Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Dictionary

Cold Storage

Cold storage refers to storing cryptocurrency on a place where the private key cannot be accessed via the internet. This can be done on a hardware wallet, paper wallet or software wallet in an offline environment.

Airdrop

An airdrop is a way to distribute coins. End users can generally get coins for free or in exchange for a small task, such as subscribing to a newsletter, sending a tweet or inviting other people via a personal affiliate link.  

Blockchain

Blockchain is most simply defined as a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that records the provenance of a digital asset.

Block Reward

The block reward is the payment that is offered to the node that is securing the blockchain. In the case of Bitcoin, which is has a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, these would be the miners. The payment is in the form of the native cryptocurrency of that blockchain. The amount is a predetermined reward per block, but often that is supplemented with the fees that are paid for the transactions that block contains. For Bitcoin the current block rewards are cut in half every four years. This is called the ‘halvening’.

Block explorer

A block explorer is an online service to track blockchain transactions. It usually is a website where you can see all the new blocks that are being created. You can also search for transactions and wallet addresses. The best-known block explorers are blockchain.info for Bitcoin and etherscan.io for Ethereum.

Smart Contract

A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol respectively, which is intended to automatically execute, control or document respectively legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract, of an agreement or of a negotiation.