Glossary

Absolute Amount

A method of measuring amounts of mosaics while taking into account their divisibility. It is figured out by multiplying the relative amount by 10divisibility. For example, if the mosaic has divisibility 2, 10 relative units correspond to 1000 absolute units.

Account

A container for assets, which can only be modified with its private key. An account always has two keys (private and public) and an address. Read more.

A type of transaction used to transfer an account importance score to a proxy account. This is required for all accounts that wish to activate delegated harvesting. Read more.

Account Restrictions

A configurable set of smart rules to block announcing or receiving transactions for a specific account. Read more

Aggregate Bonded (partial transaction)

An Aggregate Transaction is bonded when it requires signatures from multiple participants. Read more.

Aggregate Complete

An Aggregate Transaction is complete when all the required participants have signed it. Read more.

Aggregate Transaction

A type of transaction that merges multiple transactions into one by generating a one-time disposable smart contract. Read more.

Agora

The codename for a decentralized, peer-to-peer marketplace built on Symbol to enable the trading of mosaics.

Alias

The namespace linked to an account or mosaic using Alias transactions. An alias and its linked object can be used interchangeably when sending a transaction. Read more.

AMA

Ask Me Anything. An open questions session.

AML

Anti-Money Laundering.

Andromeda

The codename for a workflow product by NEM that enables users to visually architect and deploy dApps.

APAC

Asia and Pacific region.

API Nodes

Nodes responsible for storing data in a readable form in MongoDB. They are also responsible for collecting the cosignatures of aggregated bonded transactions.

APR

Annual Percentage Rate.

Arbitrage

When a trader purchases an asset in one place and sells it in another place to profit from a deviation in natural prices between markets.

Automated Delegated Harvester Detection

The automatic process by which Symbol servers allows accounts to register as delegated harvesters via special transfer messages.

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.

Catapult

The original project alias for NEM 2.0 - later labeled as Symbol.

CBDC

Central Bank Digital Currency.

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. Read more.

CMC

Coin Market Cap. A web page.

Cosignatories

Accounts that act as account managers to multisig accounts. Cosignatories need to sign multisig account transactions before they can be announced to the network.

Cosign

The act providing a signature to approve a transaction.

Cross Chain Swap

A built-in feature of Symbol which enables the trading of tokens across different blockchains without using an intermediary party (e.g. an exchange service). Read more.

CSD

Central Securities Deposit.

DAO

Decentralized Autonomous Organization.

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.

Deadline

A time window for a transaction to be accepted before it reaches its expiration. The transaction is eliminated when the deadline is reached and all the nodes reject the transaction. Read more.

DeFi

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

Delegated Harvesting

A method of harvesting that allows users to receive rewards without having to run a node locally by delegating their importance scores to a brand new proxy account. Read more.

DEX

Decentralized Exchange.

DID

Decentralized ID.

Divisibility

The property of mosaics that enable fractional amounts. The number of divisibility refers to the decimal place to which the mosaic can be divided.

DTC

Direct To Consumer, i.e. mass market.

Duration

Length of time measured in blocks. Each block on the Symbol blockchain takes about 30 seconds to harvest.

E2E

End-To-End.

Effective Fee

The fee to be paid for a transaction. Calculated by reading the fee multiplier from the block in which the transaction got confirmed and multiplying it by the size of the transaction.

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, ERC-1155).

ETH

Ethereum.

EVM

Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Fee Multiplier

A multiplier used to calculate the effective fee of each transaction contained within a block.

FFT

Fast Fourier Transform.

Flashbots

A research and development organization working on mitigating the negative effects of MEV extraction techniques.

Frontrunning

In context of cryptocurrencies, Trying to include your transaction in front of some other transaction. This is more important in case of DeFi markets, where gains can be made from front-running.

Global Restriction

Network-wide rules that determine whether accounts will be able to send or receive a specific mosaic (with Mosaic Restrictions enabled).

Harvester

The account that harvests a block. The account is rewarded with the transaction fees added in the block and the inflation tokens generated.

