about transaction into hash. It is a one-way function, meaning that the information about transaction cannot be obtained from hash alone. For example, SHA-256 utilized by Bitcoin is a hash algorithm.

Hash Rate

Hash rate – also known as hash power, is a value that represents a number of times a hash function can be computed per second by a miner or the whole network. This value depends on 2 factors: The actual computing power of a miner; The network a miner works in. Difficulty of hash function can be different in different networks. For example, the hash rate of Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, one of the most popular GPUs for mining, in Ethereum network is approximately 24 MHash/s. It means that this GPU is able to run hash algorithm approximately 24 million times per second.

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