Blockchain-Terminologies

நம்Chain - Open Initiative Research Lab

Blockchain-Terminologies - A

• Authorization is a security mechanism through which a program, service, application, user or group of users are granted certain privileges to access computer or network resources.

• Authentication is the process of proving or validating an assertion mainly with identity of a user or a process. Password (& username), One Time Pin (OTP) and Biometrics are the most common authentication methods.

• Availability is one of the three objectives of Information Security - CIA Model. Availability is an assurance that the data, services, System hardwares or Network resources are accessible whenever needed by authorized users or parties. Backup is the main mitigation followed to ensure Availability. Other methods include Disaster recovery, Redundancy, Failover, Environmental controls, Virtualization and Server clustering.

• Altcoin is Alternative coins (Cryptocurrency) to Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies created after Bitcoin’s success, mainly forked from Bitcoin with minor uninteresting changes are called Altcoin. Litecoin and Dogecoin are examples of Altcoins.

• Address is the value identifying an account in the Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Network. The address is generally computed from hash value of the public key. Bitcoin Address is Base58Check encoded value of Double Hash of Public Key. It is 26-35 alphanumeric long. SHA-256 Hash is used.

• Account represents an entity participating in a blockchain transaction. An account is identified by its address and holds a private key, Cryptocurrencies, Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts.

• ABI - An Application Binary Interface (ABI) defines a method for accessing data structures and computational routines in machine code, between two binary programs. It is low-level, hardware-dependent format.

• ASIC - An Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) is a special circuit solely designed for a particular purpose. ASIC Miners are designed for the purpose of mining a specific Cryptocurrency. Antminer S9 with a hash power of 14.0TH/s is a Bitcoin ASIC Miner.