There are many terms used when talking about blockchains and crypto-currencies. There are also many terms unique to PIVX.

Proof of Stake

The Proof of Stake (PoS) concept states that a person can mine or validate block transactions according to how many coins they hold. This means that the more coins owned by a miner, the more mining power they have (by opposition to Proof-Of-Work, where the mining power of an actor is linked to his computing power). More details on https://pivx.org/proof-of-stake.

Staking

The mechanism by which miners (called stakers) are rewarded for adding new blocks to the PIVX Proof-Of-Stake blockchain.

Cold Staking

The mechanism where Stakers delegate their PIV to a hot wallet (which can be ones own additional wallet or a third party wallet). This hot wallet can stake on the users behalf, but cannot access or spend the users PIV. Any rewards go completely to the cold-staker.

PIV

A single unit of the PIVX cryptocurrency. Multiple units are often referred to as PIVs.

PIVian

A PIVX community member who is passionate about the PIVX project, volunteers time towards the projects goals, and some even believe he/she bleeds purple.

zk-SNARKS / SHIELD

The privacy protocol implemented on the PIVX blockchain. Zero-Knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKS) is a cryptographic method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true, without conveying (or unknowingly leaking) any information apart from one simple statement that the statement being made is indeed true. PIVX uses this mechanism to create SHIELD transactions for which details are only visible to the sender and receiver. Visit the privacy protocol page on the website to learn more.

zPIV

ZPIVS are depracated! In the past, PIVX used the Zerocoin protocol for private transactions. This protocol has been retired in favor of zk-SNARKS / SHIELD privacy protocol.

Masternode

PIVX Masternodes are special wallets that, in exchange of locking up 10,000 PIV collateral, provide a second level of governance on the network with functionalities such as voting on the Treasury Budget.

Treasury Budget

A monthly budget of PIVs that may be allocated to community submitted proposals. The proposals are voted upon by PIVX masternode owners.