51 concepts
Concepts
A topic is the directory a standard was filed in, and every standard has exactly one. A concept is what a standard is about, and most have three. That is why Privacy is one word here, when the 18 standards behind it are scattered through 8 separate topics.
All concepts, by how much of the corpus they cover
- Access gating
- Agents and automation
- Backup and recovery
- Baskets
- BEEF
- Block structure
- Certificates
- Certifiers and trust
- Compatibility and extensions
- Covenants
- Data in script
- Encryption
- Frames and fragmentation
- Governance and stewardship
- HTTP payments
- Identity
- Issuance and minting
- Key linkage
- Keys from one secret
- Labels and actions
- Locking scripts
- Lookup services
- Manifests and deployment
- Media and content
- Merkle proofs
- Messaging
- Multicast
- Mutual authentication
- Network architecture
- Notarization and time
- On-chain state
- Ordinals
- Payment destinations
- Payment handshakes
- Permissions
- Privacy
- Provenance
- Resale and royalties
- Risks and limitations
- Script encoding
- Service discovery
- Shared secrets
- Signatures
- SPV
- Substrates and transport
- Synchronization
- Token rulebooks
- Transaction formats
- User experience
- Wallet calls
- Watching the chain
Bigger means more standards. Hover one for how many topics it reaches and what it is usually read alongside. A gold dot marks a concept that gained a standard in the last fortnight. 251 of the 251 standards have concepts so far.
Filed elsewhere
55 standards sit in a directory that is not where their subject lives. Browsing to the obvious place never finds them.
Identity and trust
Proving who somebody is, and deciding whose word to take for it.
Certificates
14 standards, 4 topicsa signed statement about someone, issued by a third party
Certifiers and trust
12 standards, 4 topicswho you choose to believe, and what they promise
Identity
21 standards, 6 topicswho someone is, proved with a key rather than a password
Key linkage
17 standards, 5 topicsproving on purpose that two keys belong to the same person
Mutual authentication
13 standards, 7 topicsboth sides prove who they are, not just the server
Privacy
18 standards, 8 topicskeeping who paid whom out of public view
Keys
Where keys come from, how two parties agree on one, and how you get them back.
Wallet
The interface an application calls, and the limits the wallet holds it to.
Baskets
14 standards, 5 topicsthe wallet's folders for the outputs an app owns
Labels and actions
6 standards, 1 topictagging transactions so an app can find them again
Permissions
20 standards, 3 topicswhat an app is allowed to do with your wallet
Substrates and transport
10 standards, 4 topicsthe plumbing a wallet message travels over
Wallet calls
48 standards, 7 topicsthe set of calls an app makes to a wallet
Transactions and proofs
How a transaction is written down, proved, and moved around the network.
BEEF
15 standards, 5 topicsa bundle holding a transaction and everything needed to check it
Block structure
8 standards, 1 topicthe headers, coinbase and subtrees that make up a block
Frames and fragmentation
21 standards, 3 topicscutting a large message into packets and putting it back together
Merkle proofs
20 standards, 5 topicsthe short chain of hashes that proves a transaction was mined
Multicast
17 standards, 3 topicssending one transaction to many listeners at once
Network architecture
12 standards, 4 topicswhy the system is shaped the way it is, and how it scales
SPV
32 standards, 7 topicsaccepting a payment without downloading the chain
Synchronization
18 standards, 5 topicskeeping two copies of the same data in step
Transaction formats
23 standards, 4 topicsthe agreed byte layouts for a transaction and its parts
Scripts
The conditions on an output, and the data carried alongside them.
Covenants
8 standards, 4 topicsa script that constrains how its own coins may be spent next
Data in script
8 standards, 3 topicsputting content on chain inside a script
Locking scripts
16 standards, 5 topicsthe spending condition attached to an output
Script encoding
6 standards, 2 topicswriting a script as text a person can read
Tokens
Treating an output as a thing somebody owns, and can sell on.
Issuance and minting
9 standards, 4 topicsbringing a token into existence in the first place
Ordinals
8 standards, 2 topicssingle-satoshi tokens that carry their own content
Provenance
18 standards, 5 topicsthe unbroken chain back to where a thing started
Resale and royalties
4 standards, 2 topicsselling something on, and paying the original creator
Token rulebooks
34 standards, 7 topicsthe rules for treating an output as a thing somebody owns
Overlays
Indexes that find your data for you, and how you find them.
Payments
Getting money from one party to another, including per request.
Messaging and cryptography
Reaching somebody who is offline, privately and provably.
Applications
What gets built on top: agents, media, gates, state.
Access gating
16 standards, 6 topicsdeciding who gets through, and on what condition
Agents and automation
4 standards, 3 topicsletting software spend, within limits you set
Manifests and deployment
4 standards, 4 topicsa file that tells other software what this app is
Media and content
4 standards, 3 topicsaudio, video and documents published on chain
Notarization and time
11 standards, 4 topicsproving something existed, or expired, at a point in time
On-chain state
7 standards, 4 topicscarrying a running value forward through transactions
Practice and craft
Not wire formats. How to build well, what to be careful of, and who keeps the standards.
Compatibility and extensions
7 standards, 3 topicsadding something without breaking what already works
Governance and stewardship
9 standards, 4 topicswho is allowed to decide, register and maintain things
Risks and limitations
4 standards, 3 topicswhat this does not do, and what can still go wrong
User experience
13 standards, 4 topicswhat the person using the app actually sees and does