Questions tagged [terminology]
Questions concerning terminology, jargon, abbreviations, acronyms and phrases that are essential to the cryptocurrency community.
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What does Pay to Contract (P2C) mean?
What does Pay to Contract (P2C) mean in Bitcoin? Is it just tweaking private/public key with the hash (represented as a number) of some message and then using classic P2PKH?
For example, if we are ...
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What is "(mempool) policy"?
In answers concerning validity or propagation of transactions as well as topics surrounding consensus, people frequently mention "policy" or sometimes "mempool policy".
What do ...
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Where was the term "coinbase" first coined, who first used it?
The white paper doesn't mention the term "coinbase" (in reference to the reward transaction).
I see the first version of the software main.cpp does:
// First transaction must be coinbase,...
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Bitcoin network: data-intensive or compute-intensive system?
Is it more accurate to consider the Bitcoin network a data-intensive system due to the massive amount of data that must be stored by miners, or instead, a compute-intensive system due to the PoW and ...
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How did Taproot get its name?
I've looked around best I could, but couldn't find a good answer to this. Is there any place it's documented publicly as to why the soft fork was called Taproot?
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What is sigop (signature operation)?
I've seen the term sigop in many places frequently. I've tried to figure out what does it mean by searching, and found that it's abbreviation of signature operation. But it's still not clear to me the ...
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Meaning of BTC "wallet address" and any difference with transaction address?
This is a newbie question but I couldn't find the answer after reading Reddit's r/Bitcoin Sticky FAQ and also searching r/Bitcoin on "wallet address".
I opened a Coinbase account a while ...
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Are all wallets always considered nodes?
Likely a duh question, but are all network participants (or wallet holders here) always considered nodes? Am I right to say that the answer might depend on what the wallet is capable of doing in terms ...
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Are crypto tokens a subset of cryptocurrencies?
I'm having a little bit of trouble with these terminologies regarding some crypto assets. From what I understand, cryptocurrencies are the superset; i.e. both crypto coins and crypto tokens are ...
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What's the difference between the anti klepto protocol and anti exfil?
What is the difference between the anti-klepto protocol (also here) and Anti-Exfil? Is it the same thing just with different names or are there differences? It seems they are both addressing the nonce ...
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Is it accurate to talk about a bitcoin inflation rate?
I have recently seen many news articles refer to Bitcoin's inflation.
For example: "Bitcoin's inflation rate, calculated as the percentage of new coins issued divided by the current supply" ...
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How throughput, latency, finality, waiting time are defined?
I am confused with the below terms. Could someone explain them in simple terms and confirm that my rationale below is correct?
Waiting Time - Throughput - Finality - Latency - Confirmation Time
I have ...
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Whats it called when two blocks are solved at the same time and create their own chain?
I'm trying to find more information on this topic but I can't remember what this is called in order to look up more information on it.
Is there an easy way to see the "trusted" amount of ...
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What does TLV stand for?
I'm reading about the gossip protocol and wanted to know what a TLV is. I can't find what it means anywhere.
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What is the difference between blocksonly and block-relay-only in Bitcoin Core?
The terms blocksonly and block-relay-only that are used in Bitcoin Core are very similar. What is the difference between them?
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What is a sane Miniscript? How does it differ to a valid Miniscript?
What is a sane Miniscript? How does it differ to a valid Miniscript?
This was asked during a Bitcoin Core PR review club on Miniscript hosted by stickies-v on May 18th 2022.
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Reasons not to rename scriptPubKey and scriptSig to something more intuitive?
I realize that this is how Satoshi named them and there was some reasoning behind these names, but even after years of using them, I find them weird and confusing, especially when e.g. explaining them ...
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How would one turn a Miniscript tree into a Taproot tree with Taproot'd Miniscript?
How would one turn a Miniscript "tree" into a Taproot tree with Taproot'd Miniscript?
(To be clear unlike a Taproot tree a Miniscript tree likely would't be surfaced to the user. Breaking ...
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Is there a consensus as to what is meant by 'Nakamoto Consensus'?
I sometimes hear that bitcoin's key innovation was the Nakamoto Consensus, which solves the double-spend problem without the need for trusted third-party intermediaries.
I take Nakamoto Consensus to ...
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Is it Bitcoin or Bitcoins in plural? How did Satoshi Nakamoto address this choice in his emails? [duplicate]
I understand that traditionally it is said 2 bitcoin, not 2 bitcoins. But recently I have seen Wikipedia state that "bitcoins" is the correct plural form.
We have words like water. It is ...
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How is coinswap different from submarine swap?
What is the difference between a coinswap and a submarine swap?
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What does bitcoin maximalist mean?
I've heard much about bitcoin maximalism. As I've googled it, a bitcoin maximalist is a person who believe that the only real cryptocurrency would really be needed in the future is the bitcoin. Is ...
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What is the difference between semantic policy and concrete policy in a Miniscript context?
What is the difference between semantic policy and concrete policy in a Miniscript context?
The difference between Policy and Miniscript is defined here.
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What does "Senders" and "Recipients" mean in this context?
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/3GauXQPcAgntyhxFdz9jiEf1VTiZYbNdh7
For each transaction, it mentions, for example:
Senders: 80
Recipients: 1
What exactly does this mean?
(Also, that's one ...
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What is a security model, security assumption, and security guarantee?
I often hear bitcoiners talk about
security models
security assumptions
security guarantees
but I can't find definitions of these terms.
What do these terms mean and how do they relate to each other?...
