Blockstack Terminology

Community
#1

I’ve been in a bunch of discussions lately where it’s unclear to people what exactly is Blockstack. I think it’s a combination of (a) overloading of the term “Blockstack” to mean a few different things and (b need to improve current docs that are live (some are outdated and need to be revised).

Here is how I think about some terminology, I’m sure there are people in the community who have a slightly different understanding or wording they use but it’d be good to see what that looks like and converge on more clear definitions.

Some others:

Atlas subsystem = peer network that’s mostly now contained within Stacks blockchain v2

BNS = Blockchain Name System, effectively a smart contract on our blockchain that registers human-readable domain names. (There are plans to port it to a new smart contract language once v2 chain goes live.)

Blockstack Auth = our authentication protocol, where you don’t need passwords to login

Would love to hear what others think!

– Muneeb

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#2

Agreed and simple.

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#3

Stacks and Stacks token is the same for me. (“Stacks” does not sound like a network to me)

I usually refer to the blockchain as the blockstack chain.

What about the concrete blockchain (i.e. bitcoin network)? “Burn chain” requires immediate explanation that it is not that bad as it sounds. Is there a better naming?

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#4

So, gonna throw this out there:

Happy to update based on what we learn. Also, I have written up this to explain the component entities (was reviewed internally)’

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