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Glossary

Account​

A central Stellar data structure to hold balances, sign transactions, and issue assets.

See the Accounts section to learn more.

Account ID​

The public key used to create an account. This key persists across different key assignments. It is represented in base32.

Anchor​

The on and off-ramps on the Stellar network that facilitate one-to-one conversion of off-chain representations to and from tokenized assets, for example, digital tokens representing bank deposits.

Read more in the Anchor Encyclopedia entry

Application (app)​

A software program designed for users to carry out a specific task (other than operating the computer itself).

Asset​

Fiat, physical, or other tokens of value that are tracked, held, or transferred by the Stellar distributed network.

See the Assets section to learn more.

Balance​

The amount of a given asset an account holds. Each asset has its own balance and these balances are stored in trustlines for every asset except XLM, which is held directly by the account.

BalanceID​

Parameter required when claiming a newly created entry via the Claim claimable balance operation. See ClaimableBalanceID.

Base fee​

The fee you’re willing to pay per operation in a transaction.

This differs from the Effective Base Fee which is the actual fee paid per operation for a transaction to make it to the ledger. When the network is in surge pricing mode, the effective base fee varies based on an auction mechanism. When it's not, the effective base fee defaults to the network minimum currently at 100 stroops per operation.

Learn more in our Fees section.

Base reserve​

A unit of measurement used to calculate an account’s minimum balance. One base reserve is currently 0.5 XLM.

Learn more in our Lumens section.

Burn​

Remove an asset from circulation, which can happen in two ways: 1) a holder sends the asset back to the issuing account 2) an issuer claws back a clawback-enabled asset from a holder's account.

Claim Predicate​

A recursive data structure used to construct complex conditionals with different values of ClaimPredicateType.

ClaimableBalanceID​

A SHA-256 hash of the OperationID for claimable balances.

Claimant​

An object that holds both the destination account that can claim the ClaimableBalanceEntry and a ClaimPredicate that must evaluate to true for the claim to succeed.

Clawback​

An amount of asset from a trustline or claimable balance removed (clawed back) from a recipient’s balance sheet.

See the Clawback Encyclopedia Entry for more information.

Core Advancement Proposals (CAPs)​

Proposals of standards to improve the Stellar protocol- CAPs deal with changes to the core protocol of the Stellar network.

Create account operation​

Makes a payment to a 0-balance public key (Stellar address), thereby creating the account. You must use this operation to initialize an account rather than a standard payment operation.

Cross-asset payments​

A payment that automatically handles the conversion of dissimilar assets.

Decentralized exchange​

A distributed exchange that allows the trading and conversion of assets on the network.

Learn more in our Liquidity on Stellar Encyclopedia Entry.

External Data Representation (XDR)​

The type of encoding used operations and data running on stellar-core.

Flags​

Flags control access to an asset on the account level. Learn more about flags in our Controlling Access to an Asset section.

Fuzzing​

An automated test that rapidly stuffs massive amounts of randomized, malformed data into a system to reveal adverse or unexpected results that indicate vulnerabilities.

Read more in the Fuzz Testing Tutorial.

GitHub​

An online repository for documents that can be accessed and shared among multiple users; host for the Stellar platform’s source code, documentation, and other open-source repos.

Home domain​

A fully qualified domain name (FQDN) linked to a Stellar account, used to generate an on-chain link to a Stellar Info File, which holds off-chain metadata. See the Set Options operation. Can be up to 32 characters.

Horizon​

The Stellar API, provides an HTTP interface to data in the Stellar network.

JSON​

A standardized human-readable and machine-readable format for the exchange of structured data.

Keypair​

A combined public and private key used to secure transactions. You can use any Stellar wallet, SDK, or the Stellar Lab to generate a valid keypair.

Keystore​

An encrypted store or file that serves as a repository of private keys, certificates, and public keys.

Ledger​

A representation of the state of the Stellar universe at a given point in time, shared across all network nodes.

Learn more in the Ledgers section.

LedgerKey​

LedgerKey holds information to identify a specific ledgerEntry. It is a union that can be any one of the LedgerEntryTypes (ACCOUNT, TRUSTLINE, OFFER, DATA, or CLAIMABLE_BALANCE).

Liability​

A buying or selling obligation, required to satisfy (selling) or accommodate (buying) transactions.

Lumen (XLM)​

The native, built-in token on the Stellar network.

Learn more about lumens in our Lumens section.

Master key​

The private key used in initial account creation.

Minimum balance​

The smallest permissible balance in lumens for a Stellar account, currently 1 lumen.

Learn more in our Lumens section.

Network capacity​

The maximum number of operations per ledger, as determined by validator vote. Currently 1,000 operations for the mainnet and 100 operations for the testnet.

Number of subentries​

The number of entries owned by an account, used to calculate the account’s minimum balance.

Operation​

An individual command that modifies the ledger.

Learn more in our Operations and Transactions section.

OperationID​

Contains the transaction source account, sequence number, and the operation index of the CreateClaimableBalance operation in a transaction.

Order​

An offer to buy or sell an asset.

Learn more in our Liquidity on Stellar: SDEX and Liquidity Pools Encyclopedia Entry.

Orderbook​

A record of outstanding orders on the Stellar network.

Learn more in our Liquidity on Stellar: SDEX and Liquidity Pools Encyclopedia Entry.