Harvesting Beneficiary

An account determined by the node operator that shares a portion of the block rewards.

Harvesting

The process of creating new blocks on the Symbol blockchain. Read more.

Hash Lock Transaction

A type of transaction which locks funds for a certain amount of blocks. This transaction is required before announcing an Aggregate Bonded Transaction. When the associated Aggregate Transaction is complete, the locked funds are returned to the original account. Read more.

HTLC

Hashed Time Lock Contract. A protocol which creates a trustless environment for the decentralized exchange of assets. It guarantees that a swap will take place if all the participants agree. On the other hand, if some of them decide not to conclude the process, each participant will receive their locked funds back.

Hermes

Messenger of the Gods. Codename for Symbol’s next wallet project.

ICO

Initial Coin Offering.

Importance Score

A value calculated by the PoS+ algorithm based on three factors that determine the probability that an account has to harvest a block.

Inflation

Network configured increase in currency supply per block. The mosaics created due to inflation are included in the block reward. Read more.

IP

Intellectual Property.

IRS

Internal Revenue Service. Who you pay your taxes to if you live in the US.

IVC

Incrementally Verifiable Computations.

Kairos

From Ancient Greek: “The right, critical, or opportune moment”. The codename for a collectible card game, built on top of Symbol.

KYV

Know Your Customer.

LATAM

Latin America (Central and South America).

Local Harvesting

A method of harvesting executed by running a local node.

M&A

Mergers & Acquisitions (NOT a chocolate candy).

Maximum Fee

The maximum fee allowed by the sender to be paid for this transaction to be confirmed in a block.

Merkle Tree

A structure of nodes labeled by hashes. It is a data validation technique used by Symbol to store large data sets associated with a block that cannot be retrieved directly from the block header. It allows light clients to verify if an element (e.g. transaction, receipt statement) exists without demanding the entire ledger history.

Messaging

The ability to attach text strings to transactions.

Metadata

Additional information that can be attached to accounts, mosaics, or namespaces. Read more.

MEV

Miner-Extractable Value - process of reorganising transactions inside a block by miners, to gain something (might be covered by secret contract).

Minimum Approval

Number of cosignatories required for the multisignature account to execute a transaction.

Minimum Removal

Number of cosignatories required to remove a cosignatory from a multisignature account.

Mosaic Restriction

A feature that allows mosaic creators to control which accounts can transact with the asset. It only affects mosaics with the restrictable property enabled explicitly at the moment of creation. Read more.

Mosaic

A representation of any kind of asset on Symbol (fungible or non-fungible). Read more.

Multi-level Multisignature Account

An advanced built-in feature of Symbol that allows multisignature accounts to be cosigners for other multisignature accounts, creating multiple layers of cosignatories. Multi-level multisignature accounts add “AND/OR” logic to multi-signature transactions.

Multisignature (Multisig) Account

Accounts that require additional signatures (from cosignatories) to initiate actions/transfers. Read more.

Namespaces

Unique domain spaces on the Symbol blockchain which can be linked to Symbol accounts or mosaics. Functions similarly to internet domains. Read more.

NAM

North America.

Nanowallet

Desktop NIS1 wallet created by the NEM Foundation.

NEM

The New Economy Movement.

Network Fee Sink

An account defined by the network operator that will receive a percentage of the harvesting rewards.

NFT

A non-fungible token - a way to represent anything as an Ethereum-based asset.

NGL

NEM Group Limited.

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.

Node Banning

The act by which the Symbol network will prevent communication with a malicious remote node and reject incoming connections from it.

Node Reputation

A measure of trust that the Symbol network determines for each specific node. The network’s trust for a node increases with each successful interaction, and decreases for each failed attempt of communication.

NODE_URL

The URL of the node you want to use to access the network. All nodes should return the same information so it is not critical which one you use.

Use the Statistics Service (or the Testnet Statistics Service) to retrieve a list of nodes, choose one and use its restGatewayUrl as your NODE_URL (Including the port number).

