Blockchain nomenclature

Misspellings can be either one of two things:

1. An honest misspelling.
2. An unfamiliarity with the underlying topics.

This post is an effort to tidy up possible misunderstandings. Blockchain or block chain? Read on.

Capitalisation / Nomenclature: Bitcoin vs bitcoin

"Since Bitcoin is both a currency and a protocol, capitalization can be confusing. Accepted practice is to use Bitcoin (singular with an upper case letter B) to label the protocol, software, and community, and bitcoins (with a lower case b) to label units of the currency."

Source:

• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:Introduction

Capitalisation / Nomenclature: Ethereum vs ether

From the Ethereum whitepaper by Gavin Wood.

"What Ethereum intends to provide is a blockchain with a built-in fully fledged Turing-complete programming language that..."

Pretty clear he is talking about the network.

"The account's current ether balance"

Pretty clear he is talking about account balances and hence "coins".

Source:

• Ethereum Whitepaper - https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper

Capitalisation / Nomenclature: Blockchain vs blockchain

Typically words follow the rule for capitalisation: first letter should in a name or if the word appears at the start of a sentence.

While the Bitcoin whitepaper doesn't mention the term "blockchain" it does, of course, provide an understanding of what a blockchain is:

"to make it satisfy the proof-of-work As later blocks are chained after it".

What isn't so clear is the spelling. Wikipedia suggests that the first usage was "block chain" but commonly accepted usage is now "blockchain".

Sources:

• Bitcoin Whitepaper - https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
• Blockchain on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
• Also see Ethereum Whitepaper - https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper

List of wrong capitalisations and spellings

The following spelling are hard to read:

• BitCoin, Bit Coin, Bit-Coin, Bit-coin, Bit coin etc.
• BlockChain, Block-Chain, Block-chain, block-chain etc. And now probably also "block chain".