Welcome to Hard Fork Basics, a collection of tips, tricks, guides, and advice to keep you up to date in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency can be a daunting place sometimes and the swathes of jargon, specialist terminology, and acronyms don’t really help matters. Sometimes it feels like complex terms are used just to confuse people. But don’t worry, Hard Fork has got your back.
Below you’ll find a list of industry acronyms and what they stand for. We’re steadily building up explainers of all these terms too, so in some cases there might be a deeper dive on what the terms mean. Be sure to check back, as we’ll be adding to this list as new terms are invented.
General blockchain terms
PoW – Proof of Work
PoS – Proof of Stake
DPoS – Delegated Proof of Stake
PoA – Proof of Authority
BFT – Byzantine Fault Tolerance
DAG – Directed Acyclic Graph
SC – Smart Contract
EVM – Ethereum Virtual Machine
ERC – Ethereum Request for Comments, it’s the preceding acronym for Ethereum based tokens like the ERC20 standard.
DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization
DAPP – Decentralized Application
SegWit – Segregated Witness
SoV – Store of value
MoE – Medium of Exchange
UoA – Unit of Account
Hardware
CPU – Central Processing Unit
GPU – Graphics Processing Unit, often used in reference to video cards
ASIC – Application Specific Integrated Circuit
Financial terms
ETF/ETP – Exchange Traded Fund or Exchange Traded Product
OTC – Over the Counter
CEX – Centralized Exchange
DEX – Decentralized Exchange
PnD – Pump-and-Dump
ICO – Initial Coin Offering
ITO – Initial Token Offering
STO – Securities Token Offering
MCAP – Market Capitalization
FIAT – Conventional government issued currency, like the Pound Sterling, US Dollar or the Euro.
MEME culture
HODL – Meme that followed from a simple mistype of hold.
FOMO – Fear of Missing Out
BTFD – Buy The Fucking Dip
DYOR – Do Your Own Research
FUD – Fear Uncertainty Doubt
BUIDL – A misspelling of the word “build.” Often used when telling the world you’re “trying to buidl the future.”
Regulatory bodies
SEC – Securities and Exchange Commission
FTC – Federal Trade Commission
CFTC – Commodity Futures Trading Commission
FDIC – Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
DOJ – Department of Justice
Miscellaneous terms
SATS – Satoshis. A Satoshi is the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin, it’s a hundreth of a millionth, or 0.00000001 BTC.
Tx – Transaction
TxID – Transaction Identification
TPS – Transactions Per Second
ZK – Zero Knowledge
P2P – Peer to Peer
ALT – Alternative Cryptocurrency, often used as a prefix to Altcoin
WP – Whitepaper
2FA – Two Factor Authentication
DDoS – Distributed Denial of Service
IPFS – Interplanetary Files System
PKI – Public Key Infrastructure
NONCE – Number Used Only Once
HW – Hardware Wallet
Well there you have it, even if you’re still unclear on what some of these terms actually mean, at least you know what they stand for. Hopefully it’ll help keep your research on track.
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