- Anchor / anchoring
- Writing a record's commitment onto a public blockchain, where it is permanently fixed in time. "The anchor" is that permanent public entry: a record anchored on Tuesday provably existed by Tuesday.
- Blockchain
- A public record book kept simultaneously by many independent computers, designed so entries can be added but never edited or removed. FORAY writes commitments to one; the records themselves never leave their owner.
- Commitment
- A short fixed-length value derived from a record's fingerprint and a salt. It is what actually gets written to the blockchain: it pins the record down completely while revealing nothing about it.
- Endpoint
- A web address that software (rather than a person) sends requests to. FORAY's validator is reached at one: a program sends it a record and gets back an answer.
- ERP
- Enterprise resource planning system — the central business software (accounting, orders, inventory) a company runs on, and the place most records originate.
- Fingerprint (hash)
- A short fixed-length value computed from a file's exact bytes. The same bytes always give the same fingerprint; changing even one character gives a completely different one. "Hash" is the technical name for the same idea.
- JSON
- A common plain-text way of writing structured data, readable by both people and software. FORAY records are written this way.
- Kaspa
- The public blockchain FORAY's reference deployment writes to. Anyone can look up an entry on it, without an account and without asking anyone's permission.
- Ledger
- A book of record — the running list of transactions a business keeps. Used on this site in its ordinary bookkeeping sense.
- Mainnet
- A blockchain's real, live network — as opposed to the practice networks used for testing. An entry on mainnet is a real, permanent, public entry.
- Salt
- A secret random ingredient mixed with a record's fingerprint when its commitment is computed. Without the salt, the public entry reveals nothing; with it, the record's owner can prove the match. Salts stay with the record's owner.
- Schema
- The machine-readable dictionary of a data format: which fields exist and what shape each one takes. FORAY's schema is published and is the one authority on the record format's field names.
- SHA-256
- A standard way of computing a fingerprint of a file: the same file always gives the same fingerprint, and any change gives a different one.
- shasum
- A standard command-line program that computes a file's SHA-256 fingerprint.
- Validator
- FORAY's live checker: send it a record and it answers with either PASS or a list of problems, each named. It is the referee of the record format.