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<section class="glossary-hero section">
<p class="eyebrow">Glossary</p>
<h1>Kaspa glossary</h1>
<p class="lead">The Kaspa terms you'll hit first, defined in a sentence or two and linked into the longer explainers.</p>
<nav class="jump-list" aria-label="Glossary jump links">
<a href="#proof-of-work">PoW</a>
<a href="#utxo">UTXO</a>
<a href="#blockdag">blockDAG</a>
<a href="#ghostdag">GHOSTDAG</a>
<a href="#blue-work">blue work</a>
<a href="#blue-score">blue score</a>
<a href="#daa-score">DAA score</a>
<a href="#sompi">sompi</a>
<a href="#api-key">API key</a>
<a href="#rate-limit">rate limit</a>
<a href="#bps">BPS</a>
<a href="#pruning">pruning</a>
<a href="#toccata">Toccata</a>
<a href="#vprogs">vProgs</a>
<a href="#dagknight">DAGKnight</a>
<a href="#rtd">RTD</a>
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<p class="eyebrow">Core mechanics</p>
<h2>Live-network terms</h2>
<div class="glossary-grid">
<article id="proof-of-work"><h3>Proof of Work</h3><p>Miners spend real computation to propose blocks. Kaspa keeps this Bitcoin-like foundation intact.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#bps">BPS</a>, <a href="#ghostdag">GHOSTDAG</a>, <a href="#dagknight">DAGKnight</a></p></article>
<article id="utxo"><h3>UTXO</h3><p>An unspent transaction output: a spendable coin chunk. Kaspa spends UTXOs; Ethereum edits account balances instead.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#pruning">pruning</a>, <a href="#muhash">MuHash</a>, <a href="#covenant">covenant</a></p></article>
<article id="blockdag"><h3>BlockDAG</h3><p>A graph of blocks where multiple honest blocks can exist in parallel, instead of every block forced into one line immediately.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#ghostdag">GHOSTDAG</a>, <a href="#anticone">anticone</a>, <a href="#mergeset">mergeset</a>, <a href="#selected-parent">selected parent</a></p></article>
<article id="ghostdag"><h3>GHOSTDAG</h3><p>Kaspa's live consensus rule for ordering the blockDAG so parallel work still counts toward consensus.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#blue-red">blue/red blocks</a>, <a href="#blue-work">blue work</a>, <a href="#selected-parent">selected parent</a>, <a href="#anticone">anticone</a></p></article>
<article id="selected-parent"><h3>Selected parent</h3><p>The parent block that defines the main ordering path through the DAG. Not the same thing as Bitcoin's longest chain.</p></article>
<article id="mergeset"><h3>Mergeset</h3><p>The set of past blocks a new block pulls into view: how parallel work gets folded into the ordering.</p></article>
<article id="anticone"><h3>Anticone</h3><p>Blocks that sit in neither a block's past nor its future. Nodes need an anticone rule to order these consistently.</p></article>
<article id="blue-red"><h3>Blue / red blocks</h3><p>GHOSTDAG marks well-connected blocks blue and less-compatible ones red, for ordering and security accounting.</p></article>
<article id="blue-work"><h3>Blue work</h3><p>Accumulated proof-of-work weight carried by blue blocks. It's how Kaspa compares competing DAG histories.</p></article>
<article id="blue-score"><h3>Blue score</h3><p>A blockDAG progress marker built from blue blocks in the selected-parent chain. Explorers and APIs use it for ordering and range queries.</p></article>
<article id="daa-score"><h3>DAA score</h3><p>A Kaspa progress marker nodes and APIs expose. Builders use it for block ranges, timestamp estimates, and lock-time reasoning.</p></article>
<article id="virtual-block"><h3>Virtual block</h3><p>The conceptual current tip nodes use to reason about the present state of the DAG.</p></article>
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</section>
<section class="section">
<p class="eyebrow">Speed and storage</p>
<h2>Scaling terms</h2>
<div class="glossary-grid">
<article id="bps"><h3>BPS</h3><p>Blocks per second. Kaspa runs at 10 BPS in the current era. Throughput and finality are separate claims with their own measurement assumptions.</p></article>
<article id="fast-inclusion"><h3>Fast inclusion</h3><p>A transaction gets into a block quickly.</p></article>
<article id="fast-confirmation"><h3>Fast confirmation</h3><p>Confidence that a transaction won't be reversed rises quickly. Not the same thing as appearing in a block quickly.</p></article>
<article id="finality-depth"><h3>Finality depth</h3><p>The threshold past which old history counts as settled under the protocol's assumptions.</p></article>
<article id="pruning"><h3>Pruning</h3><p>Discarding old block data that ordinary nodes no longer need for current validation.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#archival-node">archival node</a>, <a href="#muhash">MuHash</a>, <a href="#utxo">UTXO</a></p></article>