NSL

NEM Software Limited.

Off-chain

Realm outside of the blockchain. Off-chain activity does not directly reflect on the blockchain.

Optimistic Rollups

An Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution. Optimistic Rollups.

PDHU

Persistent Delegated Harvesting Unlocking. A feature that enables delegated harvesters to preserve their status despite connectivity problems of nodes. With PDHU, if a node experiences turbulence and reboots, the existing delegated harvesters will automatically reconnect when the node is back online.

Peer Nodes

Nodes that facilitate the blockchain process by verifying transactions and blocks, running the consensus algorithm, creating new blocks, and propagating the changes through the network.

Perseus

The codename for a end-to-end simulation platform by NEM that allows backtesting of network upgrades. Will launch with Symbol support but other blockchains can be added.

PoC

Proof of Concept (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.

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 scores. Read more.

PoW

Proof of Work. A consensus protocol.

Private Key

Cryptographic key that gives ultimate control over an account and its assets, and must thus be kept secret. It is paired with the public key in the key pair system.

Public Key

The public identifier of the key pair, which can be disseminated widely. It is used to prove that a transaction was signed with the paired private key. The public key is cryptographically derived from the private key.

Receipt

Record of proof for every hidden change on the blockchain. The collection of receipts are hashed into a merkle tree and linked to a block. Read more.

Reference Mosaic

A mosaic selected by the mosaic creator to define mosaic restrictions that depend directly on the selected mosaic’s global restrictions.

Relative Amount

A method of measuring amounts of mosaics without accounting for their divisibility. It is figured out by multiplying the absolute amount by 10divisibility. For example, if the mosaic has divisibility 2, 10 relative units correspond to 1000 absolute units.

Rental Fee

Fees required to register a namespace or extend its duration. The default namespace rental fees are configurable per network, but the network dynamically adjusts the namespace rental fees over time.

Rollback

The act of undoing a block(s) that was previously confirmed.

Rug Pull

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

Sandwitch

A type of front-running technique that’s popular in DeFi. To make a sandwich, you find a pending transaction in the network and then try to surround the network by placing one order just before the transaction (front-running) and one order just after it (back-running).

SDK

Software Development Kit. A Software library used to simplify creating applications for a given platform. Read more about Symbol’s SDK.

Secret Lock Transaction

A type of transaction between two accounts where the mosaics remain locked until the recipient presents a valid SecretProofTransaction. Otherwise, the funds are returned to the sender. Read SecretLockTransaction.

Secret Proof Transaction

A type of transaction through which the recipient of a SecretLockTransaction provides proof and unlocks the mosaics. Read SecretLockTransaction.

Sharding

An Ethereum scaling solution. Sharding.

Spam Throttle

A feature which provides Symbol network protection against being spammed with lots of unconfirmed transactions.

Subnamespaces

A unique domain on the Symbol blockchain that is a part of a larger domain under the namespace hierarchy. Subnamespaces can only exist in conjunction with a root namespace.

SXDH

Symmetric External Diffie-Hellman.

Symbol Extensions

Plugins that can be added to the Symbol’s protocol to extend its capabilities. Allows developers to introduce different ways to alter the chain’s state via transactions without modifying the core engine or disrupting other features. Read more.

TLC

Tender Loving Care.

TLS

Security protocol used to encrypting communication between peers on the Symbol blockchain.

Token

A representation of a digital asset.

TPS

Transactions Per Second.

Transaction Plugins

Set of plugins that determine the kinds of transactions the network supports.

Transfer Transaction

The most basic transaction used to send mosaics and messages between two accounts. Read more.

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 you can access remotely and treat as if it was your own physical machine.

VRF

VRF stands for verifiable random function. All potential harvesting accounts must link to a second public key by announcing a VrfKeyLinkTransaction. The key linked is then used to randomize block production and leader/participant selection.

XEM

NEM’s NIS1 blockchain native currency.

XYM

The native currency of the Symbol blockchain.