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.