Glossary of terms

Term
Definition
Agency
A service provider that hosts Cloud Agents and may provision Edge Agents on behalf of Entities. Agencies may be Unaccredited, Self-Certified, or Accredited.
Agent
A software program or process used by or acting on behalf of an Entity to interact with other Agents or with the cheqd Network or other distributed ledgers. Agents are of two types: Edge Agents run at the edge of the network on a local device; Cloud Agents run remotely on a server or cloud hosting service. Agents require access to a Wallet in order to perform cryptographic operations on behalf of the Entity they represent.
Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol
A protocol for communicating between Agents to form Connections, exchange Credentials, and have other secure private Interactions. A less technical synonym is DID Communication (DIDComm).
Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol Layer
The technical stack 'Layer' for peer-to-peer Connections and Interactions over the Agent-to-Agent Protocol.
Anonym
A DID used exactly once, so it cannot be contextualized or correlated beyond that single usage. See also Pseudonym and Verinym.
Anywise
A non-reciprocal relationship rooted in the Identity of one party, where the other party is the public (a faceless “other” that can be instantiated without bound). For an Organization to issue publicly Verifiable Credentials, its Issuer DID must be on a public ledger such as cheqd. It is thus an Anywise DID—a DID to which any other Entity may refer without coordination. The term “public DID” is sometimes used as a casual synonym for “Anywise DID”. However, “public DID” is deprecated because it is ambiguous, i.e., it may refer to a DID that is world-visible but usable only in pairwise mode, or to a DID that is not published in a central location but nonetheless used in many contexts, or to a DID that is both publicly visible and used in Anywise mode. Compare N-wise and Pairwise.
ATOM
The exchange token that runs and transacts natively on the Cosmos ledger.
Attribute
An Identity trait, property, or quality of an Entity.
Authentic data
A relatively new term, intended to replace 'Self-sovereign identity'. It relates to signed, verifiable and cryptographically resolvable data using the W3C Verifiable Credential data model.
Bitcoin
A type of cryptocurrency, famously created by pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, using a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus model to mine blocks.
Blocks
A set of transaction data, forming part of a Blockchain.
Blockchain
A system in which a record of transactions are maintained across several computers that are linked in a distributed, peer-to-peer network.
Bonding
Attaching tokens to a specific Node Operator, to participate in cheqd Network Governance and delegate unused votes to that specific Node Operator.
CHEQ
The native medium of exchange, governance and transaction fees on the cheqd Network.
cheqd Network
The blockchain, built on the Cosmos SDK, that cheqd uses for transactions, governance and identity interactions.
Claim
An assertion about an Attribute of a Subject. Examples of a Claim include date of birth, height, government ID number, or postal address—all of which are possible Attributes of an Individual. A Credential is comprised of a set of Claims. (Note: Early in the development of Self-Sovereign Identity technology, this term was used the same way it was used in the early W3C Verifiable Claims Working Group specifications—as a synonym for what is now a Credential. That usage is now deprecated.)
Cloud Agent
An Agent that is hosted in the cloud. It typically operates on a computing device over which the Identity Owner does not have direct physical control or access. Mutually exclusive with Edge Agent. A Cloud Agent requires a Wallet and typically has a Service Endpoint. Cloud agents may be hosted by an Agency.
Coin
A coin operates on its own independent blockchain and acts like a native currency within a specific financial system.
Connection
A cryptographically verifiable communications channel established using an Agent-to-Agent Protocol between two DIDs representing two Entities and their associated Agents. Connections may be Edge-to-Edge Connections or Cloud-to-Cloud Connections. Connections may be used to exchange Verifiable Credentials or for any other communications purpose. Connections may be encrypted and decrypted using the Public Keys and Private Keys for each DID. A Connection may be temporary or it may last as long as the two Entities desire to keep it. Two Entities may have multiple Connections between them, however each Connection must be between a unique pair of DIDs. A relationship between more than two Entities may be modeled either as Pairwise connections between all of the Entities (Peering) or each Entity can form a Connection with an Entity representing a Group.

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