Glossary

A

Account — An entity with a balance, identified by a 20-byte address starting with 0x. Two kinds exist: externally-owned accounts (EOAs, controlled by private keys) and contract accounts.

B

Base Fee — Per-gas fee burned with every transaction under EIP-1559. Adjusts dynamically based on block fullness.

Block Time — Average interval between Main Chain blocks. Xphere targets 1 second.

C

Chain ID — Numeric identifier used in transaction signatures to prevent replay across networks. Xphere Mainnet: 20250217; Testnet: 1998991.

Committee — The subset of the Council currently producing blocks via PBFT. Rotates each round.

Consensus Node — Synonym for Validator Node on the Main Chain.

Council — The full set of validators registered on the Main Chain. The Committee is sampled from the Council.

D

Dual-Chain Architecture — Xphere's design: a Main Chain (PBFT for finality) plus a Proof Chain (PoW for trust anchoring). See Whitepaper §3.

E

Endpoint Node (XEN) — A node providing JSON-RPC access to the Main Chain. Does not participate in consensus.

EVM — Ethereum Virtual Machine. Xphere implements EVM at the Cancun level.

F

Faucet — Service distributing testnet XP for free. Available at faucet.x-phere.com.

Finality — Point at which a block cannot be reverted. Xphere's PBFT provides instant finality (1 block).

G

Gas — Unit of computational work. Each opcode has a fixed gas cost.

Gwei — 10^9 wei, or 10^-9 XP. Standard unit for gas prices.

H

Hard Fork — Consensus-breaking protocol upgrade. See xpHash Fork.

Hash Rate — Number of hash attempts per second by a miner.

J

JSON-RPC — The remote procedure call interface every Xphere node exposes. See JSON-RPC Reference.

M

Main Chain — The PBFT-consensus chain holding account state and processing transactions.

Mining Node — A node performing xpHash PoW on the Proof Chain to earn block rewards.

N

Nonce — Per-account transaction counter. Prevents replay and orders transactions.

P

PBFT — Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance. The consensus algorithm used on Xphere's Main Chain.

PoW — Proof of Work. Consensus mechanism used on the Proof Chain via xpHash.

Precompile — Built-in contract at a fixed address implementing cryptographic primitives (sha256, ecRecover, etc.).

Priority Fee — Tip paid by users to validators on top of the base fee.

Proof Chain — The PoW chain anchoring Main Chain finality. Secured by miners.

R

RPC — See JSON-RPC.

S

Smart Contract — Program deployed to an account; executes on-chain when called.

T

Testnet — Parallel network for development. Tokens have no monetary value.

TPS — Transactions Per Second. Xphere targets 4,000 TPS sustained throughput.

U

Union Staking — Xphere's staking mechanism that receives 40% of every minted block reward. See Staking.

V

Validator — Operator of a Main Chain consensus node. Currently restricted to Council members.

W

Wallet — Software/hardware managing private keys and signing transactions. See Wallet Setup.

X

XEN — Xphere Endpoint Node binary. See Install Guide.

xpHash — Xphere's PoW algorithm activating at mainnet block 1,740,000. See xpHash Fork.

XP — Native token of the Xphere network. 18 decimals.

Xphere v2.0 — Current version of the protocol, introducing EVM compatibility and dual-chain architecture.