Cardano Glossary

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42 terms

a0Advanced
The protocol parameter that controls how much a stake pool operator's pledge boosts that pool's rewards.Consensus & Staking
Active Slot CoefficientAdvanced
The protocol parameter that controls the probability a slot is assigned an elected block-producer. On mainnet it is currently 0.05.Consensus & Staking
Adaptive CorruptionAdvanced
An adversary that picks which validators to attack on the fly, after seeing who has been elected to produce upcoming blocks.Consensus & Staking
Blockperf
An open-source tool stake pool operators use to measure how quickly their nodes receive and forward newly produced blocks.Consensus & Staking
Bribery AttackAdvanced
An external attacker pays validators to deviate from the protocol, for example by signing conflicting blocks or handing over dormant keys.Consensus & Staking
Controlled Stake
The total ada associated with a stake pool, combining operator pledge and all delegations.Consensus & Staking
d parameterAdvanced
The Shelley-era protocol parameter that controlled the share of blocks produced by federated genesis nodes versus community stake pools.Consensus & Staking
DelegationBeginner
The process of assigning your stake to a stake pool without transferring your ada.Consensus & Staking
EpochBeginner
A period of five days in the Cardano network during which stake distribution is fixed and rewards are calculated.Consensus & Staking
Genesis Keys
The seven cryptographic keys created at Cardano's launch that signed every block during the federated Byron era and gradually yielded block production through Shelley.Consensus & Staking
Grinding AttackAdvanced
An attack on the randomness used to pick proof-of-stake block leaders, where the adversary tries to bias the lottery in its own favour.Consensus & Staking
ISPO
A fundraising method where supporters delegate ada to a designated stake pool and receive the project's tokens in lieu of staking rewards; participants keep custody of their ada throughout.Consensus & Staking
k parameterAdvanced
The protocol parameter that sets the target number of saturated stake pools for healthy decentralization.Consensus & Staking
KESAdvanced
Key Evolving Signatures. Block-signing keys that move forward in time to limit the damage of a key compromise.Consensus & Staking
Leios
A proposed Ouroboros upgrade that aims to dramatically raise Cardano throughput by decoupling transaction diffusion from leader-driven block production.Consensus & Staking
Live Stake
The total ada currently delegated to a stake pool right now, before any epoch boundary snapshot.Consensus & Staking
Long-Range AttackAdvanced
An attack that tries to rewrite long stretches of blockchain history by building a competing chain from far back in the past.Consensus & Staking
Minimum Pool Cost
The protocol parameter that sets the floor on the fixed cost a stake pool can declare per epoch, currently 170 ada on mainnet.Consensus & Staking
Monetary Expansion Rate
The protocol parameter (often called ρ) that controls what fraction of the remaining ada reserve is released into the reward pot each epoch.Consensus & Staking
Nothing-at-StakeAdvanced
The risk that proof-of-stake validators sign every competing fork at once because doing so costs them nothing.Consensus & Staking
Operational Certificate
The certificate a stake pool operator signs to authorise a KES key to produce blocks on the pool's behalf.Consensus & Staking
Ouroboros
The family of proof-of-stake consensus protocols that power Cardano, designed with formal security proofs against the known attack catalogue against PoS chains.Consensus & Staking
PipeliningAdvanced
A protocol optimization that lets a newly produced block start propagating across the network before validation completes.Consensus & Staking
Pledge
The amount of ada a stake pool operator personally commits to their own pool.Consensus & Staking
Pool Saturation
The threshold past which extra delegation to a stake pool stops increasing rewards; a built-in incentive to spread stake across many pools rather than concentrate it in a few.Consensus & Staking
Posterior CorruptionAdvanced
An attack where the adversary buys or steals signing keys from people who held large stake in the past but no longer do.Consensus & Staking
Proof of StakeBeginner
A consensus mechanism where validators are selected to create blocks based on the amount of cryptocurrency they hold and stake (commit) to the network.Consensus & Staking
Proof of Work
A consensus mechanism where miners compete to solve computational puzzles to create blocks.Consensus & Staking
Proof-of-Stake AttacksAdvanced
The set of known attack categories against proof-of-stake blockchains and how Cardano's Ouroboros family defends against each.Consensus & Staking
RewardsBeginner
Ada earned by delegators and stake pool operators for participating in the network.Consensus & Staking
SlotBeginner
Each slot represents an opportunity for a block to be produced by an elected slot leader.Consensus & Staking
Slot Leader
The stake pool selected by Ouroboros to produce a block in a given time slot.Consensus & Staking
SMASH
An off-chain service that aggregates stake pool metadata (name, ticker, homepage) for wallets and explorers to display; delisting from a SMASH only changes how a pool appears in apps, not its ability to produce blocks.Consensus & Staking
Stake Majority AttackAdvanced
An attack where a single party controlling more than half of the staked ada can rewrite recent history, censor transactions, or double-spend.Consensus & Staking
Stake PoolBeginner
A server node that participates in the Cardano network by validating transactions and producing blocks.Consensus & Staking
Stake Pool Deposit
The refundable amount of ada locked when registering a new stake pool, currently 500 ada on mainnet; returned in full when the pool retires.Consensus & Staking
Stake Snapshot
A frozen capture of every account's delegation taken at an epoch boundary; what the protocol actually uses to elect block leaders and pay rewards.Consensus & Staking
Stake-Bleeding AttackAdvanced
A long-range attack in which a minority adversary slowly drains stake from the honest chain onto its private chain by copying transactions and collecting their fees.Consensus & Staking
StakingBeginner
A general term for committing tokens to a proof-of-stake network. On Cardano the everyday equivalent is delegation, which is technically distinct: your ada never leaves your wallet, and there is no slashing.Consensus & Staking
Sybil AttackAdvanced
An attack in which one entity creates many fake identities to gain disproportionate influence over a network.Consensus & Staking
Treasury Cut
The protocol parameter (often called τ) that decides what fraction of each epoch's reward pot is moved to the on-chain treasury before the remainder is paid to stake pools and delegators.Consensus & Staking
VRFAdvanced
A cryptographic function that produces a verifiably random output; Cardano uses it inside Ouroboros as a private per-slot lottery, letting each pool check whether it won the right to produce a block, fairly and unpredictably.Consensus & Staking