FAQ and Blockchain Definitions

Our Blockchain Solutions are here to power your business to create the next generation of digital experiences and to drive positive change by solving real-world problems.

Frequently Asked Questions

Next generation Services and Solutions are being used today by companies, governments, academia, and partners to redefine services and experiences that empower users by giving them the benefits that blockchain technology offers and increasing value over the long-term.

When is the ABT Token Swap?

Token Swap is live and available for anyone to use and includes bidirectional swap capabilities to support both the native ABT Token and ERC20 token.

Where Can I Buy ABT?

We aren't able to make any recommendations on where to buy ABT. We suggest just performing a search online for available exchanges.

Who is ArcBlock?

ArcBlock is an end-to-end blockchain application and decentralized identity platform that makes it easy to build, run and use applications.

What is the ArcBlock Blockchain Platform SDK?

Previously known as Forge, the ArcBlock Blockchain Platform SDK gives developers everything they need to build, run and use decentralized applications.

Where can I get the latest news and updates?

Simply visit https://www.arcblock.io to see the lastest news and updates, or join our community forum using your DID Wallet.

What is Decentralized Identity?

Decentralized Identity replaces identifiers such as user names and passwords with unique IDs that are self-owned, indepedent and use blockchain to protect privacy.

Where can I get the DID Wallet?

Simply visit DID Wallet to download and setup your fully decentralized DID Wallet to access ArcBlock's apps and services and manage your digital identity.

I'm a developer, what is the easiest way to start?

You can start with our ready-made blocklets or visit the developer documentation to get started.

How much does it cost to start using ArcBlock?

There are no fees to start and when you ready to move your app or service to production you simply subscribe to ArcBlock using your AWS account and launch your app.

What kind of things can I build?

You're only limited by your imagination. ArcBlock makes it easy to build apps, websites, services or customers can use our ready-made industry solutions.

ArcBlock Definitions and Terms

Common terms and phrases used in the ArcBlock blockchain ecosystem.

ArcBlock: A complete blockchain 3.0 product platform to build, deploy and manage DApps easily.

ABT: 1) ArcBlock Token, 2) ArcBlock Technology

ArcBlock Blockchain Application Framework: a set of development tools that give developers the ability to build ABT-ready applications including a software framework, hardware/cloud platform, software package, software frame.

ArcBlock Marketplace SDK: enables developers to easily add support for the ABT marketplace.

ABT Token: 1) the digital balance for the asset, 2) a cryptographic string of numbers and letters that is the representation of real-data. 3) ABT token currently exists on ETH blockchain.

ABT Chain: ArcBlock’s secure transaction ledger database used by all ABT Network participants that record every transaction happening on the ABT Network.

ABT Block Explorer: a tool used to view blocks, addresses, and transactions on the ABT Chain.

ABT Super Block Explorer: multi-cryptocurrency block explorer that supports any token that is ABT compatible (built with ArcBlock Framework), as well as leading cryptocurrencies supported by OCAP including BTC and ETH.

ABT Token Bus(Previously known as Decentralized Pub/Sub API Gateway): a distributed/decentralized messaging system that supports publish/subscribe allowing messages to be broadcast asynchronous event notifications and endpoints that allows the software components to connect to the topic in order to send and receive messages. All “subscribers” receive every message that is broadcast. Token Bus also acts as an API gateway for Blocklets/customer DApps.

Account Management Center: Account Management Center (AMC) is designed to give ArcBlock customers useful and helpful information in a single system. The AMC helps users create, maintain and support their ArcBlock account by consolidating their information into a single system. This could include managing resources, adding/removing users, creating and maintaining security roles/groups, activity and usage, managing Block Servers and more.

Miner: is an individual or business that participates in the ABT Networks incentive driven marketplace.

Component Miner: Component Miners contribute software to the system including Chain Adapters, Blocklets or ready-to-deploy DApps. Each component can also include a smart contract that defines how the miner's fee will be distributed if the component is developed by multiple parties and sets the rules if the code is forked.