Passive order​

An order that does not execute against a marketable counter order with the same price; filled only if the prices are not equal.

Passphrase​

The Mainnet and Testnet each have their own unique passphrase, which are used to validate signatures on a given transaction.

Learn more about network passphrases in the Network Passphrases Encyclopedia Entry.

Pathfinding​

The process of determining the best path of a payment, evaluating the current orderbooks, and finding the series of conversions to achieve the best rate.

Payment channel​

Allows two parties who frequently transact with one another to move the bulk of their activity off-chain, while still recording opening balances and final settlement on-chain.

Precondition​

Optional requirements you can add to control a transaction’s validity.

See the Operation and Transaction Validity section for more information.

Price​

The ratio of the quote asset and the base asset in an order.

Public key​

The public part of a keypair that identifies a Stellar account. The public key is public- it is visible on the ledger, anyone can look it up, and it is used when sending payments to the account, identifying the issuer of an asset, and verifying that a transaction is authorized.

Mainnet or Pubnet​

The Stellar Public Network, aka mainnet, the main network used by applications in production.

Read more in our Networks section.

Rate-limiting​

Horizon rate limits on a per-IP-address basis. By default, a client is limited to 3,600 requests per hour, or one request per second on average.

Sequence number​

Used to identify and verify the order of transactions with the source account.

A transaction’s sequence number must always increase by one (unless minimum sequence number preconditions are set, or a bump sequence operation is used). SDKs and the Stellar Lab automatically increment the account’s sequence number by one when you build a transaction.

Secret (private) key​

The private key is part of a keypair, which is associated with an account. Do not share your secret key with anyone.

SEPs (Stellar Ecosystem Proposals)​

Standards and protocols to allow the Stellar ecosystem to interoperate.

Learn more in our SEPs section.

Signer​

Refers to the master key or to any other signing keys added later. A signer is defined as the pair: public key + weight. Signers can be set with the Set Options operation.

See our Signature and Multisignature Encyclopedia Entry for more information.

Smart contract​

Self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code, automatically enforceable without the need for intermediaries.

Soroban​

The smart contract platform on the Stellar network. The name "Soroban" comes from the Japanese abacus, which is a traditional counting tool used for mathematical calculations. The Soroban abacus is a lightweight instrument known for its efficiency and accuracy in performing arithmetic operations.

Source account​

The account that originates a transaction. This account also provides the fee and sequence number for the transaction.

Starlight​

Stellar’s layer 2 protocol that allows for bi-directional payment channels.

Stellar​

A decentralized, federated peer-to-peer network that allows people to send payments in any asset anywhere in the world instantaneously, and with minimal fees.

Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)​

Provides a way to reach consensus without relying on a closed system to accurately record financial transactions.

See our SCP section to learn more.

Stellar Core​

A replicated state machine that maintains a local copy of a cryptographic ledger and processes transactions against it, in consensus with a set of peers; also, the reference implementation for the peer-to-peer agent that manages the Stellar network.

Stellar Development Foundation (SDF)​

A non-profit organization founded to support the development and growth of the Stellar network.

Stellar.toml​

A formatted configuration file containing published information about a node and an organization. For more, see the Stellar Info File spec (SEP-0001`)

Stroop​

As cents are to dollars, stroops are to assets: the smallest unit of an asset, one ten-millionth.

Testnet​

The Stellar Test Network is maintained by the Stellar Development Foundation, which developers can use to test applications. Testnet is free to use and provides the same functionality as the main (public) network.

Read more in our Networks.

Threshold​

The level of access for an operation.

Also used to describe the ratio of validator nodes in a quorum set that must agree in order to reach consensus as part of the Stellar Consensus Protocol.

Read more about operation thresholds in the Operations and Transactions section.

Learn more about quorum set validators in our Stellar Consensus Protocol section.

Time bounds​

An optional feature you can apply to a transaction to enforce a time limit on the transaction; either the transaction makes it to the ledger or times out (fails) depending on your time parameters.

Read more about time bounds in our Operation and Transaction Validity section.

Transaction​

A group of 1 to 100 operations that modify the ledger state.

Read more in the Operations and Transactions section.

Transaction envelope​

A wrapper for a transaction that carries signatures.

Transaction fee​

Stellar requires a small fee for all transactions to prevent ledger spam and prioritize transactions during surge pricing.

Learn more in our Lumens section.

Trustline​

An explicit opt-in for an account to hold a particular asset that tracks liabilities, the balance of the asset, and can also limit the amount of an asset that an account can hold.

Learn more in our Accounts section.

TTL (Time To Live)​

A smart contract's TTL is how many ledgers remain until the data entry is no longer live.

Read more in the State Archival section.

Type​

The classification of data that dictates the kind of data that can be stored and how it can be manipulated within a smart contract.

UNIX timestamp​

An integer representing a given date and time, as used on UNIX and Linux computers.

Validator​

A basic validator keeps track of the ledger and submits transactions for possible inclusion. It ensures reliable access to the network and sign-off on transactions. A full validator performs the functions of a basic validator, but also publishes a history archive containing snapshots of the ledger, including all network transactions and their results.

XLM (lumens)​

The native currency of the Stellar network.

Wallet​

An interface that gives a user access to an account stored on the ledger; that access is controlled by the account’s secret key. The wallet allows users to store and manage their assets.