Breaking Down Po.et: Key Terms

In preparation for our push towards writing claims to mainnet, we gathered up some of the common terminology from our documentation on https://docs.poetnetwork.net/. For up to date information, always be sure to check out the official documentation.

Anchoring: The process of recording a blockchain transaction containing a batch of claims.

Bitcoin Blockchain: Po.et writes all transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain (BTC) using the OP_RETURN opcode.

Claims: Claims are well-formatted, cryptographically signed JSON-LD documents that contain metadata about a specific subject. Claims are not to be considered “truth” or “fact”, but instead, they are meant to record data in an immutable, permanent record that can be independently validated as to have originated from a specific identity.

Claim Batching: Claim batching is the process by which a Po.et Node combines multiple claims together into one transaction that anchors all of the claims in one on-chain transaction, allowing the Po.et Network to scale to a higher number of transactions per second compared to recording each claim one at a time. Po.et uses hashes generated from IPFS objects that have been combined into one IPFS directory. The IPFS directory is what is recorded in the blockchain transaction, along with other necessary metadata to help identify Po.et transactions.

Claim Type: A reference to a schema for a particular type of Claim (e.g., Creative Work or Identity). Claim types can be extended for ad hoc use cases through JSON-LD “@contexts”.

Creative Work: A Po.et Entity representing an original creative work, such as a text file, PDF, image, or video.

Creative Work Claim: A claim type containing metadata about a creative work.

Entity: An entity is the sum of the aggregated claims about a particular subject or hash. Entities could be tied to an identity (Person, Organization, Agent) or content (Creative Work).

Hash: A hash is a cryptographic algorithm that deterministically generates a string of numbers and characters from an input file which acts as a unique fingerprint.

IPFS (InterPlanetary File System): IPFS is a decentralized hypermedia protocol. Po.et uses IPFS for storing both content and claims.

JSON-LD: JSON-LD is a JSON-based Serialization for Linked Data used to describe claims. JSON-LD allows for deterministic canonicalization of serialized data which ensures that claims can be independently verified as originating from the signed identity. JSON-LD also allows for including additional schema information to modify or extend available claim types.

Custodial Wallet: Custodial wallets are services that enable a node operator to manage private keys on behalf of API users. This improves the UX of managing works and claims for average users by obfuscating public/private key infrastructure. Po.et has developed a custodial wallet to be used along with the nodes, but it is not a required dependency to run a node.

Metadata: Metadata is data that describes some other data. For example, if you wrote a book, that is the data itself. If you printed off a sheet that stated how many pages your book was, what the genre was and the name of the author and editor, that would be the metadata: data which describes the dataset.

Person / Organization: An entity such as a human, business, government, church, association, NGO, etc. as defined from schema.org.

POE: Native token of the Po.et network.

Po.et API: Po.et’s official key-custody agent and Identity Provider. It makes it easier to work with Po.et by hiding the complex details of key and identity management from Po.et application developers and end-users that don’t want to manage their own node.

Po.et Network: The sum total of all the claims that meet the requirements of the Po.et Protocol. The entire network lives on BTC and IPFS and there is no separate blockchain.

Po.et Node: A Po.et Node refers to software that receives creative works and produces claims according to the Po.et Protocol.

Po.et Protocol: The Po.et Protocol is a metadata schema along with methods for storing, retrieving and verifying metadata and its related data.

Proof of Existence: The process of recording a transaction that includes a hash representing some type of information or object to a blockchain. The transaction must be considered to be immutable and durable. The timestamp from the transaction allows us to have proof that the subject of the hash existed at that specific point in time.

Subject: An Entity about which claims can be made. Subjects are represented by their corresponding hash.

Verifiable Claims: For a claim to be considered verifiable, it requires that a claim be deterministically serialized and cryptographically signed in a way that allows for independent verification of the contents of the claim.

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