Glossary
Last updated
Last updated
A Decentralized Exchange allows the exchange of value between two or more assets, without the need to send those assets to a Centralized Exchange (CEX) first. When assets are sent to a CEX, they are no longer in your possession. You do not have the Private Key to the assets on a CEX and so you do not actually own them (just like you do not own the money in your FIAT bank). With UNIGATE, your assets only leave your wallet, when they are secure under the control of a Smart Contract, since you alone know your complete Private Key.
What is a Wallet?
All the coins and tokens purchased by the user are stored in a digital wallet. The wallets usually tend to be centralized (under custody of the platform through which user purchases/trades) - and in essence, never in actual control of their wallet from unfortunate system incidents such as a downtime, hack attempt and further - the wallet-to-wallet transfer involves fees.
With UNIGATE, being under decentralized protocol, the user will maintain their funds independently with a decentralized wallet like Metamask. Hence the user is given complete control over but also complete responsibility of safeguarding their wallet.
What is an Address?
In context of cryptocurrency, an address is a long alphanumeric unique identifier to a user's wallet. Hence, the user's address serves as a beneficiary details when the user is receiving crypto payment, and a remitter identifier when payment is performed by the user.
Public Key:
A public key permits to receive digital assets (often, cryptocurrency payments). A wallet address is the hashed version of the public key, and this wallet address is meant to be shared for the purpose of receiving these payments.
Private key:
A private key authorises a transaction of the cryptocurrency held under the public key, to be processed. It is utilised mainly in DeFi - where the wallet custody is given to the user.
A private key must NEVER be shared, and the private key must be carefully and privately stored to be kept safe from other eyes but also retrievable personally - because if it is lost or forgotten, neither a new one can be generated, and the digital assets are lost from access forever.
Token:
A token is a digital asset created on its blockchain it is founded on. It may be fungible (cryptocurrencies) or non-fungible (NFTs).
A few other meanings on the fungible tokens:
A coin is called a token if it resides on a blockchain it is not native on Simply, a coin running on another coin's blockchain is called a token.
A token is a digital asset created by cryptocurrency project which can be purchased usually against a stablecoin
Coins and tokens are often interchangeably used, as the assets often travel across different blockchains based on the transactions and exchange activities happening.
The token of UNIGATE is denoted as 'UGT', which is actually a synthetic stablecoin.
Who are the Merchants, under context of UNIGATE's services?
Under relevance with UNIGATE's services,
A Merchant can be an institution, corporate, firm, medium or small enterprise, or even an individual engaged in business with the intention to collect payments in cryptocurrency .
UNIGATE can coexist alongside the merchant's existing mode of payment collections.
UNIGATE has compatibility to cater to these businesses can be an on-premise (retail store, mom-and-pop shops, one person company) as well as e-commerce. The e-commerce setup can be compatible for a plug and play plugin for platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, or simple RESTful APIs to proceed for an integration.
What is Yield Farming?
Yield Farming is an earning method where the user invest their crypto assets in the liquidity pools of DeFi Platforms to earn interest in return.
Under UNIGATE's liquidity pool for DeFi services, 80% of the fees received from UNIGATE's DeFi services like swapping, borrowing and lending are paid to the investor.
UGT:
UGT is the token of UNIGATE
Trustless
A platform is trustless, in the subject of cryptocurrency & essentially blockchain, when a transaction can be processed completely through the underlying smart contracts on the blockchain - without the need of involvement of a third party in holding your crypto assets, nor the involvement of the third party on validating the transaction.
Smart Contract:
In simple terms, Smart contracts are rulesets programmed on the blockchain behind applications like UNIGATE, where the business logics are configured to run by conditions and requests. Smart contracts enable workflows that proceed with ethics and security. Since smart contracts are immutable, they allow no capability of an organization to change the rulesets at any point of time after they are configured
What does it mean for something to be immutable?
Commonly used for transaction records on blockchain, immutable refers to the incapability of something to ever change by nature of system it is working within. When it comes to UNIGATE- the transaction records and smart contracts programmed.
'Once done, is forever how it will be. It can never ever be changed. Regardless of intent behind changing it, and regardless of any entity with any technical access and any authority in the world'
What does it mean when something is decentralized ? Why is it frequently mentioned here?
Decentralization, in simple terms, happens when any activity (processing, record keeping) is re-engineered from going through a single point of authority, into going through distributed points of authority. This avoids issues from failures and misappropriations that may happen on that single point, and also ensure multiple sources of truth present during the processing and record keeping of that activity.
As cryptocurrency was created on blockchain with the expectation of transactions and records of the currency to be decentralized; Decentralized Finance is the next step where financial activities like trading,
UNIGATE is operating 'to bring DeFi to the business men and common man'. UNIGATE is being the platform where all crypto transactions and the resulting financial assets; whether for an institution, merchant or even a household user - stay within the control of the user. Being true to the definition of decentralization is sacred for us, and hence every part of every service given under UNIGATE - from signup to processing to wallets & earnings stay decentralized - completely running between users and smart contracts with zero possibility of intrusion from any authority, even UNIGATE itself.
Multichain:
Multichain is the feature of UNIGATE where the platform is integrated with 11 blockchains (!!)
Almost every other known platform for every service that's being currently provided in UNIGATE - are operating only on their individual blockchain whether on a layer-1 or layer-2 network. Withdrawal from a wallet of a blockchain to another blockchain for different purposes/investment allocations - incurs transaction costs and defeats interoperability.
However, with multichain in UNIGATE - companies will be able to operate with customers irrespective of the customer's wallet network - and further, without the fear of repeated cross-chain transfers and eventual processing costs to add up.
Pool:
In a crypto exchange running on DeFi (these exchanges being known as DEX), the liquidity pool exists as a layer between the buyer and the seller, and performs the buy and sell operations on behalf of the buyer and the seller rather than the direct P2P trading that happens on centralized platforms. Contribution of one's crypto assets into the liquidity pool to facilitate the availability and hence the trade of those crypto assets in the ecosystem is called as the activity of 'pooling', for which incentives are earned.
NFT Marketplace
Just like an Exchange (whether centralized or decentralized) is a marketplace for cryptocurrency to be traded directly amongst the buyers and sellers, similarly a NFT marketplace connects buyers and sellers for trading in NFTs.
Bridge:
A bridge connects blockchains that enable transfer of digital assets from one blockchain to another. This enables utilizing a cryptocurrency of its native blockchain 'A' on an application that's hosted on blockchain 'B' . Bridges enable interoperability of assets between blockchains, without which the blockchains and assets on them would be working in siloes.
Borrowing:
Borrowing is the facility where the borrower collects a crypto loan, while giving crypto as a collateral - with an expectation to receive the collateral released back on payback of the loaned crypto and the applicable loan interest.
Lending:
A passive earning mechanism in response to borrowing, where a custodian of crypto stays as the owner of the crypto assets but lends the assets to the borrower and earns an interest from the loan. As a counter-measure of payback default, the collateral from the borrower can be sold to recover the bad debt.
