web3 lingo! - Scratching the surface with soosh
What is Scratching the Surface with Soosh? Its a new mini project of mine to provide some context to the world of crypto, finance etc in bite sized written format. As the name suggests, everything here is at surface level (i.e. no deep dives or extremely details/heavy datasets), just enough to get your curiosity to tingle~ so you can learn!
Today's topic: Web3 Lingo!
Lets go over some most used terms in web3 that can be weird, different and new to a non crypto native human.
What is a blockchain?
Blockchain is sometimes also referred to as a network. Starting from the top, a blockchain is a chain of blocks.
Each block is basically a short-ish list of transactions, each essentially saying "the owner of account AAA has authorized a transfer of XXX to account BBB".
To ensure that this is actually true (i.e., the true owner of the account has actually authorized that transaction), each account is associated with a public/private pair of cryptographic keys and the transactions are signed with it.
What is a wallet?
A wallet is a crypto ‘account’. There are some wallets that are exclusively linked to specific blockchains but many are infrastructure based. Example: MetaMask is the most popular wallet that is used for all Ethereum based blockchains (Ethereum, Zora Network, Coinbase Base, Optimism, Arbitrum etc). Phantom started as a Solana wallet but now also support Ethereum and Bitcoin.
What is private key?
Private key or private seed is the 12 or 24 word phrase (randomized) that is the holy grail to your wallet. This is the ONLY way you can recover a wallet. If you don’t have this or forget it, everything in the said wallet is lost forever. No customer support, no reset passwords. Also, you should never share your private key with anyone (i know it’s obvi but a clear reminder!)
What is a public key?
Wait private and public - so confusing soosh! Public key is comparable to your email address. People can know this but they can’t use it to log in. This is how transactions are shown on the explorers. This is random string of numbers and letters. Also referred to as your wallet address.
Wait what is an Explorer?
Explorer is the Wikipedia + google + library of the blockchain. All transactions are public on the blockchain and the public key is visible for every single transaction. Yes, EVERYTHING is public.
What is an ENS?
Because the public key is a long string of random numbers and letters, its get complex when you transaction with other applications or users. So ENS - Ethereum Naming Service (similar to a DNS for the tech people) is something you can purchase with your wallet. This makes your wallet address/public key more reasonable. Example, instead of typing 0x1353rhkgst35131xzvgzx5014 (this is random) you can type in SUSHEN.ETH.
I thought crypto was super secret and people do illegal stuff with it because of it?
We this is what media gets it wrong. Crypto is not anonymous but rather pseudo-anonymous. This means people won’t know YOU are interacting with it unless they know your wallet address OR you have a ENS or sort that clearly identifies you. But the cashing out (i.e. when you send crypto to an Exchange, they will require KYC thus making the anonymous a pseudo anonymous.
What are some major blockchains?
The most used blockchains are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Base, Optimism, Optimism.
Until next time on the next scratching the surface with soosh!
*this article is for curiosity only and nothing stated within should be taken as tax and financial advice. DYOR!
Legend:
DYOR - Do Your Own Research