A hard fork is a major change to the blockchain that makes it incompatible with the old version. A soft fork is a small, backward-compatible change.
The new coins that miners earn for successfully adding a new block of transactions to the blockchain.
A special event on some blockchains, like Bitcoin, where the reward for mining a new block is cut in half.
The total computing power used for mining a cryptocurrency. A higher hash rate means the network is more secure.
A node that only stores a small part of the blockchain's history and relies on full nodes for information.