Resource Miner: Our Resource Partners contribute compute resources to the ABT Network including server, cloud computing, or self-hosted compute resources to run Block Servers. Resource Miners can use their own resources, share them with selected users, or to anyone who needs compute on the ABT Network.

Operator Miner: Operator Miners support the community by investing in the community. They will work as a service provider to run applications or set up joint efforts with other miners to participate in service operations.

Economy Managers: the role of the ABT “Economy Managers” is to encourage, facilitate and develop relationships with miners and to help them establish their online presence and find people/users with interests and objectives aligned with them, and to engage their services and develop meaningful business relationships that create value.

Block Server: 1) a browser-enabled system that allows users to run and manage decentralized applications and ABT-compliant services including publically available services and/or user-enabled networks. Block Servers are completely decentralized. 2) Block Server supports running ABT Chain (blockchain) on the ArcBlock Framework.

Admin Console: a browser-based console pub that gives users administrative control over their Block Server including the ability to view node status, network performance, node monitoring. Admin Console also includes an integrated block explorer, storage management controls, as well as functionality to connect their node to other users and services, and development tools to support their node/application.

ABT Chain Node: The ABT Chain Node (or ABT blockchain node) is the world's simmplest blockchain nodes software that includes an easy to understand dashboard, integrated developer tools and is available to run on most cloud providers world-wide.

DID Wallet: A decentralized identity and crypto wallet to manage your entire digital life and ABT Tokens. Visit https://www.abtwallet.io to learn more.

ABT Network: 1) ArcBlock Mainnet, 2) ABT Mainnet, 3) ABT NET or main blockchain network for ABT to deliver key functionalities and the ability to transfer ABT tokens between users.

ArcBlock Blockchain Application Framework: 1) the easiest and most flexible way to build blockchains. 2) A full stack development framework that supports most development languages that includes everything needed to build and support a user-created chain. ArcBlock Framework is made up of several parts including a Consensus Engine, DID engine, Storage Engine, ArcBlock Core, APIs and UI/web-enabled tools. ArcBlock Framework is comprised of pluggable user-defined components. https://www.arcblock.io/en/forge-sdk

Chain Adapters: Chain Adapters are chain-specific components that translate the chain state into a unified data format (shadow state)

ArcBlock Framework CLI: easy to use command line interface for ArcBlock Framework

ArcBlock Framework simulator: simulate real use cases and to stress test user created chains

ArcBlock Framework indexer: compile and organize the data for various purposes

ArcBlock Framework benchmark: performance testing

ArcBlock Framework Core (Open Source version): ArcBlock Framework Core includes the basic building blocks to build a user-created blockchain including ArcBlock Framework server (handles ABCI protocol, delivers tx and updates states), PubSub to broadcast the data to the subscribes, RPC (gRPC) server to expose the capabilities of ArcBlock Framework, Consensus Engine to manage the consensus engine and provide consensus RPC and storage engine to manage the storage and provide storage RPC.

ArcBlock Framework SDK: software developer kits that give coders everything they need to build ArcBlock framework-based applications. Available SDKs include Java SDK, Python SDK, Elixir SDK, JS SDK, Android SDK and iOS SDK.

IPFS: InterPlanetary File System. 1) A protocol and network designed to create a content-addressable, peer to peer mem-story and sharing hypermedia in a distributed file system. 2) a distributed file system that attempts to connects all computing devices with the same system of files. Note: file system layer offers interesting properties such as -

  • Websites that are completely distributed
  • Websites that have no origin server
  • Can run entirely on client-side browsers
  • Each file and all the blocks within it are given a unique cryptographic hash
  • Removes duplications across the network and tracks version history for each file
  • Each network node stores only content it is interested in and some indexing information that helps figure out who is storing what.
  • When looking up files, you’re asking the network to find nodes storing the content behind a unique hash.
  • Each file can be found by human-readable names using a decentralized naming system called IPNS

Blockchain Transaction Types (TX):

  • Transfer
  • Exchange
  • Declare
  • Stake (for node, user, asset, app)
  • Vote
  • Createasset / updateasset
  • Account_migrate
  • system_upgrade

DApp(Decentralized App): 1) an application that is run by many users on a decentralized network with trustless protocols. 2) DApps must include Self-sovereign Identity, Self-sovereign data, digital asset exchange without a middle man, open protocols, deployment and governance simplified.