<article id="archival-node"><h3>Archival node</h3><p>A node that keeps full historical data for explorers, audits, and historical queries.</p></article>
<article id="muhash"><h3>MuHash</h3><p>A compact commitment tool used to verify UTXO-set state and keep pruning safe.</p></article>
<article id="transaction-mass"><h3>Transaction mass</h3><p>Kaspa's measure of a transaction's resource cost.</p></article>
<article id="storage-mass"><h3>Storage mass</h3><p>A cost model that makes UTXO/state growth pay for the burden it puts on the network.</p></article>
<article id="sompi"><h3>Sompi</h3><p>The smallest unit of KAS. One KAS equals 100,000,000 sompi. APIs return amounts as strings so software doesn't lose precision.</p></article>
<article id="hosted-api"><h3>Hosted API</h3><p>An API run by a provider outside your own node or indexer. Fine for quick reads and prototypes; production apps need key handling, rate-limit handling, and a reliability plan.</p></article>
<article id="api-key"><h3>API key</h3><p>A credential sent with hosted API requests, usually in a header like <code>x-api-key</code>. Keep it out of client-side code and public repos.</p></article>
<article id="rate-limit"><h3>Rate limit</h3><p>A provider rule that caps request volume. Apps should read rate-limit headers, cache stable data, batch where possible, and back off on 429 responses.</p></article>
<article id="cursor-pagination"><h3>Cursor pagination</h3><p>Fetching long lists in stable chunks. Address history endpoints use it so apps can walk through many transactions without one huge response.</p></article>
<article id="accepting-block"><h3>Accepting block</h3><p>The block that accepted a transaction into ordered history. Acceptance data is evidence, but apps still need confirmation and reorg-handling rules on top of it.</p></article>
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<p class="eyebrow">Roadmap terms</p>
<h2>App and research terms</h2>
<div class="glossary-grid">
<article id="toccata"><h3>Toccata</h3><p>Kaspa's live hard fork for spend rules, asset rules, ZK proof checks, sequencing commitments, and vProgs groundwork. It activated at DAA score 474,165,565.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#covenant">covenant</a>, <a href="#zk-verification">ZK verification</a>, <a href="#sequencing-commitment">sequencing commitment</a>, <a href="#vprogs">vProgs</a></p></article>
<article id="covenant"><h3>Covenant</h3><p>A rule that limits how a coin or asset can be spent later: the basis for vaults, escrow, and simple app state.</p></article>
<article id="silverscript"><h3>Silverscript</h3><p>A higher-level scripting direction built on Kaspa's covenant and programmable-UTXO path.</p></article>
<article id="zk-verification"><h3>ZK verification</h3><p>Checking a proof that computation was done correctly, without re-running that computation on L1.</p></article>
<article id="sequencing-commitment"><h3>Sequencing commitment</h3><p>Lets an app track the activity lane it actually cares about, instead of forcing every proof to depend on the whole DAG stream.</p></article>
<article id="vprogs"><h3>vProgs</h3><p>Apps that prove their own logic around Kaspa, while L1 stays focused on ordering, commitments, verification, and metadata.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#zk-verification">ZK verification</a>, <a href="#sequencing-commitment">sequencing commitment</a>, <a href="#covenant">covenant</a></p></article>
<article id="dagknight"><h3>DAGKnight</h3><p>A parameterless/adaptive consensus research direction. Not current mainnet behavior.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#ghostdag">GHOSTDAG</a>, <a href="#bps">BPS</a>, <a href="#fast-confirmation">fast confirmation</a></p></article>
<article id="rtd"><h3>RTD</h3><p>Real-Time Decentralization: Hashdag's framing for Kaspa's core edge, Bitcoin-style PoW security and censorship resistance operating in real time. Oracle and TangVM ideas are downstream extensions of this.</p><p class="related-terms">Related: <a href="#proof-of-work">Proof of Work</a>, <a href="#dagknight">DAGKnight</a>, <a href="#fast-confirmation">fast confirmation</a></p></article>
<article id="proof-of-useful-work"><h3>Proof of Useful Work</h3><p>A speculative research direction where mining work might also perform useful computation. Not live Kaspa functionality.</p></article>
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<h2>If you need more context</h2>
<p>The zero-start guide explains why records, keys, transactions, blocks, consensus, mining, staking, and tokens exist in the first place, before any Kaspa-specific term makes sense.</p>
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