A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol respectively, which is intended to automatically execute, control or document respectively legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract, of an agreement or of a negotiation.
Blockchain is most simply defined as a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that records the provenance of a digital asset.
An altcoin is any cryptocurrency or token created after the Bitcoin was developed.
AML is the abbreviation for ‘anti-money laundering’. AML stands for policy and legislation on money laundering. This prevents illegally acquired funds from being converted into a legal variant. Within the crypto world, it is no longer unusual for AML techniques to be used by exchanges and wallets. This term is often used as AML/KYC, where KYC stands for ‘Know your customer’.
An airdrop is a way to distribute coins. End users can generally get coins for free or in exchange for a small task, such as subscribing to a newsletter, sending a tweet or inviting other people via a personal affiliate link.
The block reward is the payment that is offered to the node that is securing the blockchain. In the case of Bitcoin, which is has a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, these would be the miners. The payment is in the form of the native cryptocurrency of that blockchain. The amount is a predetermined reward per block, but often that is supplemented with the fees that are paid for the transactions that block contains. For Bitcoin the current block rewards are cut in half every four years. This is called the ‘halvening’.
