This glossary explains words as this document uses them. Where a word means something else in the wider industry, that is noted — because misreading one word is enough to misread a whole mechanism.

Network and consensus

Word	Meaning in this document
Blockchain	A ledger that can be appended to but not quietly altered, held by many parties at once. This document says ledger when speaking of meaning, and chain when speaking of the product
Chain	Used interchangeably with ledger in the conceptual sense; kept as "chain" in established names such as the chain-producing machine and customer chain
Consensus	The rule deciding which block counts as real. Here it is the kind that would rather halt than split
The two-thirds threshold	More than two thirds of voting power is needed to finalise a block. The consequence: losing a third halts the network
Independent failure domain	A place where, when it dies, everything inside it dies with it — usually a machine, a region, a provider. Counting these gives fault tolerance; counting signers does not
Validator	A node entitled to sign blocks and accountable for doing so
Self-bond	The stake a signer puts up from their own assets — what they lose if they misbehave
Full node	A node that holds and serves the ledger but does not sign blocks
Archive node	A node holding the complete history from the first block, not only recent state
Genesis	The birth file: the first state every node must agree on before any block is signed
Re-genesis	Rebuilding a network from a new birth file. During the test phase this is permitted; the inheritance promise only takes effect from the official network
Test period · testnet	A run for testing. A rehearsal carries exactly the identity of the official network, so telling them apart requires the time of the first block
Mainnet · official network	Two words for the same thing: the period where everything is engraved for the last time and the record is kept permanently

Economics and assets

Word	Meaning in this document
LOVE9	The 9Chain network's native token — used for staking, voting, accounting
AGAPE	The only endowment holding a balance at birth; every issued flow opens from here
VERITAS · LIBERTAS · AETERNUM	The three parts each day's flow divides into: truth about people · keeping the network alive · builders and the future
The four zeros	No premine · no team allocation · no investment fund · no sale to anyone. The project's shortest engraved list
Operating capital	The advance that lets the network run on day one — an advance, not a grant: what is unspent returns to the endowment
Gasless	Users pay no fee to submit a transaction. It does not mean the network costs nothing — it means somebody else is paying
LOVE9 Point	Community points on the project's community platform. Not the network's token, not on chain, and whether they convert is LEFT BLANK
Token issuer	An asset issued by an organisation on their chain, not the network's native token

Customer chains and compliance

Word	Meaning in this document
The chain-producing machine	The infrastructure that takes a description and raises, keeps alive, and tears down a private chain
Customer chain	A private chain produced for an organisation or a community
Declaration · blueprint	A written declaration of a chain: what it is, what its rules are — what the infrastructure reads in order to build it
Compliance at the protocol layer	Rules enforced inside the consensus mechanism itself, not in a contract running above it
Shared identity	Proving you are you once and being able to use it across many chains. This is the part the project still has to prove
Interoperability	The ability of two chains to read and trust each other's data. In this project, opening the first channel is a gate not yet passed

How to read this document

Word	Meaning in this document
ENGRAVED	Locked permanently, changeable by nobody — including whoever holds the name
RUNNING	Built, and verifiable from outside
PROPOSED	Drafted by the founding group; the community can change it by vote
LEFT BLANK	Deliberately undecided. Not forgotten, and not a promise either
Gate	A condition that must be passed, written in criteria rather than dates — so it does not go out of date
Maturity level	A four-step scale measuring what the system has proven, read in Check the network yourself. Moving back a level can happen
Live measurement	A number that changes over time. The body of this document contains none — they live only where they are read straight from the network
Hash anchoring	Timestamping a version of the document into a public ledger, so that later it can be proven unaltered. It proves integrity and timing, not that the content is true

Diagram

flowchart LR W["A word in the document"] --> N{"Which group?"} N -->|"network"| A["Consensus · nodes · genesis"] N -->|"money"| B["LOVE9 · endowment · three parts"] N -->|"customer chains"| C["Producing machine · compliance"] N -->|"reading"| D["Four labels · gates · levels"]

Figure 30 — The glossary splits into four groups, matching the document's four lines of content.

In short: most arguments about an infrastructure project turn out to be arguments about what words mean — so a public glossary is the cheapest guard against talking past each other.