Glossary

AMA

Ask Me Anything. An open questions session.

AML

Anti Money Laundering.

APAC

Asia and Pacific region.

APR

Annual Percentage Rate.

Arbitrage

When a trader purchases an asset in a market and sells it in a different one, to profit from a deviation in prices between markets.

Backrunning

To broadcast transactionA with slightly lower gas (or fees) than an already pending transactionB so that transactionA gets mined right after transactionB in the same block.

BLS

A Boneh–Lynn–Shacham signature is a cryptographic signature scheme which allows a user to verify that a signer is authentic.

BTC

Bitcoin.

CBDC

Central Bank Digital Currency.

CEX

Centralized Exchange, as opposed to Decentralized Exchanges (DEX).

CLI

Command-Line Interface. A Program which is entirely used from a terminal console, using only the keyboard. Symbol has a CLI tool to interact with the blockchain.

CMC

Coin Market Cap. A web page with cryptocurrency information.

CSD

Central Securities Deposit.

DAO

Decentralized Autonomous Organization. An organization whose governance happens completely on a blockchain.

Dapp

Decentralized Application. An application that runs on a blockchain instead of a single computer. The term is slightly abused so, in a more general sense, it also means any application which makes use of a blockchain.

DDH

Decisional Diffie-Hellman.

DD

Due Diligence.

DeFi

Decentralized Finance, as opposed to Traditional Finance (TradFi).

DEX

Decentralized Exchange, as opposed to traditional Centralized Exchanges (CEX).

DoS

Denial of Service. An attack in which a single source floods a server or network with excessive requests, overwhelming its resources and rendering it unable to respond to legitimate traffic.

The most common variant is the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack that involves multiple sources, often using compromised devices without the owners' knowledge.

DTC

Direct To Consumer, i.e. mass market.

E2E

End-To-End.

EMEA

Europe, Middle-East and Africa.

ERC

Ethereum Request for Comment. Commonly utilized to refer to a token standard on the EVM (such as ERC-20, ERC-721, or ERC-1155).

ETH

Ethereum.

EVM

Ethereum Virtual Machine.

FFT

Fast Fourier Transform.

Frontrunning

To broadcast transactionA with slightly higher gas (or fees) than an already pending transactionB so that transactionA gets mined right before transactionB in the same block. This is important in case of DeFi markets, where gains can be made from frontrunning.

Hardware wallet

A device designed to store private keys and produce signatures with them. The keys are stored in an encrypted memory and never leave the device, so hardware wallets are deemed one of the most secure ways to access an account. They typically only provide signing functionality, so they must be paired with a software wallet or application that creates the transactions and announces them.

HTLC

Hashed Time-Lock Contract.

ICO

Initial Coin Offering.

Inflation

A small amount of XYM that is freshly minted with each new block to reward the node that creates it. Inflation began 48 hours after network launch in March 2021, starting at approximately 200 XYM per block. The reward decreases gradually over time following a slow curve, reaching 1 XYM per block after 30 years, and disappearing entirely after 105 years.

IP

Intellectual Property.

IRS

Internal Revenue Service. Who you pay your taxes to if you live in the United States or are an American citizen.

KYC

Know Your Customer. Related to AML.

LATAM

Latin America (Central and South America).

MEV

Miner-Extractable Value, or Maximal-Extractable Value, is the process of reorganizing transactions inside a block by miners, to gain something. Uses Frontrunning, Backrunning, or Sandwich.

NAM

North America.

NEM

The New Economy Movement.

NFT

A non-fungible token, a way to represent individual entities as a blockchain-based asset.

NIS1

The first version of NEM's blockchain node that operates the public mainnet with the native currency XEM. First launched on March 31, 2015.

PoC

Proof of Concept, i.e., a prototype (not a consensus protocol).

PoI

Proof of Importance. The consensus protocol used by NIS1. Similar to PoS but measuring an account's activity besides its stake.

PoS

Proof of Stake. A consensus protocol, used, for example, by Ethereum.

PoS+

Proof-of-Stake Plus. Symbol's consensus mechanism. It is a modified PoS algorithm which considers users' activity in the network in addition to their network stakes. The chance that accounts will have to harvest a block is calculated through their importance score.

PoW

Proof of Work. A consensus protocol, used, for example, by Bitcoin.

Rug Pull

A malicious maneuver where cryptocurrency developers abandon a project and run off with the funds.

Sandwich

A type of MEV technique that is popular in DeFi. To make a sandwich, you find a pending transaction in the network and then try to surround it by placing one order just before the transaction (Frontrunning) and one order just after it (Backrunning).

SDK

Software Development Kit. A Software library used to simplify creating applications for a given platform.

Sharding

An Ethereum scaling solution.

SXDH

Symmetric External Diffie-Hellman.

Sybil Attack

An attack in which a single adversary creates many fake identities or accounts to gain disproportionate influence over a network or consensus process. Common countermeasures include PoW or PoS, which tie influence to scarce resources.

TLC

Tender Loving Care.

TLS

Security protocol used to encrypting communication between peers on a network.

Token

A representation of a digital asset. On Symbol they are called mosaics.

TPS

Transactions Per Second.

TradFi

Traditional Finance, as opposed to Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

USP

Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Selling Point. A characteristic of a product that can be used in advertising to differentiate it from its competitors.

VPS

Virtual Private Server. A virtual machine typically hosted on a data center which can be accessed remotely and treated as if it was a conventional physical machine.

VRF

Verifiable Random Function.

XEM

The native currency of the NIS1 blockchain.

XYM

The native currency of the Symbol blockchain.