DAO

The DAO (stylized Đ) was a digital decentralized autonomous organization, and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. It launched in April 2016 after a crowdfunding campaign. By September 2016, it was delisted and had, in effect, become defunct. The DAO had an objective to provide a new decentralized business model for organizing both commercial and non-profit enterprises. It was instantiated on the Ethereum blockchain, and had no conventional management structure or board of directors. The code of the DAO is open-source. The DAO was stateless, and not tied to any particular nation state.

dApp

A decentralized application (DApp, dApp, Dapp, or dapp) is a computer application that runs on a distributed computing system. DApps have been popularized by distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as the Ethereum Blockchain, where DApps are often referred to as smart contracts.

Decentralization

Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Concepts of decentralization have been applied to group dynamics and management science in private businesses and organizations, political science, law and public administration, economics, money and technology.

Decentralized Application (dApp)

A decentralized application (DApp, dApp, Dapp, or dapp) is a computer application that runs on a distributed computing system. DApps have been popularized by distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as the Ethereum Blockchain, where DApps are often referred to as smart contracts.

Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are a type of cryptocurrency exchange which allows for direct peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions to take place online securely and without the need for an intermediary. In transactions made through decentralized exchanges, the typical third party entities which would normally oversee the security and transfer of assets (e.g. banks, stockbrokers, online payment gateways, government institutions, etc.) are substituted for a blockchain or distributed ledger.

Deflation

In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0% (a negative inflation rate). Inflation reduces the value of currency over time, but sudden deflation increases it. This allows more goods and services to be bought than before with the same amount of currency.

Deposit

A deposit is the act of placing cash (or cash equivalent) with some entity, most commonly with a financial institution, such as a bank. The deposit is a credit for the party (individual or organization) who placed it, and it may be taken back (withdrawn) in accordance with the terms agreed at time of deposit, transferred to some other party, or used for a purchase at a later date.

Deterministic Wallet

A deterministic wallet is a system of deriving keys from a single starting point known as a seed. The seed allows a user to easily back up and restore a wallet without needing any other information and can in some cases allow the creation of public addresses without the knowledge of the private key. Seeds are typically serialized into human-readable words in a Seed phrase.

Difficulty

Difficulty is a value used to show how hard is it to find a hash that will be lower than target defined by system. The Bitcoin network has a global block difficulty. Valid blocks must have a hash below this target. Mining pools also have a pool-specific share difficulty setting a lower limit for shares.

Digital Asset

A digital asset is anything that exists in a digital format and comes with the right to use. Data that do not possess that right are not considered assets. Digital assets include but are not exclusive to: digital documents, audible content, motion picture, and other relevant digital data that are currently in circulation or are, or will be stored on digital appliances such as: personal computers, laptops, portable media players, tablets, data storage devices, telecommunication devices, and any and all apparatuses which are, or will be in existence once technology progresses to accommodate for the conception of new modalities which would be able to carry digital assets; notwithstanding the proprietorship of the physical device onto which the digital asset is located.