_The following words & phrased are used in the Gordian architecture.
Architectural Terms
- Coercion Resistance. The philosophy that people should be able to make their own choices. We all often instead invoke Privacy, but Coercion Resistance instead defines what Privacy is meant to protect.
- Functional Partition. The philosophy of separating different functions as different parts of an interoperable ecosystem, and also dividing data up into different locations, all to improve Resilience. This is done with Partitions and could include Airgaps or Torgaps. This is one way to accomplish Heterogeneity.
- Data Minimization. The philosophy of always offering the least amount of data needed for a task. This is a subset of Least & Necessary.
- Gordian Principles. Four fundamental precepts at the heart of
the Blockchain Commons’ work: Independence, Privacy, Resilience,
and Openness. See Gordian Principles.
- Independence. The ability to work in a self-sovereign way without centralization. A Gordian Principle.
- Privacy. Protection of personal data and usage against correlation and censorship. A Gordian Principle.
- Resilience. The ability to prevent loss of assets or data, including resilience against theft and resilience against accidental loss. A Gordian Principle.
- Openness. Interoperability of systems and easy portability of data. A Gordian Principle. nnn* Heterogeneity. The philosophy that things are better protected if they’re different. Functional Partition is one element of this.
- Least & Necessary. A authentication-related philosophy that says the least required (or most necessary) permissions should be granted. When extended to information, this becomes the Data Minimization principle.
- Open Development. The philosphy that open source isn’t sufficient: it must be part of a larger life cycle that communicates with community and includes support.
- Progressive Trust. The concept of gradually building trust over time. See Musings of a Trust Architect: Progressive Trust.
- Pseudonymous Trust Building. The philosophy of being able to build Progressive Trust through peer-to-peer interactions in a Web of Trust for a static identity not connected to the physical world.
- Reference App. An application that shows an example of the usage of a Specification, usually built with a Reference Library. See Gordian Reference Apps.
- Reference Library. A library that provides an API for using a Specification. See Libraries.
- SmartCustody. Documents, instructions, and Specifications intended to improve the Resilience of digital assets, either at the personal or the ecosystem level. See SmartCustody.
- Specification. A specific design intended to support communication, data, or backup Encoding and backup, to ensure the Openness of interoperability, to support UX Design, or to ensure other Gordian Principles. Part of the Gordian System. See Gordian Specifications in Blockchain Commons Research Repo and of course, the whole developer website.
- Web of Trust. A linked set of identities that can offer peer-to-peer attestations for Pseudonymous Trust Building.
Macro-Architecture Terms
- Airgap. A Partition between two Services such that they are not Networked on the same network. (Often, at least one Service is not Networked at all). See Airgap (Wikpedia).
- Closely Held Device. A hardware device such as a phone or a hardware wallet that is privately held by an individual, that has a small attack surface due to careful and consistent sandboxing, and that is not constantly Networked in the way that a full computer tends to be.
- Gordian Macro-architecture. A suggested design for a data-asset ecosystem that supports the Gordian Principles. It’s built upon a foundational idea of Functional Partition. See Gordian Architecture.
- Microservice. A Service that provides a capability which is very specific and/or infrequently used. See Gordian Architecture.
- Networked. Directly connected to an online network.
- Partition. A division between two or more Services. A partition could be as simple as ensuring those Services are on different machines, but can also include an Airgap or Torgap.
- Service. An application providing a specific capability as part of the Functional Partition of a digital-asset ecosystem. Includes Microservices.
- Torgap. A Partition between two Services, created to ensure that they are anonymous to each other. See Torgap.
Technological Terms
- Animated QRs. An animation of a QR made up of several frames. Used for transmitting data larger than the max possible with Quick Response (QR) Codes. See Animated QRs.
- ByteWords. An Encoding Specification that represents binary data as English words. Used in the by Blockchain Commons specifications primarily to represent CBOR in URs. See ByteWords.
- CBOR. A Data Format: it represents data in a binary format. See RFC 8949.
- Collaborative Key Management (CKM). A Seed Recovery Service for the collaborative generation and usage of keys. See CKM.
- Collaborative Seed Recovery (CSR). A Seed Recovery Service to improve Resilience by storing Shares of keys or seeds that are created by Sharding. See CSR.
- Encoding. A conversion of data into a specific form. See Encoding (Techopedia).
- Encoding Specification. A Specification for Encoding
- Envelope. A communication Specification for a Smart Document that supports the storage, backup, encryption & authentication of data, with explicit support for Merkle-based selective disclosure. See Envelope.
- Lifehash. A UX Design that creates a visual hash as part of an OIB to allow for visual identification of data. See Lifehash.
- Object Identity Block (OIB). A UX Design for an array of data that can together allow a user to easily and uniquely identify data. Can include a Lifehash. See OIB.
- Quick Connect. A Data Format for a URI or QR Code that can be used to securely connect together two devices that are separated by a Partition. See Quick Connect.
- Quick Response (QR) Code. An Encoding Specification that represents data in a graphical format. URs are built to allow for efficient encoding as a QR Code. With them, Gordian Animated QRs support animation of larger data sets using foundation codes. See QR Code (Wikipedia) & URs.
- Seed Recovery. A method for recovering a seed that has been lost, thanks to proactive backups. Uses Sharding or other similar techniques. See Seed Recovery.
- Share. A fraction of a seed or a key created by an algorithm such as Shamir’s Secret Sharing or VSS. Intended to improve Resilience of data and enable Seed Recovery. See SSKR.
- Sharding. The process of creating Shares from seeds or keys. See SSKR.
- Uniform Resources (URs). An Encoding Specification of a URI for data. It is created by representating data as CBOR and then encoding it with minimal Bytewords. URs are also built to allow efficient Encoding as QR Codes. URs allow for interoperable communication. See URs.
- Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). A unique sequence for identifying a resource. A UR is a URI. See URI (Wikipedia).