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Crypto Glossary

The Crypto Glossary is a plain-language dictionary of the blockchain terms used across the SoapBox ecosystem and crypto in general. It is part of the Library's Glossaries section. Terms that have their own article are linked.

A

• Address — your public account identifier on a chain; where coins are sent. Derived from a public key.
• Airdrop — free distribution of a token to a set of accounts (e.g. to holders of another coin).
• AMM (Automated Market Maker) — a smart contract that lets people swap tokens against a pooled reserve instead of an order book. KULA's KulaSwap is an AMM.
• APIS — the ecosystem's "pay gas with tokens" coin, minted from staked MELEK worker shares.
• ASIC — specialized mining hardware built for one algorithm; much faster than CPUs/GPUs.

B

• Block — a batch of transactions added to the chain. MELEK adds one every 4 seconds.
• Block reward — new coins paid to whoever produces a block (a miner or witness).
• Blockchain — an append-only ledger agreed on by many independent computers, with no single owner.
• Bridge — a system that moves value between two chains by locking it on one and minting a wrapped copy on the other.
• Burn — permanently destroying tokens (sending them where they can't be spent), often to reduce supply or mint another token.

C

• CDP (Collateralized Debt Position) — lock collateral to borrow against it, over-collateralized and liquidatable. KULA uses this for its stable mechanism.
• Chain ID — a unique id that stops a transaction on one chain from replaying on another.
• Cloning — copying open-source chain or contract code to launch your own.
• Cold storage — keeping keys offline, disconnected from the internet, for safety.
• Consensus — how a chain's computers agree on the one true history (e.g. PoW, DPoS, PoS).
• Curation — voting on content; on MELEK curators earn a share of the reward for backing good posts.

D

• DAG — a ~1 GB dataset an Etchash miner builds in memory before it can mine.
• DAO — Decentralized Autonomous Organization; on-chain governance by token-holders.
• dApp — a decentralized app: a smart contract plus a web front-end.
• DeFi — Decentralized Finance: swaps, lending, and stable mechanisms run by contracts, not banks. KULA is the ecosystem's DeFi layer.
• Delegation — lending your stake or vote-weight to another account without giving up ownership.
• DEX — a Decentralized Exchange; trades run on-chain via an AMM or order book.
• Difficulty — how hard the mining puzzle is; auto-adjusts to keep block times steady.
• DPoS — token-holders vote for witnesses who take turns producing blocks. How MELEK agrees.

E

• ERC-20 — the standard interface for a fungible token on Ethereum; the basis of PRC-20, TRC-20, BEP-20. See token standards.
• EVM — the Ethereum Virtual Machine; the runtime EVM chains (including PRANA) share, so the same tools work everywhere.

F

• Fair launch — no premine, no presale, no insider allocation; supply starts at zero and is earned. Both MELEK and PRANA launch this way.
• Faucet — a tap that hands out small amounts of a (usually test) coin to new users.
• Forking — splitting or re-launching a chain by changing its rules or copying its code.

G

• Gas — the fee paid to run a transaction or contract on an EVM chain.
• Genesis block — block zero; the first block, which sets the chain's starting state and often carries an inscription.
• Graphene — the DPoS blockchain framework behind Steem, Hive, Blurt, and MELEK.

H

• Halving — a scheduled cut (usually by half) of the block reward, making a coin more scarce over time.
• Hard fork — a non-backward-compatible rule change that can split a chain in two. See Forking.
• Hash — a fixed-length fingerprint of any data; the core of mining and chain ids.
• Hashrate — how many hashes per second a miner or network computes.
• Hive-Engine — a layer-2 on Hive for community "side tokens" (SCOT). The model behind ecosystem side-tokens like VKBT/CURE.

L

• Liquidity — how easily an asset can be traded without moving its price.
• Liquidity pool — the pooled reserves an AMM trades against; providers earn fees.

M

• Mainnet — the real, live chain (as opposed to a testnet).
• Mempool — the waiting room of unconfirmed transactions before they're put in a block.
• Mining — earning block rewards by solving PoW puzzles. PRANA is mined; MELEK is not.
• Minting — creating new tokens (the opposite of burn).

N

• NFT — a non-fungible token (ERC-721/1155): a unique on-chain item.
• Node — a computer running the chain software, keeping a copy of the ledger.
• Nonce — the changing number a miner tries over and over to find a valid block.

O

• Oracle — a service that brings off-chain data (like prices) onto a chain for contracts to use.

P

• Pool (mining) — miners combining hashrate and splitting rewards. See the pool.
• PoS (Proof of Stake) — consensus where validators stake capital to produce blocks (e.g. today's Ethereum).
• PoW (Proof of Work) — consensus secured by Mining hashpower (Bitcoin, PRANA).
• PRC-20 — an ERC-20 token on PRANA; same standard, our chain. KULA and wrapped tokens are PRC-20s.
• Premine — coins created for insiders before public launch. A fair launch has none.
• Private key — the secret that controls an account; never share it. See seed phrase.
• Proof of Brain — the idea that up/curation-votes reward good content; the core of Graphene social chains.
• Public key — the shareable half of a keypair; your address derives from it.

R

• RandomX — a CPU-friendly, ASIC-resistant mining algorithm (Monero, the pool's CPU side).
• REN — the ecosystem's on-chain naming system (e.g. yourname.melek). See REN.
• RPC — the endpoint apps and wallets call to read a chain or broadcast transactions.

S

• SCOT — "Smart Contracts on Token": Hive-Engine's engine for community token reward pools.
• Seed phrase — the 12–24 words that back up a wallet's private keys. Lose it and you lose the funds; leak it and someone takes them.
• Smart contract — code that runs on-chain and enforces its own rules (tokens, DEXes, CDPs are all contracts).
• Soft fork — a backward-compatible rule change (does not split the chain). See Forking.
• Stablecoin — a token designed to hold a steady value (often ~$1); KULA's CDP mints the ecosystem's stable.
• Staking — locking a coin to earn rewards and/or gain vote-weight.
• Stratum — the protocol a miner uses to talk to a pool.

T

• Testnet — a practice chain with valueless coins for testing before mainnet.
• Token — a coin defined by a contract on top of a chain (as opposed to the chain's native coin).
• TRC-20 — the ERC-20 equivalent on TRON.

W

• Wallet — software that holds your keys and lets you send, receive, and sign. The ecosystem's is Akasha.
• Witness — an elected block-producer on a DPoS chain. Hathor is MELEK's founding (AI) witness.
• Wrapped token — a token on one chain that mirrors value locked on another (e.g. wMELEK, wVKBT on PRANA).

Y

• Yield / Yield farming — earning returns by providing liquidity or staking in DeFi (with real risk; not free money).

See also: Glossaries · Forking · Cloning · Mining · MELEK · PRANA · KULA · Witness School