Technical
Infrastructure and technical concepts powering blockchain networks.
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Gas Fee
The transaction fee paid to process and validate operations on a blockchain network, compensating validators or miners for computational resources.
Hash
A fixed-length output generated by a cryptographic hash function from any input data. The foundation of blockchain security, creating unique digital fingerprints for data.
Mainnet
Mainnet, short for 'main network,' is the primary, production blockchain network where real transactions occur, actual value is transferred, and smart contracts execute with real economic consequences.
Testnet
A testnet is a parallel blockchain network used by developers to test applications, smart contracts, and protocol upgrades without risking real assets or affecting the main network.
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Bridge Protocol
A protocol enabling asset transfer between different blockchains through locking assets on one chain and minting equivalent wrapped assets on another chain.
Composability
The ability of smart contracts and DeFi protocols to interact and combine seamlessly, enabling complex financial applications built from modular pieces.
Fork
A divergence in a blockchain resulting in two separate chains. Can be intentional (hard fork/soft fork) for upgrades or accidental due to competing blocks.
Gas Fee Market
The dynamic marketplace where users bid for block space by offering gas fees, with prices fluctuating based on network demand and capacity.
Mempool
The memory pool where unconfirmed transactions wait before being included in blocks, visible to all network nodes and creating opportunities for MEV extraction.
Node
A computer that connects to a blockchain network, maintaining a copy of the distributed ledger and validating transactions. The fundamental building blocks of blockchain infrastructure.
Proof of Stake
A consensus mechanism where validators are chosen to create blocks based on the amount of cryptocurrency they stake. Replaces energy-intensive mining with capital investment for blockchain security.
Proof of Work
A consensus mechanism where miners compete to solve computationally intensive puzzles to add new blocks to the blockchain. The foundation of Bitcoin and original Ethereum security.
Sequencer
A centralized or decentralized entity that orders transactions on layer 2 systems, batching them together before posting to layer 1 for efficient settlement.
Smart Contract Wallet
A cryptocurrency wallet implemented as a smart contract rather than a traditional externally-owned account, enabling programmable features like transaction batching, automation, and custom security.
Token Standard
A specification that defines how tokens are created, transferred, and managed on a blockchain, enabling interoperability and ensuring consistent behavior across applications.
Validator
Network participants in Proof of Stake blockchains who stake cryptocurrency to propose and attest to blocks, earning rewards for securing the network.
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Account Abstraction
A framework that allows smart contracts to act as user accounts with programmable features like multi-sig, recovery, and gas sponsorship without protocol changes.
Account Abstraction
An architecture treating user accounts and smart contracts uniformly, enabling accounts to have arbitrary logic instead of requiring ECDSA signatures, supporting features like batched transactions and multi-sig natively.
Block Builder
A specialized entity that constructs optimized blocks by ordering and bundling transactions, bidding to have their blocks proposed by validators.
Data Availability
The guarantee that blockchain data required to verify state transitions is publicly accessible, ensuring that anyone can validate blocks and preventing hidden data attacks.
Data Availability Sampling
A technique where nodes randomly sample small pieces of block data to probabilistically verify that full data is available, enabling scalable block sizes without full data download.
Gas Optimization
Techniques for writing smart contracts that minimize gas consumption, reducing transaction costs for users while maintaining functionality and security.
Intent-Based Architecture
A blockchain design where users specify intents (what they want) rather than transactions (exact steps), allowing solvers to find optimal execution paths.
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value)
The profit sophisticated actors can extract through transaction reordering and inclusion decisions, capturing value that users believe they're getting but is intercepted before execution.
Preconfirmation
A commitment from validators or sequencers to include a transaction in an upcoming block, providing fast certainty before final confirmation.
Proposer-Builder Separation
A blockchain architecture that separates block proposing from block building to mitigate MEV, improve fairness, and enable specialized block builders.
Proto-Danksharding
An Ethereum upgrade (EIP-4844) that introduces blob-carrying transactions to reduce rollup data costs, serving as a stepping stone to full danksharding.
Sharding
A scaling technique dividing blockchain validation into parallel shards, where each shard processes subset of transactions, enabling much higher throughput than single-chain processing.
Slicing
A technique where computation is divided into smaller pieces that can be independently verified or processed, improving scalability and verification efficiency.
SNARK
Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge - cryptographic proofs that are very small and fast to verify, used in blockchain scaling and privacy applications.
STARK
Scalable Transparent Arguments of Knowledge - cryptographic proofs without trusted setup, using only hash functions, but larger than SNARKs.
State Channel
Off-chain payment channels enabling multiple transactions between parties with only opening and closing transactions on-chain, providing instant payments and reduced fees.
Stateless Client
A blockchain client that can verify blocks without storing the entire blockchain state, using cryptographic witnesses to prove state validity.
Zero-Knowledge Proof
A cryptographic proof enabling proving a statement is true without revealing the underlying data or knowledge, enabling privacy and compression in blockchain applications.