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What is a Miniscript fragment? And what should I call the underscore letter?
An example Miniscript is:
and_v(or_c(pk(B),or_c(pk(C),v:older(1000))),pk(A))
(Generated using this Miniscript site).
What would a fragment be here? What should I call the underscore letter (_v)? And ...
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Who first started to name 'blockchain technology' as 'blockchain'
I read through the whitepaper of Satoshi Nakamoto.
I could find the expression 'blocks are chained...' but he did not specifically use the word 'blockchain' itself.
I want to know the origin of the ...
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Is there a distinction between an attack and an exploit?
I'm writing up lecture notes and attempting to put the language on the most logical footing. I'm hoping to distinguish attacks on the consensus itself from exploits of the protocol, as these seem to ...
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What verb best describes "causing another block to become stale"?
For example, suppose I'm selfish mining; you publish a block and then I immediately publish two, what did I do to your block?
Similarly, if I'm executing a double-spend attack, my goal is to ?___? the ...
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What is signature grinding?
What is signature grinding and why does the answer to What is the size and weight of a wrapped segwit single-sig input? "highly recommend it"?
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Different term for 'fee rate'
Lot of users are confused between fee rate and fee. Sometimes even developers make mistakes or use 'fee' for everything to avoid confusion which can be considered misleading.
Was there ever a ...
user103136
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Why is "regtest" called "regtest"?
Bitcoin "regtest" is for when you want to run a local version of Bitcoin where the state is only shared within a small community, whereas both "mainnet" and "testnet" are ...
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What is difference between Lightning Wallet and Lightning Node?
I am confused with the terminology of lightning node vs and wallet, as I see that each individual can run its own wallet like eclair so does that mean the person running a wallet is also running a ...
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Is it correct to say that Bitcoin has a virtual machine in the same way as Ethereum does?
I always thought that between Bitcoin and Ethereum only the latter had a virtual machine.
The answer to this thread opened my eyes to the fact that Bitcoin actual has a virtual machine. However, I ...
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What does the abbreviation "HTLC" stand for?
An HTLC is a contract making use of both a hashlock and a timelock. I noticed a discrepancy in what various sources state the abbreviation HTLC is short for. I've found:
"Hashed Timelock ...
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How do difficulty, hashrate, and network hashrate fit together?
I understand that there are multiple terms for the idea of how hard it is to successfully mine BTC. The terms I have seen are "difficulty", "network hashrate" and "hashrate&...
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What are the scriptPubKey, scriptSig, redeem script and witness for the various output types?
scriptPubKey, redeem script, witness script, witness program are defined in this StackExchange post.
What are the scriptPubKey, scriptSig, redeem script and witness for the various output types (P2PKH,...
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How can I efficiently search the bitcoin-dev mailing list for discussion of a specific term?
How can I efficiently search the bitcoin-dev mailing list for discussion on a specific term e.g. deprecating BIP37 support?
This question was asked by pinheadmz on IRC.
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Does Bitcoin Core have/need an archive mode?
Similar to Ethereum's Archive Node:
Stores everything kept in the full node and builds an archive of historical states. Needed if you want to query something like an account balance at block #4,000,...
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What is the control block in Taproot?
What is the definition of "control block" in the context of Taproot?
It is referred to in standard.cpp in the Bitcoin Core repo and in BIP 341.
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Isn't burning bitcoins a kind of fraud?
BitCoin burning is the process by which digital currency miners and developers can remove bitcoins from circulation, thereby slowing down inflation rates or reducing the total circulating supply of ...
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What does "buy the dip" mean?
I keep hearing "buy the dip" constantly with Bitcoin people/comments.
I get that it means that you should buy Bitcoin while the price is temporarily low, but what do they mean by it? Do they ...
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What exactly is a "blockchain developer"? [closed]
Hello everyone. This isn't specifically a bitcoin thread but due to recent events I think it is important that people get an understanding of the real Elon Musk as I have no doubt he will try and ...
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What is the difference between key aggregation and signature aggregation?
What is the difference between key aggregation (e.g. MuSig) and signature aggregation?
Many people (including myself) have in the past used these terms interchangeably. Why is it important to be ...
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I need help figuring out what happened with my BFGminer overnight
I'm a newbie to crypto and was experimenting with usb erupters because I was getting into ETH mining with my rig and wanted to test it on something less risky. I ran ck pool for my USB erupter just to ...
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What exactly is sol/s as far as a hash rate is concerned? [closed]
What is sol/s? Is it the same as MH/s? Please don't answer it depends, because that makes no sense!
I have already tried googling this question but to no avail.
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Privacy and Anonymity in Bitcoin
I hope this is not a duplicate.
I have seen lot of people confused between terms "PRIVACY" and "ANONYMITY". Context is Bitcoin transactions and protocol. What does privacy and ...
user103136
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What does PSBT stand for?
What is PSBT? What does it stand for?
bitcoin-qt has menu items "Load PSBT from file…" and "Load PSBT from clipboard…"; the dialog box says the file format is "Partially ...
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When bitcoin forks, how do they decide which fork gets the original name?
Bitcoin has had a number of forks over the years. The biggest one was Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin seems to have won out in this fork, and is much more popular than Bitcoin Cash.
However, how was ...
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Why is coinbase mentioned in a BIP?
I thought that BIPs were similar to Pythons PIPs. So I was confused when I read BIP 34 mentioning coinbase explicitly. The author, Gavin Andresen, seems not to have a connection to coinbase.
I thought ...
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