DID: decentralized identities. (https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/) DIDs is a globally unique identifier that is fully under the control of the DID subject, independent from any centralized registry, identity provider or certificate authority.

Decentralized ID: slightly different than self-sovereign. DID is owned completely by the user and there is no central registry, identity provider or certification authority that verifies the validity of the data.

Self-sovereign Identity: concept that users store and control data on their own devices and provide the data when needed to validate.

OCAP(Open Chain Access Protocol): 1) The open chain access protocol is a protocol that provides an abstract layer or middle layer to access underlying blockchains, and enabling applications to utilize different blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more. 2) An abstraction layer that delivers a simple, unified way to “interact” with data from different blockchains.

OCAP Playground: 1) a browser-based tool that using available OCAP APIs to query, search and use blockchain data for their DApps. 2) an interactive console and API service with a GraphQL interface giving developers the ability to create, save and reuse data queries and transmission of data using APIs.

OCAP Playbook: a developer tool to record and share research/blockchain queries, as well as easily save and reuse previously created queries.

GraphQL: GraphQL is a query language for APIs and runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data.

OCAL: 1) Open chain access layer. 2) The applications access blockchains through the generic APIs provided by Open Chain Access Layer which hides the chain-specific details of different chains. The Layer is powered by Chain Adapters behind the scenes.

Blocklet: 1) high-level application protocol using cloud computing/service computing and microservices architecture. Enables the apps to run on any server easily. 2) top-level container for your code, datasources, token and identity services, messaging and business logic for your DApp that can be installed on Block Server or other ABT compliant services.

Blocklet Types:

  • Off-chain Logic
  • Off-Chain and On-Chain
  • Asset and Resource Handling
  • Smart Contracts
  • Oracle

ABT Token Economy: Economic circle where ABT token is used.

TokenEngine: A framework of services and procedures that allow a user to create a user-defined token/cryptocurrency.

Managed Data: execution of architectures, policies, process, practices and procedures that properly manage the full data life-cycle needs.

Framework as a Service: 1) a collection of services that provide the foundation on which a user can rapidly develop an application or system. 2) A service that brings all the tools together in place and developers can use the “framework ecosystem” to create, build or manage apps.

Technical Learning: Developer training sessions, technology reviews, best practices all done through ArcBlock's certified learning series courses.

ArcBlock BOSS: Billing and Operations Support System based on ArcBlock platform and ArcBlock Framework Framework that enables publically verifiable billing and operation support for ABT Network.

DevCon 0: Genesis Developer Conference

Community DAO: community decentralized autonomous organization

Blockchain 3.0: 1) Addresses the issues that have arisen from 1.0 and 2.0 through by delivering improvements through different protocols, techniques, and frameworks, as well as improved scalability, interoperability, adaptability, sustainability, privacy and the ability to achieve instantaneous transactions. 2) a collection of services that improve the delivery of DApps and a focus on incentivizing the ecosystem for self-evolution.

Industry 4.0: current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies including cyber-physical systems, IoT, Cloud computing and cognitive computing that when combined create the smart factory.

RPC: remote procedure call

ABI(Application Blockchain Interface): a set of subroutines, definitions, communication protocols, and tools for building blockchain applications (data structures, routines, object classes, variables, and remote calls) .

Goldorin: A Data Serialization Language interepreter to transform DSL descriptions into Elixir Code.